Does Jeff Gordon still have the fire and passion he did when he was winning championships?
Yes, no and absolutely.
The three-time Daytona 500 winner broke his winless streak dating to race 31 of 2007 Thursday afternoon with a win in the day’s first Gatorade Duel at Daytona. He kissed his daughter in Victory Lane, leaving behind his first winless season since 1993, a season in which many wondered if the birth of his daughter made Gordon lose his desire to race.
It was only a qualifying race and Gordon was already locked in, but the No. 24 team needed this.
“Any win’s exciting and meaningful to us right now,” Gordon said. “Because of the pressure that we felt from being winless last year, it’s important for us to gain some momentum, some confidence.”
Gordon will start third in Sunday’s Daytona 500 after winning the first of the twin 150-mile races and Kyle Busch, who won the second Duel, will start beside him, fourth.
Can Gordon rebound and perform as he did in 2007, when he won six races and gave Johnson a run for the championship before finishing second? Or will he repeat his 2008 performance, when Gordon was seventh in the points battle and not a factor in the championship?
Even Gordon is not sure.
“Last year was a big deal, and it’s behind us and we learned from it,” Gordon said when he arrived at Daytona last week. “We grow from it and make ourselves better and try to make sure it doesn’t happen this year. I don’t think it’s going to.”
“That’s what I’m talking about starting off 2009,” Gordon said. “Who says we can’t win? I’m so fired up about this year. I’m really excited about the Daytona 500 after that race.” Gordon did compete for wins and was occasionally unlucky, but it was not bad luck that was his downfall in 2008. It was a bad fit. The Nascar-designed racecar introduced into the Sprint Cup series full time in 2008 was very different from the previous model. Gordon was unable to fully adapt his driving style, while other drivers excelled in the new car. For the crew chief Steve Letarte, tweaking the racecar and making the right adjustments to suit Gordon were weekly battles.
“He is as good as anybody out there,” said Ray Evernham, who won three championships as crew chief for Gordon in the 1990s. “Steven is good. Jeff believes in Steven. Man, they’re this close. Jeff Gordon, he’ll definitely win races.”
Richard Petty, the seven-time champion, won multiple races in 18 consecutive seasons from 1960 to 1977 until he went winless in 1978. A year later, Petty won five races and the last of his seven championships.
“He wants to prove something,” Petty said. “Not to you all, to himself. That’s the way I was when we went through a year and didn’t win.”
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