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Jeff Gordon took the first step toward getting a couple of big monkey wrenches off his back by winning the pole for Sunday’s Dickies 500.
The four-time Cup champion has never won at Texas Motor Speedway, one of only two tracks where he’s yet to visit Victory Lane in his Cup career.
Gordon is also looking for his first win of the 2008 season. He hasn’t had a winless season since his rookie year of 1993.
Jimmie Johnson, who leads the Chase for the Sprint Cup, will start seventh, ahead of all three of his closest competitors.
“The one place I thought no way we’d get a pole was here, and here we are with the pole,” said Gordon, who won the first Cup qualifying session in four weeks that wasn’t washed out because of rain. “It’s a great feeling and definitely a boost of confidence for us going into the weekend.”
“We were comfortable right from the beginning of practice,” Gordon said. “We just needed the car to turn a little bit better and get the speed out of it. That just kept coming slowly but surely.”
Gordon said this season has not quite been the bust that he and others sometimes make it out to be.
“It’s certainly not as big of a failure as sometimes we make out of it because we haven’t won so far,” Gordon said. “Any time you make it into the Chase, any time you’re sixth in the points this late in the season, it’s not a bad season.
“But obviously we want to win, and we aim to win every weekend—and it’s been frustrating that we haven’t been able to achieve that. It’s been an up-and-down season for us; it hasn’t been a stellar, great season like we had last year [when he won six races and finished second to Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson in the points championship]. What I’m proud of is the fight that this team has shown over the last 10 races. I feel like we’ve made a lot of improvements with the car, and the points have shown for it. The win column hasn’t yet shown for it, but we’ve still got three to go.”
Friday’s pole was the 67th of Gordon’s career, but the first he’s won at Texas. That and his racy practice speeds certainly caught the attention of the other drivers, who dismiss the notion that Gordon has had difficulty understanding the new car being used full-time in the Cup Series by NASCAR this season.
Clint Bowyer, another of the 12 drivers in the Chase, was third, followed by Jamie McMurray and four more Chasers: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Matt Kenseth, Johnson and Tony Stewart.
The rest of the drivers in the Chase were well down the lineup, with series runner-up Carl Edwards, 183 points behind Johnson, 16th; Denny Hamlin 17th; third-place Greg Biffle 19th; Kevin Harvick 23rd; Kyle Busch 29th; and fourth-place Jeff Burton a very disappointing 38th.
