October 26, 2006

By Rebecca Gladden

Rebecca Gladden

In case you missed it, Jeff Gordon admitted something over the weekend that he's been accused of for as long as he has been in NASCAR.

After Sunday's Nextel Cup race in Martinsville, where he finished fifth, Gordon appeared as co-host on the Speed channel program "Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain."

During an interview segment, show host Despain asked Gordon to comment on one of the most frequent criticisms he faces, which Despain summarized as follows:

Jeff Gordon is a whiner.

Replied Gordon, "I agree. I am. I whine too much at times."

Despain chuckled.

"I'm serious," Gordon said.

Sensing that he was, Despain asked Gordon why he whines, noting, "it annoys people."

Jeff Gordon

Gordon explained, "In the heat of the moment, you know what - I'd like to put anybody else in that position, when you're out there racing hard and you think somebody is doing something. My biggest thing is that if NASCAR says something, they say something in the drivers' meeting or make a rule or whatever, then abide by it. Stick by it. And sometimes when I don't see them, you know, I see somebody trying to get an unfair advantage, it bothers me …

"But I agree. Sometimes I whine too much."

Despain thanked him for his honesty, adding that he thought a lot of people would concur with Gordon's admission.

Maybe so.

But is it whining if he's right?

Everyone jokes about the NASCAR rule book being written in pencil because it's erased and rewritten so often. The fans themselves, even the ABGers (Anybody But Gordon) regularly accuse NASCAR of manipulating race results with their curiously-timed debris cautions, selective enforcement of rules and application of penalties, and so forth.

Gordon is not the only driver who complains, but he is the one most often accused of whining.

Sometimes I wonder, what must it be like to be Jeff Gordon?

Love him or hate him, Gordon is inarguably the most accomplished active driver in NASCAR today. He's already won four Cup titles (three in his first six years of Cup), placing him third on the all-time championship list behind legends Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt. He's seventh on the all-time win list and is just one victory away from tying Earnhardt with 76 wins. The closest active driver in wins is Mark Martin, 17th on the list with 35 wins.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Gordon's remarkable racing achievements date back to his early childhood years, and it would take pages to list them all.

Moreover, he's accomplished all this in a setting where he was unwelcome, in fact vilified, by a majority of the sport's fans for various perceived transgressions, including being too polite, too polished, and too successful.

When I think about what it must be like to be Jeff Gordon, I am reminded of an episode of the original Star Trek TV series called "The Ultimate Computer." In it, a brilliant middle-aged scientist named Dr. Daystrom invents a new computer in hopes of recreating the glory days of his prodigious youth, when he completely revolutionized existing computer systems at the tender age of 24.

The new computer is a failure, however, because Daystrom tried too hard to prove that his earlier achievements were not a fluke, but the result of true talent; that he was not a "boy wonder" as his colleagues scoffed.

Gordon, too, was referred to for years as NASCAR's "Wonder Boy," a moniker hung on him by Dale Earnhardt himself.

However, as Captain Kirk notes, "Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, 'Today I will be brilliant.' "

Or, as Dr. McCoy more succinctly asks, "Where do you go from up?"

That, in a nutshell, is the challenge of being Jeff Gordon.

After achieving so much at such a young age, in so many forms of racing and with relative ease, people simply expect Gordon to be brilliant. They don't understand it when he struggles, and they hound him with questions about whether he's lost his drive, his ability, or his desire to win.

There are many perks to being Jeff Gordon, but there are also drawbacks - chief among them living up to his own record.

So if anyone in NASCAR is entitled to a little whining, maybe it's him.

On the other hand, maybe what we so readily dismiss as whining should be considered with a little respect.

After all, he is the Wonder Boy.

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.