Jeff Gordon having a tough time dealing with Jimmie Johnson's success

Imagine you’re at the top of your profession and, at the height of your success, you bring a young apprentice into the same field.

The pupil learns from you, the master, and before long, the youngster is out-performing you at your job. In fact, he’s keeping you from promotions or perhaps industry awards and hogging all the glory.

That’s a taste of what Jeff Gordon has gone through with Jimmie Johnson, although the exact situation is still hard to imagine.

“It’s not easy being in my shoes, is it?” Gordon said recently when asked how he’s dealt with Johnson’s success. “Jimmie and I are always going to be really good friends, but we might be better friends 15 or 20 years from now. Because right now, I’m a competitor, like every other competitor out there, that wants to beat him.”

Earlier this decade, Gordon was the one who urged team owner Rick Hendrick to give Johnson a shot. A four-time Cup champion, Gordon hoped Johnson would succeed but had little reason to feel threatened by his fellow Californian.

So Gordon shared everything with Johnson, dispensing advice, relating his past experiences and communicating as a team about the cars.

“I had enough confidence in what I’m doing as a driver that if we get beat, it’s because we’re getting beat by a better team,” he said.
Johnson and his crew chief, Chad Knaus, took all that and transformed themselves into the sport’s most unbeatable unit, perhaps the greatest team ever. Now, the team

Gordon helped establish is threatening to match the No. 24’s championship total – and all in consecutive years, at that.

Gordon has still been highly competitive over the last few seasons, but not at the level he once was. The last four seasons have yielded nine victories (including six in 2007), which marks the leanest stretch in Gordon’s career.

In the same time period, Johnson has won 28 races, three championships and is well on his way to a fourth.

It’s of little consolation that Gordon is part-owner of Johnson’s team, because Gordon himself wants to win badly. And the very guy standing in his way, denying him wins and potential championships (Gordon was runnerup in the 2007 Chase and third last year) is the guy he brought to the Cup level.

All of that frustration, Gordon acknowledged, has impacted his relationship with Johnson.

“It’s definitely affected our friendship, there’s no doubt about it,” he said. “We’re competitors on the race track. I’m not going to go over and pat him on the back and say how great he is and ‘I love you, man’ when I really want to beat him.

“… There’s definitely been some challenging moments and days. It gets harder to go to victory lane and congratulate them when you want it as badly for yourself.”

As to Johnson, he admitted this weekend at Texas that, in some ways, he's surprised by that but in others he understands it.

After all, their personal relationship has evolved through a series of life changes - and competition levels - over the years.

"There's no doubt that over the last few years competition has been more intense," Johnson said. "We've been racing for championships. It was a lot easier when I was a rookie needing assistance and help. We spent a lot of time together then. I guess we were both single and not married at that point, too, having a lot of fun. So that certainly helped.

"But, you know, I think we still have a very strong friendship. He's probably right in the respect that as competitive as we are, what we're racing for, what we're both trying to accomplish in our professional careers, it does strain the friendship side. I'm not sure if 'strain' is the correct word. There's less focus on the personal side and the friendship side. It's more of a working relationship."

Johnson is quick to credit Gordon for his role in developing and maintaining both sides of that relationship - and points out that the two still share a high level of friendship and respect.

"I look to him and give him a lot of credit over the years, how the friendship and the working relationship has worked," Johnson said. "As a young guy coming in, I think he being the veteran, the wiser one of the two of us, more experienced, depending on how he handled things would set up how I would react and act myself. I looked to him for so many things.

"Through it all, there's been a great deal of respect. It's still there today. I guess at some point he's probably right, I think our friendship will be closer when we're both hanging the helmet up and retired and things like that.

But there isn't any issues with our friendship. We're still great friends. Our lives have changed a lot. He's married. I'm married. He has a young daughter he's raising, all that kind of thing, too. I don't think that the competition has been responsible for all of it, you know. There's just been things change in life, you go different directions, all that. The respect is still there. I think that shows. That's the most important thing."

Gordon, too, points out that respect.

In recent weeks, Gordon has said he’s felt his cars are “second class” compared to Johnson’s, and has grown tired of answering questions about why his team isn’t performing at the same level despite having the same resources and equipment as Johnson’s.

The fact that Gordon sees everything the No. 48 team does and knows all the setups, driving styles and data, “make it even more frustrating when you’re getting beat,” he said.

Despite that, Gordon said he continues to believe in “myself and my own experience and skills and our team.” He’s certain he can beat Johnson and is intent on making it happen.

It’s all part of a “tough balance” with his teammate and longtime friend, he said.

“At the end of the day I respect him, I know the story of how he got there and I think he’s a great guy and a great race-car driver,” Gordon said. “That team has pushed all of us in the sport to be better, to push ourselves harder and to step up. So I’m thankful for that and I don’t have any regrets about anything.”