Two years ago? I would have been a mess.
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The final race of the NASCAR season will be the Ford Ecoboost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
And he’ll quickly admit that making it to the Championship Round and racing against three other drivers (Kevin Harvick, Kyle Bush and Martin Truex Jr.) for the Chase title is something he never quite imagined for his retirement year. Representatives of the other contending teams have media around them.
Forget about the numbers: It’s really tempting to parse statistics now, to do deep dissections on who was fastest in the practices, who had the best average finishes at this track and in the Chase, or what historical patterns show.
Now, they’re poised to win it again.
Being an underdog means you’re not expected to win.
Truex qualified 11th and with Gordon’s run in the second round, he prevented Harvick from advancing to the final round of qualifying. The pole was Hamlin’s 23rd of his career and his first at Homestead where he has two wins. It’s about who is the better man with the better auto on Sunday. Each has victory on their minds.
Still, it’s a good bet that nobody is more excited to take the green flag than Gordon.
“I just love this race track”.
Asked where winning the title on his final day of work would rank in career that stamped him on the short list of all-time greats, Gordon was left speechless. “After all, he’s ‘Jeff Gordon'”. The only NASCAR driver to host “Saturday Night Live”, Gordon was name-dropped in a song by rapper Nelly, became a nationally recognized Pepsi spokesman and proved he can gracefully move from his fire suit to a business suit for any occasion.
The clear front-runner is Harvick. And in racing, anything can happen.
He continued: “You know, you’re confident in what you have, but you can’t be confident in the results just for the fact that you just never know what can reach out and grab you”.
Harvick has led 2,248 laps this season in his No. 4 Chevy, 889 more than second-best Logano. Harvick will start 13th, lowest of the Chase finalists. And Homestead’s oval suits him. Busch might be the best driver without a series championship, but accomplishing that won’t be easy.
“We cut back because the performance wasn’t where it needed to be and wanted it to be”, team co-owner Len Wood said. He has finished in the top 15 in all nine races of the Chase.
Pearn said it doesn’t bother him in the least that his team keeps getting overlooked.
Truex and Busch also have compelling stories.
Gordon began with rough start to the season.
“The team did an excellent, excellent job of that in those last couple laps”. The race was delayed seven hours by rain, then called 93 laps from the finish when another storm rolled in. His longtime girlfriend, Sherry Pollex, is still receiving monthly chemotherapy treatments for ovarian cancer (the disease is in remission). However, Johnson caught then past Keslowski with three laps remaining stealing the race at Texas. She will be at the track to root for him.
“We’re not going to react to anything that’s part of the traditional part of hard, aggressive racing”, France said.
As it has for much of the Chase, the weather might be a factor Sunday.
Storyline: Seeking fifth championship before he retires at end of season.
The 44-year-old Gordon wants to give us one last memory. We’ve had our ups and downs, but I think we have had more ups than downs. It’s something that – I mean, I’m sure it’s been done in a few sport, but I don’t think it’s ever been done in this sport. “I was looking at everything and trying to figure out where I lost time”. It was going against Earnhardt; that was huge.
Hamlin jokingly said he would welcome being the victor of Gordon’s final race (he is retiring after this season).
Gordon, for his part, will not be going out quietly.
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Those who want to experience Gordon’s entire final ride can view a live stream of his in-car camera on the NASCAR YouTube page.
