In the past three Nextel Cup races, Jeff Gordon’s quest for a fifth NASCAR championship has taken too many right turns under green-flag conditions.
The idea is to keep the steering wheel to the left, but Gordon has made too many rights – into the garage or out of his pit stall – and has squeezed the life out of what looked like a promising bid for a fifth title.
A faulty fuel pump ruined his chance for victory three weeks ago at Kansas, and an accident at Talladega, Ala., sent him to back-to-back 30-something finishes.
Engine failure last weekend in Concord, N.C., relegated him to 24th place. The three problematic races have dropped the 75-time winner from second to 10th in the Chase for the Nextel Cup. He is a whopping 216 points behind leader Jeff Burton with five playoff races to go.
“We’re certainly going to make as much of a comeback as we are capable of,” Gordon said in Tuesday’s national teleconference. “Obviously, it’s been disappointing the last three races to have the problems that we’ve had. You know, our goals are to go into these last five races just giving it everything we’ve got to win races and get as high up in the points as possible.”
Gordon has plenty of motivation. He is one victory shy of the late Dale Earnhardt, whose 76 wins are sixth-most in series history. Gordon admits that winning one of the five remaining races is more realistic than getting back into the championship hunt.
“The likelihood of having seven, eight guys in front of us have problems to get us back into the Chase, I think is very unlikely,” he said. “So we’re kind of more relaxed now where we’re just going out there to win.”
Separate system
Gordon said he is not a proponent of change, and he wasn’t a fan of the Chase format when it came out in 2004. Now, he said he likes the playoff system, but believes it needs to be tweaked.
“I like the idea of once we get into the Chase, of having a separate points system among the 10 guys,” he said. “I think that’s a great idea. (It) means that we’re still racing with the other guys out there. Everybody’s still racing to win races.”
Gordon’s idea is to award 10 points to the highest-finishing Chase driver, nine points to the next-best playoff contender, and continue in increments of a point to where the worst finishing Chase driver gets a point. Victories and leading a lap would merit bonus points.
“I think that could be very interesting,” he said.
Not so fast
Burton isn’t getting too comfortable while enjoying success in the Chase. “We’ve had some good fortune, and we’ve run well, and hopefully we can keep doing both,” Burton said in a release. “At the same time, five races is a long time. You can go from having all of your stuff together and really feeling good about yourself to really figuring you can’t run a lick.
“We’re not going to take ourselves too seriously just yet.”
Montoya on track
Former CART and Formula One star Juan Pablo Montoya is scheduled to make his NASCAR debut Oct. 28 at the Busch Series race at Memphis (Tenn.) Motorsports Park, Chip Ganassi Racing announced Tuesday.
Montoya continued his first official Nextel Cup test session Tuesday at Homestead, Fla., site of the season finale. He is pegged to drive Ganassi’s No. 42 Dodge next year in Nextel Cup.
Mike Chambers can be reached at 303-954-1357 or mchambers@denverpost.com.
