After having a loose wheel just before halfway, Jeff Gordon would fight back from two laps down during the second half of the race to finish third.
“I’m very pleased the way we finished,” he commented. “It certainly wasn’t easy and was filled full of ups and downs and emotions. You know, the whole weekend really was. We were very disappointed in the way we qualified. I didn’t get the best out of the car. But we were just lacking some speed, as well. And in the race, I thought we were really, really good.”
Gordon had worked his way into the top-10 despite a poor qualifying effort before the loose wheel and continued to show that speed after getting the wheel changed. He would take a wave around to get himself to a single lap down, before getting the lucky dog at lap 295. He was then able to get some track position when the leaders pitted under a caution at lap 344.
“We lined up in the outside lane which was a huge plus tonight, a couple times on some restarts and ended up driving our way into the top 5,” he commented. “We were in a good position to get a really nice, solid finish, and then all the chaos broke out with restarts and rain and crashes and everything else. Found ourselves somehow in second, and I thought we were going to run out of fuel for sure, but luckily we didn’t. I saw the 3 (Austin Dillon) peel off there and I felt sorry for him and I thought we were going to be next or the 20 (Matt Kenseth).
“But that last restart was just trying to get momentum and not spin the tires too much. I knew Jimmie (Johnson) on the outside was going to be really, really hard to hold off, and I thought a third would be a great finish.”
Gordon felt at the end of the race that he didn’t have anything for Kenseth by virtue of having to restart in the non-preferred groove on the inside and having worn off the right rear tire.
“Of course I wanted to race Matt for the win, but I was going to pretty much either have to take him out or he was going to have to make a huge mistake just because that inside lane is such a disadvantage,” he stated.
Drivers are now focused to run the outside groove versus the inside groove at Bristol due to how they’ve ground the track, and that was only made more difficult by the rubber build up.
“I really hope they reconsider that in the future and do something about it, but anyway, it makes for some interesting racing out there, especially around lapped cars, just big, big challenges getting through traffic,” he added. “Makes it very hard to pass.”
He added that they have made the bottom more abrasive than the top, which causes the drivers to run the top side, and as rubber goes down, it gives the top more grip than the bottom. As a result, when you try to make passes on the bottom, you’re grinding the tires and have no grip.
“Some guys have gotten their cars set to rotate and roll around the lower part of the race track a little bit better than some others and those guys do better in traffic, but for me I was just slide jobbing every car I came to,” he explained. “If I got a run off the corner and had momentum and could get to their quarter panel or bumper, I’d just dive in there and slide up in front of them, and that worked really well for me all night long, but there were some cars that were a little bit faster that you couldn’t do that with, and when I finally got back on the lead lap with cars I was racing with, I really had to pick and choose those moments to make those passes very carefully or I would lose positions instead of gaining them.”
The finish marked a positive note for Gordon, considering the day started off on a high with his children Ella and Leo giving the command to start engines.
“That was so, so cool, and they nailed it,” Gordon commented. “I’m just so, so proud of them. Yeah, that was just — I’m just so thankful to Bristol Motor Speedway and Marcus and Bruton and all those folks. To do that, to invite them to do that, means so much to me and they just had a blast preparing for it, just practicing in the car on the way to school. So funny, and Leo, he had to put his little engine rev in there at the end, which I thought just kind of put it over the top. As soon as the red flag came, I went back to the bus and rewound it and watched it with them, and they were just beaming. It was awesome.”
