This just in: Gordon remains a top driver

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© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 6, 2001

Okay, so all this time it wasn't just the crew. Or the owner. Or the crew chief. Or the car.

The driver, it turns out, had a whole lot to do with all those Victory Lane trips after all.

Come on, admit it. This Jeff Gordon dude is a pretty darn good driver.

If you haven't done so already, it's high time to give Gordon his due. All of it.

Even after he stunk up the joint at Rockingham on Sunday, he is a virtual lock to win another NASCAR Winston Cup championship for Hendrick Motorsports.

This will be his fourth -- only Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt have more -- with Hendrick, but his first with his mostly revamped crew and crew chief Robbie Loomis. Aside from Hendrick, the constant among Gordon's four titles will be Gordon.

That's worth noting after all the skepticism that engulfed him two years ago when long-time crew chief Ray Evernham departed late in the season, leaving Gordon to finish an uncharacteristic sixth in the standings.

That was all Gordon's detractors needed to start whispers about whether Evernham or the Rainbow Warriors were the real driving force behind the 24 car.

Gordon was an easy target. He had the best crew, a master crew chief and an owner with pockets as deep as the Mississippi River. Hey, anybody could have driven that car to all those victories, right?

Well, wrong.

It took a guy who has so much talent that, after a decade in Winston Cup, we still probably haven't seen it all. He has been extraordinary at every level where he's competed. From midgets to Winston Cup.

He has six wins and seven poles with three races left this season. With consistency and endurance, he has made a joke out of the championship race, building such a huge lead (326 points ahead of Ricky Rudd) that the title virtually has been out of everyone else's reach for weeks.

He even flirted for a while with matching Petty's record for earliest championship clinched, but the competitive level of NASCAR makes it unlikely anyone could sew it up with four races to go, as Petty did in 1975.

He still has a decent shot to lock it up Sunday at the Pennzoil 400 in Homestead, which would make the remaining two races little more than parade laps for him. He needs to gain 44 points, meaning he has to finish roughly 10 spots ahead of Rudd.

That ain't easy, but it's certainly doable.

Still, whenever he officially wraps it up, some of the credit has to go to Loomis, Hendrick and the crew. Gordon is good, but he isn't so good that he could set up the car, change the tires and drive.

But there'll be no question this time about how big a role Gordon played in the winning. The trophy will have his name on it, and with good reason.

That's not to diminish the impact Evernham, Hendrick and his old crew had on Gordon's past championships. They certainly made his life easier. Even Gordon's biggest fans might admit it was no coincidence last season that he had his worst season in years (ninth in the standings) in his first without Evernham.

Gordon won three races that season, his lowest total since his second year in the series.

But last I checked, none of them ever turned a lap anywhere near 200 mph at Daytona or Talladega. None ever took a poor-handling Chevy and brought it home a winner when barely in their 20s. Gordon has, and he has done it more than once.

Look, if you don't like Gordon because he's not a good ol' boy, fine. If you haven't forgiven him for switching from Ford to Chevy early in his stock-car racing career, that's fine, too.

But, when he hoists that championship trophy this time, give him what he has coming. He doesn't deserve second-guessing. He has won the title with Evernham, and now he's about to win it without him.

If you want to guess at something, guess how long it's going to take Evernham to win a title without Gordon. Nobody really knows, but I'll betcha it'll take a lot longer than it took Gordon to win without him.

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