Jeff Gordon, the four-time Cup champion who finished second in the standings a year ago, still hasn’t won a race this year. That’s 0-for-28, and his fans have begun to blame the drought on crew chief Steve Letarte.
Although Gordon made this year’s 12-car playoffs, he’s eighth in the standings and trails leader Carl Edwards by 118 points. Gordon undoubtedly will not have a shot at a fifth title if his winless streak continues through the final eight races, a stretch that begins this weekend at Kansas Speedway.
“Whenever we’re not performing, my fans seem to stay loyal to me, and I appreciate that,” Gordon said Tuesday in a national teleconference. “But I’m as much a part of this team and its performance as anybody else out there.
“I feel like Steve has done an amazing job. And he and I work very well together. . . . Unfortunately, we just haven’t seen the results like we did last year.”
Gordon won six times in 2007 and produced a series-record 30 top-10 finishes. At the playoff cut a year ago, he had a 317-point lead over second-place Jimmie Johnson, which would have been insurmountable in the old nonplayoff format.
Guess who his crew chief was? Yes, it was Letarte.
“I think it’s really easy to put aside or forget what we did last year, which to me was one of the best seasons I ever had in the Cup Series,” Gordon said.
Busch falls hard.
Gordon can sympathize with Kyle Busch, who has produced a series-high eight wins this year and had a 208-point lead over Edwards before the top 12 were reseeded for the playoffs.
Busch has finished 34th and 43rd in the first two postseason events because of handling and engine failure, respectively. He is 12th in the standings, 210 points behind Edwards.
“It’s a little bit different than what we went through, where we missed (the 2007 championship) just by a small margin,” Gordon said. “We were in the thick of it all through the Chase.”
“I’ve been saying all year long that the real test for Kyle and that team is going to be when the pressure’s on for the championship, how mature not only Kyle is, but this team.”
