June 24, 2010
By Doug Demmons
Does Jeff Gordon have it coming at New Hampshire this week? You bet.
And Gordon has been the first to admit it. He was driving at Sonoma like he owned stock in the wrecker company, bouncing off everything except the pace car.
He wrecked Martin Truex Jr. and Elliott Sadler and slammed into Kurt Busch, causing his tire to go down and relegating him to 32nd place. Also on the Gordon Hit List were Clint Bowyer, David Ragan and Greg Biffle. He even got into Mattias Ekstrom, who was filling in for the first time in the No. 83 at Red Bull and barely had time to get anybody mad at him.
Gordon says he’s sorry about Truex and Sadler. But he knows that being sorry isn’t going to save him.
“Whatever is coming back to me, I understand,” he said. “When you blatantly get into a guy like that, you can say you are sorry all you want and I certainly had no intentions on what happened with him. I have the No. 42 (Juan Pablo Montoya) behind me, dive bombing me into the braking zone and where I made a mistake is trying to out-brake him. I will try and explain that to Martin. I fell terrible because Martin races a lot of guys clean out there. He had a good run going and I ruined that for him."
Busch is another story entirely.
"Kurt Busch had everything coming to him that I gave him because he gave it to me on the restart before that, so I don't feel sorry about that,” Gordon said. “I certainly do with Martin. With Elliott (Sadler), I feel bad. I was racing him hard, he was blocking me but we was trying to race somebody else too but that was probably my fault as well.”
So nobody should be surprised if the No. 24 ends up in the garage before the end of Sunday’s race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
And there’s still the possibility that payback might not come from one of the Sonoma 7 that rubbed fenders and bumpers with Gordon. Matt Kenseth could deliver it. Even Jimmie Johnson.
New Hampshire is the perfect place for payback -- a flat, short track where speeds don’t get ridiculous. Failure to deliver payback this weekend means waiting at least two more weeks because Daytona follows New Hampshire and payback on a plate track can result in making 10 or 12 new enemies.
But the carnage at Sonoma doesn’t make Gordon the bad guy. It makes him a driver with a long time between wins and a short amount of patience.
It makes him a driver who knows he’s on the downward slope of his career and knows the opportunities for wins are fewer than they once were.
It makes him a driver who knows that NASCAR is not a church social.
It makes him a driver who is more than willing to dish it out and prepared to endure the consequences.
It’s what fans have been pleading for -- less political correctness, more letting it all hang out.
Well, they have gotten it this season. “Boys have at it” started slowly but it is quickly gathering steam as the chances to make the Chase or hang on to a sponsor and a ride wind down.
Gordon was far from being the only offender at Sonoma.
Tony Stewart apparently felt he owed something to Boris Said and slammed him on the cooldown lap after the checkered flag.
“The only thing I was disappointed in is at the end of the race Tony Stewart just ran in and took the side of my car out after the checker,” Said said. “He's one of my heroes, so that kind of upset me a little bit.”
AJ Allmendinger, who said he “kept getting hit and ping-ponged around,” attributes it to the improved level of competition in the series.
“Everybody is really close,” he said, “and I think it's a good and bad thing because it shows how close the Sprint Cup Series is and how great a racing this is and how tough everybody is. But, at the same point, we're just battling to death on lap one. It's interesting out there in the race car, but it's fun and that's what the fans pay for."
Doug Demmons is a writer and editor for the Birmingham News ~ he writes daily and weekly auto racing columns ranging from NASCAR to open wheel to Formula One, local tracks and more... you can read Doug's columns online at Blog of Tommorow
Follow Doug on Twitter: @dougdemmons
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
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