Jeff Gordon
Jeff Gordon
Jeffery Michael "Jeff" Gordonis an American semi-retired professional stock car racing driver and currently an announcer for Fox NASCAR. He formerly drove the No. 24 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports in 23 full-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series seasons between 1993 and 2015, and currently serves as a substitute driver for Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRace Car Driver
Date of Birth4 August 1971
CityVallejo, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I've been fortunate where, when I've had bad years, we've usually ended those bad years with something positive to build on in the off-season. And that's what happened to us last year.
Usually when you make up 52 points it's easy. It's not difficult. It's because something happens. You don't make it up because a guy ran bad and you went out there and led every lap and won the race.
It was a hell of a night. It's just one of those nights. You'll have those good nights when things will happen. We thought we had it at one time. I don't know if we just got a bad set of tires, over-adjusted or what. We were really looking good and then things just went backwards. We struggled back and forth all night.
It's not as bad as it used to be in Turn 4, but Turn 2 is pretty extreme. The way you come off the corner, you've got nice banking but then it really flattens off. ...It just makes your car want to drift to the wall. That makes it really difficult to get side-by-side.
Our performances haven't been as bad as our finishes. We've had several races where we were completely off on our setup, but we've had numerous situations where we ran strong during the event but didn't have the good results to show for it.
They played fairly well overall. They just had a couple of bad holes. That's what beat us.
As bad as that was, we had to move forward in a positive way. If you look at James Dean or Elvis Presley after his death, it's the same thing with Earnhardt. That's the type of persona Dale Earnhardt had in our sport and the publicity of his death took it to another level.
Once I get focused on something that's the only thing I focus on. That can be good or bad in life, but in racing, it's typically pretty good.
We just want to be able to focus on our program, on our people, on what we have to do to be as strong as we can as a team to compete for wins, compete for championships, and build that together without there being too many outside distractions. If we ever say we want to go under the radar, that's what we're trying to do.
The Roush cars are really, really fast right now.
I've worked with Steve for more than 10 years and we already communicate extremely well, both on and off the track. The team has a ton of confidence in his abilities, so we're looking forward to the last 10 races of 2005 and getting an early jump on next year.
It was a long day. I think we had a shot a top 10 with that tore-up race car.
It was a long day for the Dupont Chevrolet Monte Carlo. We fought back all we could.
The sport's different today than it was, and I don't know if there's ever going to be one individual in this garage area that feels like they've got the voice.