June 20, 2011
By Matthew Pizzolato
Matthew Pizzolato
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It's no secret that Jeff Gordon has been struggling over the past several years. The wins that once came so easy during the early part of his career have been eluding him. Over the last three seasons, he managed just one win.
And of course people began wondering if he was done, if he was in the final stages of his career.
His win last weekend and Pocono Raceway was the 84th of his career and tied him for third on NASCAR's All Time Win List with Bobby Allison and Darrell Waltrip. Allison is already a member of NASCAR's Hall of Fame and Waltrip will be joining the Hall in the next class. Gordon has certainly had a career deserving of the Hall of Fame. But he's not ready to be enshrined just yet.
In the post race press conference following his most recent victory at Pocono, Gordon was asked how he would rank his career among the all-time NASCAR greats.
"Man, I'm going to be 40, but I'm not in the rocking chair yet. I really haven't thought about it a whole lot. And I don't know if I want to," Gordon said. "I want my mindset to be in that mode of, 'How do I enjoy this moment?'
"There's going to be plenty of time when that time comes for me to look back on my career. There's no doubt, it's been amazing. I'm very thankful and appreciative of it. But it takes more time than the time that I have right now with my schedule to really be able to express it the way I truly want to express it because it means a lot. But I want to think about it a lot more before I really answer that."
Gordon certainly has a point.
Mark Martin is 52 years old and has been racing in NASCAR for 30 years. Richard Petty competed for 35 years and was 55 when he retired. Jeff Gordon debuted in the Cup Series at Atlanta in 1992. Ironically, it was also final race of Richard Petty's illustrious career. It may seem like he's been around for a while when compared to most of the current drivers, but his career is still relatively young when compared to those two.
At just 39 years of age and only 20 years of competition, Gordon still has quite a ways to go and still a few good years of racing left to him.
He's already won twice this season and could very easily surpass Allison and Waltrip before the end of the season. And it's not inconceivable that he could pass David Pearson's win total of 105 before the end of his career.
However one of the things that his most ardent fans like harp on is the fact that if it weren't for NASCAR's new championship points format, The Chase, Gordon would have two more NASCAR Championships to add to his total. Two more titles would put him within reach of at least tying Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt with seven Championships.
At this point of his career, tying those two legends is probably not very likely. But are those two titles that got away from him going to detract from his legendary career? Not at all. Regardless of whether or not he wins another Championship, Jeff Gordon will always be regarded as one of NASCAR's greatest drivers.
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