Jeff Gordon looking for more wins to finish out 2009 Cup season
Hendrick Motorsports' Jeff Gordon is third in the Chase For The Sprint Cup standings heading into Sunday's race at Texas Motor Speedway.
// LaDon George, NASCAR Scene
FORT WORTH, Texas – As the winner of the most recent NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway, Jeff Gordon is fairly confident he can get back to victory lane this weekend at the 1.5-mile track.
And he proved he has a strong car by winning the pole on Friday afternoon for Sunday’s Dickies 500.
Running down Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson for the series championship is a taller order.
Gordon trails Johnson by 192 points in the standings and is eight behind teammate Mark Martin with three races left in the season.
So while Gordon is itching to claim his second victory of 2009 and second at TMS, he concedes he’ll probably have to wait until at least next year for a fifth Cup crown.
“All we can do is go out and focus on our race team, our race cars, and get the best finishes that we possibly can, try to end the season on a positive note,” Gordon said on Friday at TMS. “We still have a great battle going for second in points. If for some crazy reason, those guys had trouble, we have to make sure we capitalize on it. I think our focus right now is winning races and trying to get to second in points.”
If Gordon doesn’t win the championship, the California native says he’ll consider 2009 to be among his best non-title winning seasons. Gordon has 16 top-five and 23 top-10 finishes in 33 starts this season and has been in the top five in the standings almost the entire campaign.
His stellar 2009 has come on the heels of a winless 2008 in which Gordon finished seventh in the points but was never in serious contention for the championship.
Gordon has finished in the top three in the standings in three years when he didn’t win the title: 1996, 2004 and 2007.
“We've had a great year all season long,” the driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet said of his Steve Letarte-led team. “We've been consistent and solid and strong. We're not as strong as we need to be to win the championship, but we're still very happy with how we've been able to improve the results from last season.
“I mean, I think that we're not as close to the 48 [team of Johnson] as we were in '07 when we battled with them for the championship, or with Kurt [Busch] in '04. Other than that, I'd say this has definitely been our best effort.”
That doesn’t mean Gordon is totally satisfied, however. The 38-year-old admitted on Friday that he is “a little disappointed” that he hasn’t been back to victory lane since his earlier win at Texas in the seventh race of the season.
Gordon does have a whopping eight second-place finishes.
“It is disappointing we haven't been able to get more victories,” he said. “It gives us something to work on for next season."
