Jeff Gordon
Jeff Gordon
Jeffery Michael "Jeff" Gordonis an American semi-retired professional stock car racing driver and currently an announcer for Fox NASCAR. He formerly drove the No. 24 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports in 23 full-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series seasons between 1993 and 2015, and currently serves as a substitute driver for Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRace Car Driver
Date of Birth4 August 1971
CityVallejo, CA
CountryUnited States of America
Years like that make you hungrier, make you humble. The criticism has come a little bit stronger, come more often. I understand why. We've won four championships, a lot of races. We've prided ourselves on being competitive every year. When we're not, we recognize as well as everybody we're having an off year.
There are some people that maybe have gotten caught up thinking I'm just a guy that lets things go. I feel like it takes a lot to make me mad, but I still get mad. Lately I haven't been afraid to show it.
We needed a long run. We didn't need that last caution. That last caution hurt us a bit.
We've got a points system that's built on consistency, and then we change how it's structured to make this exciting 10-race stretch, but then it's still about consistency. The guy could finish top-five every weekend in those last 10 races and still win that championship. It's very possible that it could happen.
It didn't hurt having my teammate (Busch) pushing me from behind. There at the end it got pretty interesting.
I think with our track record here at Daytona, with the performance that we've got going for us already this week, I'd like to think that we're one of the favorites. But whether we're the guy to beat or not, we'll find out in the closing laps of the 500.
The Roush cars are really, really fast right now.
Texas is an important race track for us. We struggled here last year, and we've been really focused on improving our intermediate track program.
I am going to take part blame for that. I think Tony should take part of it as well. ... I think it could have been avoided by both of us. It was an unfortunate incident that hurt us both a lot.
He was one of those guys that right away, you knew he was gonna do a lot more than sweep the floors. I knew five years ago that Steve would be a crew chief. I didn't know if it'd be with me or some other team. But I always hoped that it would be for me.
I think it could have been avoided by both of us and it cost us both a lot.
I don't know how you can just pick one guy, there's strong cars out here. I felt like (Sadler) was really strong in that first race. I know that Tony and Junior and Jimmie and those guys who weren't in our race are going to be strong.
Last year was a very humbling experience. I don't want to ever go through that again.
I feel like over the years that I've been here that I've earned more respect. But I don't know if I'll ever have the type of respect that Dale had. Because Dale had that kind of respect, everybody looked up to him. Whether they enjoyed racing with him or having dinner with him or not, they all respected him tremendously.