Jeff Gordon can't capitalize on teammate's troubles at Texas
Hendrick Motorsports driver Jeff Gordon finished 13th in Sunday's Dickies 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway. // Chuck Yadmark, NASCAR Scene
FORT WORTH, Texas – A dejected Jeff Gordon didn’t attempt to hide his frustrations about an opportunity missed in Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway.
Needing Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson to finish poorly in order to have any shot at catching the defending three-time champion for the series title, that’s exactly what happened when Johnson was involved in a lap three crash and went behind the wall for extensive repairs before finishing 38th.
Gordon struggled throughout the Dickies 500 with a poor-handling race car, however, and finished 13th – closing the gap on Johnson but not by nearly as much he could have with a better performance.
Gordon entered the weekend 192 points behind the leader and shaved off 80 points, but he lost ground to teammate Mark Martin, who rallied from a slow start at Texas to finish fourth and move within 73 points of Johnson.
Gordon, whose lone Texas victory came his 17th start at the track back in April, wasn’t nearly as strong this time around at the 1.5-mile facility. Starting from the pole, the four-time champion led just 11 laps before fading and eventually falling out of the top 15.
“Just a total missed opportunity,” Gordon said. “All we could do throughout this whole Chase [For The Sprint Cup] is fight, fight, fight and when the 48 [of Johnson] put together the string of runs that they did, you’ve just got to keep pushing, and if they make a mistake or a problem happens you’ve got to capitalize on it. ... We just really didn’t do a very good job today.”
Gordon caught a big break when a caution flag waved for debris on lap 168 just as he was about to be lapped by Kyle Busch. Gordon continued to struggle, however, and spun less than 10 laps later while trying to avoid the wrecking cars of fellow Chase contenders Juan Pablo Montoya and Carl Edwards in Turn 2.
“I just saw two cars get together and head up the race track into the wall and I was trying to avoid them and the car came around and I just stood on the throttle to try to keep it out of the wall,” Gordon said. “Luckily I did, and it cost us some track position, but at least it kept us on the lead lap.”
Gordon avoided any damage in the spin and restarted 18th, last among lead-lap cars, and made minimal progress over the remaining 150-plus laps. To hear him tell it, his Texas triumph in April was little more than a fluke.
“[I had] the same issues I have every time I come to Texas except for the last time we had some miracle happen and we won the race,” Gordon said. “I don’t know. I just am not good here and I don’t know what to tell them to make it better. And the car definitely wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do."
