November 1, 2007
By Rebecca Gladden

Rebecca Gladden

In the lexicon of today's text messaging teens, Nextel Cup point leaders Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson are self-professed BFFs.

Best Friends Forever.

With the two Hendrick Motorsports teammates battling each other for this year's championship, I'm afraid that acronym has a second meaning:

Boring For Fans.

It's impossible to avoid the topic of the Gordon-Johnson friendship, given the current circumstances in the Nextel Cup Series. The two sit atop the championship standings, separated by just nine points with three races left in the season - the closest margin ever at this point in the four-year history of the Chase.

You'd think that such a tight match-up would make for an intense rivalry and nail-biting drama, but just the opposite is true.

No matter how hard the media and the marketing moguls try to create a sense of friction or animus between these two - you know, the stuff that great sports rivalries are made of - all they uncover is layer upon layer of good will.

It's about as exciting as watching your uncles play horseshoes at the family reunion.

"It does make for a unique situation there," Gordon said of his friendship with Johnson. "The competitor in me always rules out. I want to win as a driver. But the cool thing is that if I can't win as a driver, then I want to see him win."

Yawn. Not exactly Ali versus Frazier, is it?

The ties that bind Gordon and Johnson run so deep that it's almost eerie. Both drivers are attractive, dark-haired, California-born racing superstars who happen to be married to supermodels. Gordon helped Johnson get his start in the Cup Series, and is not only his teammate at Hendrick Motorsports, but an equity owner of Johnson's car.

"Everybody knows the story," said Gordon. "Just the way I support him - he came to me for advice and me going to Rick (Hendrick) and saying, 'We need to start this new team up. Jimmie, I think, would be a great driver for it.'"

Since then, the 24 and 48 teams have shared a garage at HMS. Their respective crew chiefs, Steve Letarte and Chad Knaus, are also best friends. As much as possible, they share information on engineering and set-ups, making the teams stronger than the sum of their individual parts.

Johnson has been called Gordon's student, his protégé, even his disciple.

But in a classic case of the pupil outshining the professor, Johnson has outperformed Gordon at times, including winning the 2006 Cup championship (Gordon finished 6th), and competing in all four years of the Chase, while Gordon failed to make the cut in 2005.

Now, Gordon sits atop the standings by nine points, but his hold on the lead is tenuous. Johnson has won eight races this season compared to six for Gordon, including two straight recently at Martinsville and Atlanta, and has closed the gap on Gordon by 44 points in just one week. Last year at this time, Johnson was running second to Matt Kenseth in the Chase by 26 points, but went on to win the title.

Despite their close-knit relationship, Gordon and Johnson insist they are fierce competitors on the track. They both claim to want to beat each other more than any other driver. But to onlookers it remains a friendly competition, and a tame one at that.

Take Gordon's response to an interviewer's question about how he and Johnson have handled a couple of recent racing incidents: "It's not about friendship at that point. But come Tuesday or Wednesday, and I say Tuesday because usually when we're battling one another like we were here at Martinsville or Talladega, it takes a couple days just to get over that. Then you go back to the friendship. But the good thing is that we're able to put that aside, put that behind us and the friendship rises to the top."

Sigh.

I don't begrudge Gordon and Johnson their friendship - really. The two share a unique bond that other teammates - and people in general - envy. Whatever their relationship is on and off the racetrack, it clearly works for them.

It's just that all these warm fuzzy feelings have made the NASCAR post-season as void of drama as watching the Red Sox sweep the Rockies in four to win the win the World Series.

Just look at the controversy that exploded two weeks ago after a TV cameraman filmed Carl Edwards shoving teammate Matt Kenseth after the Martinsville race. The incident completely dominated racing talk for over a week - demonstrating just how little real excitement exists in the NASCAR Chase otherwise.

"I think there are some teammate situations out there where there is not as much love flowing around and guys are not being as good as they need to be as teammates," said Johnson regarding the Edwards-Kenseth tussle. "But at Hendrick, that's something we work really hard on."

So, while Gordon and Johnson reassure us that they really do want to beat each other on the track, they clearly have no intention of ruining a good friendship over it. "It has driven me, it has pushed me, it has inspired me to see how well (Jimmie) has done, knowing his equipment," said Gordon. "I think that this year is probably one of the first years that he and I have really been able to push one another … That competitiveness is there, but because of the friendship that has built, that allows us to be totally different than any other teammates that are out there."

Wake me when it's over.

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.