The Top 10 moments of Jeff Gordon’s career (so far)
When Jeff Gordon announced he’ll drive one more full-time season on Thursday, we immediately started thinking.
Yes, that’s dangerous. But we wondered what the top 10 moments of Gordon’s career were. And damn, it was tough. There are so many things to choose from. That’s what happens when you have 92 wins and countless other memorable moments.
Here’s our best shot.
10. Gordon’s first Sprint Cup Series race: Did anyone realize at the time just how big the symbolism of Gordon’s first race would be? Gordon made his Cup Series debut in 1992 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. It was the final race of seven-time champion Richard Petty’s career. Both had inauspicious races. Petty only completed 95 laps while Gordon crashed out. But as the book of Petty’s driving career closed, another novel-sized book about Gordon’s was being opened.
9. Beating Rusty Wallace for Cup win No. 22: What’s so special about this race? It’s a perfect example of the Bristol bump and run. It looked like Gordon wasn’t going to catch Wallace until Wallace ran into traffic on the last lap. Gordon got to his bumper on the backstretch and sent Wallace up the hill entering turn three. There was nothing Wallace could do to prevent the pass.
8. Fighting at Texas. Twice: We’ll start with what happened in 2010. After tangling with Jeff Burton after the caution lights came on, Gordon got out of his car and went after Burton following a long walk towards Burton’s car and the ambulance.
The tussle would be the defining Texas skirmish of Gordon’s career until he and Brad Keselowski made contact late in the 2014 race. And then, as you know, this happened:
Remember how we told you finding 10 things was tough? Honorable mention goes to the craziness with Clint Bowyer at Phoenix in 2012. It fits in with the theme of this entry, so that’s why it’s getting mentioned here.
7. Passing Dale Earnhardt’s win mark: A week earlier, Jeff Gordon held off Tony Stewart for his first Phoenix win and the 76th win of his career, tying Dale Earnhardt for No. 6 on NASCAR’s all-time wins list. Then, fittingly, Gordon broke it at Talladega, the site of Earnhardt’s last win. In 2000, Earnhardt dashed from mid-pack to first in the final few laps. In 2007, Gordon won via late-race restarts.
6. Five Brickyard 400 wins: Gordon won the first Brickyard 400 in 1994 for his second career Sprint Cup win. In 2014, he won his fifth, becoming the first driver to win five Cup races at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Gordon’s fourth win came in 2004 and since then, teammate Jimmie Johnson had won four times at the Brickyard. But in 2014, Gordon had a great restart to hold off Kasey Kahne for No. 5.
5. Winning the 1997 Daytona 500: Gordon won the race at age 25 and became the youngest winner of the Daytona 500. To do so, he survived a crazy last part of the race that included a multi-car crash involving perennial Daytona contenders Dale Jarrett and Dale Earnhardt.
4. Winston Million: The same year he won the 500, Gordon became the second driver to win the Winston Million. The four-race program was held within a Cup season and if a driver won three of the four designated races (Daytona, Talladega, Charlotte and Darlington), he won $1 million. Gordon missed out at Talladega but won at Charlotte to go to the Labor Day weekend race at Darlington with a shot at the money. He got it by holding off Burton and Jarrett.
3. 2001 All-Star Race: As soon as NASCAR threw the green flag for its all-star race in 2001, it started to rain. Rain and slick tires don’t mix and many drivers, including Gordon, crashed as the field hurtled into turn one.
NASCAR allowed all of the teams that had crashed cars to go to backup cars and Gordon went on to win the race. It was his third All-Star win, which tied him with Earnhardt (at the time) for the most wins in the race. In 2013, Jimmie Johnson won his fourth, breaking the mark he shared with Gordon and Earnhardt.
2. T-Rex: The car that Gordon drove in the 1997 Winston was fast. Real fast. It’s become a bit of a mythic figure nearly 20 years later after NASCAR countered the car’s arrival with new rules after the race.
The car was never deemed illegal. But it left many other teams unhappy.
“The rear suspension was different on the car, the way all the bracing was done and whatnot,” Gordon’s then-crew chief Ray Evernham said in a 2007 ESPN feature. “That car had what we called raised door bars and raised front struts.”The chassis itself was built differently than our other stuff. But it wasn’t cheating. There were no rules against it.”
It’s called T-Rex not only because it devoured every other car in its path in the race’s final segment but because it was sponsored by the Jurassic Park Ride and had a dinosaur on the hood. It was a perfect sponsor arrangement.
Plus, the non-points race set the stage for the points dominance Gordon would show throughout the next two seasons. After winning the 1997 title with 10 wins and 23 top-10 finishes, Gordon was even better in 1998.
1. An incredible seven-race stretch: How good was Gordon in 1998? Well, there were 33 races in the season. Five times he finished outside the top 10. Yes, outside the top 10. Four of those finishes came in the first seven races of the year and the fifth was in race 13, meaning Gordon won his third Cup title with 20 straight top-10s to finish the year.
But he wasn’t simply just accumulating top 10s. Gordon won 13 races that season, including six wins in a seven race stretch from Pocono to Darlington. In addition to wins at those two tracks, he won at Indianapolis, Watkins Glen, Michigan and New Hampshire. The only place he didn’t win at was Bristol, and there he finished fifth.
And if you’d like, you can even say Gordon won seven of nine races as he won two weeks before Pocono at Sonoma. And after Darlington, Gordon had three straight second-place finishes.
It’s a stretch – and a season – we’re likely never to see again from anyone in NASCAR.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
