The last time Jeff Gordon visited victory lane it was at Texas Motor Speedway in April of 2009.
TMS has never been a track that Gordon looked forward to every year. Not because it is not a good track but because he hasn’t seen the success at TMS that he has seen at other tracks.
That success that he had for so long unable to find at TMS has been changing in recent years. In two of the last three races he has started on the front row at TMS.
Along with his win last spring, Gordon has seven top fives and nine top 10 finishes at TMS. It is not like in recent years he hasn’t run well enough to win.
In this race in the spring he led a race high 124 laps before getting caught up in a late race accident. He ended up finishing 31st but Gordon and his team knows they had the car to beat and a fast car.
"We had such a great car here earlier this year that it's hard to start off the weekend any different," said Gordon, who is fourth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings and 207 behind the leader. "We'll start out the same and we'll find out how much this sport and setups have changed since we were last here.”
Gordon who sits fourth in the standings and 207 points behind teammate Jimmie Johnson needs a win. It is not like they have not been competitive this season. The near misses early in the season have definitely haunted them late in the season.
It’s those bonus points that set him behind early in the Chase and has forced them to play offense the entire Chase. With poor finishes at Charlotte and Martinsville their title hopes took a definite hit.
After a much needed and solid eighth place finish last weekend at Talladega, Gordon is looking for maximum points this weekend.
This weekend the team will hope that they can finally break through in the win column and that starts on Friday.
"It's a tough 1.5-mile race track because the transitions from straight-aways to the corners and corners to straight-aways are very challenging and abrupt. So it's hard to get the car comfortable in those sections. And if you get comfortable in those sections in and off the corner, how do you get the car to turn in the middle? You're doing all those things at a 170 or 180 miles per hour, so it's a very challenging race track. It's been one of the most challenging for me and my race team over the years for that reason."
Looking to get comfortable in the car has been something Gordon has struggled with at TMS. In the spring race in 2008, Gordon was never happy with the car. He hit the wall and ended up finishing 43rd; one of his worst finishes in his career.
As we saw last year at TMS in this race anything can happen. If the top three contenders struggle in any way Gordon and his team are hoping they are in position for not only the win but the points.
On Sunday, Gordon and his team hope to pick up maximum points in victory lane.
Written by:
