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
My car just took off. I thought man, we've got a shot at this thing.
I am going to take part blame for that, (and) I think Tony should take part of it, as well. We went into turns one and two and had been real tight. We slid up the race track, left the middle wide open. I thought that I could clear him and just about the time he got to my right rear, my car just took off pushing. It was an unfortunate incident that hurt us both a lot.
When we took off, the car wasn't the same car.
When you put him in that position, how does he go from being one of the guys to all of a sudden being the boss? How is he going to deal with the guys? That's the part I've been impressed with. He came right in there and took control and got the guys that support him to support him more and the guys that didn't to either support him or they were out the door.
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.
I did a lot to clean the tires off and try to keep as much heat in them. When we took off, the car wasn't the same. I don't know what it was.
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.
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.
The way our season's gone, no matter how good we're running, no matter how bad, you just never know what's going to happen. You know, tonight is one of those nights we wanted and needed to happen.