Gordon Struggles to Regain Top Form

Has the law of averages finally caught up with Jeff Gordon?

The three-time Winston Cup champion has dropped out of three of nine races this season, the most since the 1996 season when he had five DNFs.

“We’re not having the year we had last year, that’s for sure,” Gordon said. “We’ve had some troubles that have been out of our control, a blown engine at Rockingham, a cut tire [that put him in the wall] at Texas and getting caught in that accident [Sunday] at Talladega.

“Each time we were up close to the front, so there’s nothing wrong with what the team’s doing. We just have to work harder to catch up, and that starts this week at California Speedway.”

Gordon will be one of 46 drivers coming to Roger Penske’s two-mile banked oval in Fontana to start qualifying Friday for Sunday’s $2.6-million California 500. He won the inaugural race in 1997 and finished fourth last year.

Track officials said that tickets for Sunday’s race, No. 10 in the 34-race series, have been sold out. There are tickets available for Friday and Saturday, however.

“I love that California track,” Gordon said. “It’s a beautiful facility and offers great racing, for the drivers and for the fans. We’re bringing the car that won at Atlanta, so we hope for better results than we had at Talladega.”

Gordon was running with the leaders midway in that race when Tony Stewart and Mike Skinner touched, sending Skinner’s car careening across the track. With cars three- and four-abreast, it was no surprise when nine cars started crushing sheet metal.

Gordon attempted to slice through an opening, only to bounce off Stewart and get hit solidly on the passenger side by Rusty Wallace.

“It was the tightest I’ve ever seen,” said Gordon, who wound up 38th.

Wallace said, “I really don’t know who caused the accident, but it was just a matter of time. I was hoping NASCAR would throw a caution just to calm everybody down because they were just totally out of control.”

At Texas Motor Speedway last month, Gordon finished 43rd, the worst of his career after crashing into the wall when a tire went flat.

Despite the DNFs, Gordon is fifth in the standings, right where he was a year ago. However, then he was only 73 points behind Wallace. This year he is 210 behind Jeff Burton.

“Hey, we can’t look back, we have to buckle down and do the best we can,” he said. “It doesn’t change our attitude, which is to win races. If you do that enough, the championship takes care of itself. We don’t look at this year as trying to win our third in a row.

“We look at it as a totally different year, one in which we’re trying to win as many races as we can. We couldn’t expect to have every year like last year.”

Last year, Gordon won 13 races, failed to finish only twice and became NASCAR’s youngest three-time champion with a record $9,306,584 in earnings.

If two accidents and a blown engine haven’t been problems enough, Gordon also says he can’t find anyone to be his drafting partner in the 200 mph superspeedway runs.

“I was telling Jeff Burton the other day, after I’d tried to run him down at Martinsville, I’d kind of like it if he won 10 or 12 races and found out he’d lost all his friends. I’d be racing him real close and we’d get in traffic and one of his teammates, or friends, would just move aside to let him by and then they’d move back in front of me.

“This year I feel like I’ve been completely on my own. When I did win, at Daytona and Atlanta, it made it that much more special.”

Dale Earnhardt, who finished second at Daytona, scored his first victory Sunday at Talladega since he won the 1998 Daytona 500.

“It’s like I’ve got Earnhardts all around me,” Gordon said. “Dale wins on the Winston Cup circuit, and I’ve got to race Dale Jr. in a Busch Grand National car.”

Gordon will not be in the Busch race Saturday, but is running in five of them this year to get a feeling for being a car owner.

“The Busch series is a lot of fun,” he said. “I enjoy it. I picked out places where I hadn’t had much luck, hoping to get some more track time. That’s why I skipped California.

“Racing against Dale Jr. is great. Having him there is good for the sport and he is a very talented race car driver. Obviously, he has all the ingredients.”

The younger Earnhardt is defending champion in Saturday’s Auto Club 300 and also in the series.

One thing going Gordon’s way is the inability of Chevrolet and NASCAR to agree on the body configuration of the new Monte Carlo. It was expected to be available in midseason, but NASCAR recently announced that it would not appear before 2000.

“It turned out to be good for us, I believe,” Gordon said. “Even though the new car might be better than the model we’re driving now, it takes time to sort things out, time to adjust to change. There is a lot of parity in the series now, and it could have been a distraction to us.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

California 500

Jeff Gordon returns to site of his 1997 victory in track’s inaugural race. He was fourth last year.

* WHEN: Sunday, 11 a.m.

* TV: Channel 7.

* WHERE: California Speedway, Fontana.