September 27, 2008
By Brenda Benedict
Jeff Gordon showed championship behavior this week. Gordon’s season has been good but not great. He enters this third week of the Chase in 8th place without having had a Sprint Cup win all year. However Gordon talked about this season with the class of a champion.
In a press conference this week, Gordon expressed his frustrations over many aspects of this season. He accepted responsibility for the results his team is achieving. Gordon’s openness is refreshing when so much of what we hear in interviews from drivers is NASCAR- homogenized. Homogenization of milk makes every part of milk the same and doesn’t allow the cream to rise to the surface. NASCAR’s control over drivers often doesn’t allow us to hear anything more than a ‘company line’ but this was not the case when Gordon reviewed his season.
This year we have seen drivers who are quick to blame others for their performance-crew chief, pit crew or engine builders. Gordon did not do that. He stepped up to the plate and acknowledged his responsibility in the performance of the #24 team. Gordon said, “I’m as much a part of this team and its performance as anybody else out there. If there’s going to be criticism, I want it to come across the board.”
Gordon has many areas of frustration this year and readily acknowledged several. He discussed the criticisms of his crew chief, Steve Letarte. Many of Gordon’s loyal fans are pointing to Letarte as the cause of Gordon’s lack of wins.
Gordon responds to those criticisms by saying, “I believe he’s the guy for the job and he’s a confident guy that does the job well.”
Gordon also talked about the new car in NASCAR, formerly called the Car of Tomorrow. He said, “You know how tricky this car is and finicky that it is. I’ve worked harder this year than I have in any other season that I’ve run in the Cup Series, and the frustrating part is that the results aren’t showing for it.”
The difficulty adjusting to the new car has a side effect on Gordon’s personal life. The #24 team has scheduled many additional testing sessions to configure the set-up for better results. This additional testing means that Gordon must be away from his wife and 15 month old daughter, Ella, more than he likes. When speaking about fatherhood, Gordon said, “To be a dad is amazing. It makes me certainly want to be home a lot more than I am.”
I wrote about Gordon’s reaction to fatherhood and its effect on his racing last June in Jeff Gordon’s Father’s Day ~ Has Ella Changed Him?. His devotion to his daughter is still very apparent and has to be considered when analyzing his performance.
I see a similarity between Gordon and Darrell Waltrip when they had children. Gordon had already won his championships before he became a father. This was also true of Darrell Waltrip. Waltrip has candidly discussed the effects of fatherhood on his driving. He stated that the birth of his first daughter changed his life but also affected the way he raced. “If you look at my career from that day forward, I never had the same results again.”
The birth of his daughter is not the reason that Gordon is not winning. But in the big picture, it may be a contributing factor.
This week’s race in Kansas is an opportunity for Gordon to move to Victory Lane. Gordon does not believe in luck-good or bad.
“I’m just somebody that’s not a believer in bad luck or good luck. I believe that you make your good fortune through hard work, through putting the right tools in place.”
Gordon has tested at Kentucky because of its similarity to the 1½-mile track at Kansas Speedway. In looking ahead to the race, Gordon stated, “We’ve been searching all year long, trying to get that feel and comfort for me so that the speed can come along with it. Felt like we were on to a few things last week at Dover. Didn’t perform quite as well in the race as we would have hoped to have. So maybe those things will apply a little bit better to Kansas this weekend.”
“We’ve got eight more races to go and I know we can win some races before it’s all over.”
Gordon's last season without a win was 1993. Gordon has had two or more race victories every season since then. He may have a season without a victory this year. But his willingness to take responsibility for his performance and his loyalty to his team makes him a champion to me.
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.
