Saturday, September 06, 2008
Will Jeff Gordon show enough guts to tell NASCAR the real story on the car-of-tomorrow?
Jeff Gordon is one of this sport’s top spokesmen, but he refuses to speak his peace. Would Dale Earnhardt Sr. just shut up and drive?(Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)
By Mike Mulhern
RICHMOND, Va.
Jeff Gordon apparently isn’t brave enough to stand up to NASCAR on the car-of-tomorrow issues, though car owner Rick Hendrick and teammate Jimmie Johnson did just that themselves last weekend after winning the California 500. But then maybe Gordon is just biding his time – after all he’s still winless in his 25 starts this season. So maybe until he does finally win, shut-up-and-race may be a good policy.
But when one of the sport’s best all-around drivers --- hey, throw winless Tony Stewart in there too – can’t get this new car to work, maybe there is something wrong here.
Gordon, under normal circumstances, would be a favorite in this afternoon’s tropical storm delayed Chevy Rock and Roll 400 (1 p.m.). He’s won twice here, he has 19 top-10s, and five poles (and might have six, if not for Friday’s rainout). This is a good track for him: “one of our best tracks.”
But it’s not been a good year for him, not at all.
This 400 could not only be one of the best races of the season, since there is really no reason for anyone to play it conservatively, for a change, but it could also offer the clearest indication of who has what for the upcoming championship chase.
Or rather, if anyone really has anything for Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards, who have dominated the tour all season.
Gordon says what he and others have fought all year is inconsistency. And last year Gordon’s consistency was marvelous – he romped through the 26-race regular season and racked up a 500—point lead over the rest. Under NASCAR’s old championship rules, Gordon would have won another Cup title in a runaway.
“It has been inconsistent for us this year,” Gordon says. “You hear drivers talk a lot about it. If you were in our debriefs and our meetings, you would hear me talk more about it probably than anybody.
“The inconsistency isn’t just with our performance, it’s with these bump-stops we have to run on. I can’t stand them. And trying to get them figured out is just near impossible.
“The left-front bump stops, right-front bump stops, front bumps upright, both bump stops, the timing of the bump stops….we’ve just had one heck of a time trying to get the front of the car to be consistent into and through the corner at a lot of tracks.”
NASCAR may well resolve that issue by banning those shock-stoppers next season, depending on how the Monday-Tuesday Nationwide testing goes.
Gordon has been fast here, giving him confidence. “I feel we’re really starting to get some things figured out.
“I hate it’s coming this late in the season, because we’ve had some missed opportunities. But with the type of year we’re having, at least we’re making gains.”
But can Gordon do anything with Busch and Edwards in the title chase?
“As good as Kyle is running, it’s going to make it tougher for guys like me to make up ground,” Gordon frets. “We need them to have some tough luck…and we’ve got to get on a roll now, which we haven’t been able to do over 25 races so far.
“But we’re still optimistic.”
Yeah, right.
As rough as the tour’s intermediate tracks have been for Gordon and Johnson, and teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. too, it would seem unlikely for them to find something for Busch and Edwards this late in the season. And five of the 10 chase tracks are mid-sized: Kansas City, Charlotte, Atlanta, Texas and Homestead.
“While the 1-1/2-miles are very important, it’s how you come out of Talladega and the short tracks unscathed that I think can win you the championship,” Gordon says.
“At the 1-1/2-miles aerodynamics play a much bigger role than the short tracks. But we’re also dealing with mechanical grip—These bump- stops we all talk about, they allow us to get the car where we want it on the racetrack (for the best aerodynamics)… but then it takes all the mechanical grip away from it.
“You’ve got hard stops, soft stops, stops that come in sooner, stops that come in later, you’ve got a stop with a spring. There’s just a million different scenarios, and some guys are making it work, some guys aren’t.”
Another example of how NASCAR’s new car has created more problems than it’s solved, and added unexpected expense.
“We’re capable of being very consistent in the chase….but we haven’t proved we can lead a lot of laps and win races,” Gordon says.
“In order to beat those guys—as good as they’ve been—we’ve got to step it up to a whole other level…that we certainly haven’t shown all year.
“While I’m optimistic, I’ll be shocked if we are able to do that.
“Like, we came here with a setup we’d put in our simulation on our computer, and we’d put on the seven-post (simulator): ‘Okay, we’ve got it.’ But in the first 45 minutes here the speed wasn’t there, and we had to abandon it. We had two hours to figure that out, get us ready to race, and then have to make sure we can qualify with it.
“If you are trying to make the chase, or trying to win a championship, you can’t afford to that.”
So the car-of-tomorrow is a real stinker? Come on, Jeff, tell us how you really feel.
“I don’t have an answer for that,” Gordon insists, perhaps tongue-in-cheek. “I’m just a dumb driver: put my helmet on, get behind the wheel, and drive the race car. That’s what I’ve been told and that’s what I’m living by.”
Would the late Dale Earnhardt Sr. just sit there and bite his tongue like that?
Gordon is getting increasing criticism in the garage for not using his position as one of the top men in this sport to speak out more forcefully on important issues like that.
Meanwhile, Gordon says he’ll be following Joey Logano’s introduction this sport with interest the next several weeks. Logano’s Cup debut here was rained out and he’ll have to try again at Loudon.
Gordon understands the pressure well: “You can have all the talent in the world, you can have a tremendous amount of experience….but the one thing you cannot be prepared for is when you’ve got that much hype and that much focus on you coming in, the demands on your time, the cameras in your face, the autographs, the fans. All those things are not things that you can train for.
“That didn’t happen to me immediately (when he joined the tour in the early 1990s). I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anybody with as much attention coming into this series as Joey. Obviously he’s got a lot on his shoulders.
“But he seems to have lived up to all of it so far.
“Back in 1992 when I ran my first race, I felt the whole world was watching me. I felt like I was under a microscope. It was excruciating.
“I was excited to be out there and get that opportunity. I wanted to do well. But I questioned ‘Do I have what it takes to be at this level, to compete at the top in this series?’
“Joey seems to have a lot of confidence, and that’s certainly good.
“He’s going to do a great job in the car….It’s how is he going to handle all the other things, especially with all the attention from the media.
“That’s when you really find out what you’re made of.
“A kid like Joey, especially if he does well, they’re going to want to use him even more. I won my first championship my third season in, and until 1994 when I won the Brickyard, I really didn’t have a lot of things that I had to do. So I didn’t find myself constantly pulled left and right until I won the Brickyard. That’s when all of a sudden things started changing for me.
“And it’s literally never been the same since. Every weekend is slam-packed full of stuff, every week is slammed full of things. And now it’s just part of life.
“But those first couple years it was a huge, huge adjustment for me.”
Agree? Disagree? Don’t just brood. Express yourself here, and make your voice heard clearly in NASCAR headquarters in Daytona and Charlotte and in NASCAR race shops throughout North Carolina and the rest of the country.
We want your reaction, so please comment on this story and offer your own opinions and insight, on this topic, on our NASCAR videos, and anything about NASCAR. Any questions, just ask Mike at . And bookmark this page for continually updated NASCAR reports: http://independenttribune.net/index.php/sports/mulhern/
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