NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Gordon, Johnson Make Peace
Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson were critical of each other at Texas last weekend...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted April 24, 2010   Talladega, AL
Jimmie Johnson (Left) and Jeff Gordon (Right) have had their differences this season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
The hate will have to wait.

Any race fan hoping that the ire and ill-will Hendrick Motorsports drivers Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon displayed for each other last week at Texas Motor Speedway would explode into a full-fledged inter-team feud are going to be sorely disappointed.

The two four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champions breezed into Talladega Superspeedway Friday and each said there were no problems between them any more. The on-track hostilities at Texas and harsh words afterwards? Just one of them racin’ deals. Que sera sera.

Gordon said a big part of the frustrations the two experienced at Texas came because this year he finally has the speed to keep up with Johnson, something he’s lacked during most of Johnson’s four-year championship run.

“We’ve raced hard for years. I just never had a car that could keep up with him,” Gordon said of Johnson. “We’ve got that this year. In a way, I hope we see more of it. We don’t want to be bumping and banging, but I do want to be changing positions with him for the lead and swapping those. I love racing with Jimmie and because you know when you’re racing with Jimmie, you’re running good. He set that standard here over the last several years, and that’s one that we haven’t lived up to. It’s one that I feel like we’re capable of living up to this year. That’s why we’re going to be more aggressive, and we’re going to be racing hard, and that means that we’re going to upset some guys along the way.”

Johnson said in talking with Gordon, it was apparent that both men had at times been aggressive, perhaps overly so, with the other.

“Jeff and I talked and I quickly realized that there are two sides to every story,” said Johnson. “Through that and communicating, if you feel wronged in a situation, he reminds me of something that he felt wronged by before and I’m like, ‘Ok, well then this happened.’ So it’s like what came first, the chicken or the egg? Where did this start?”

And Johnson said performing at this level requires running each other absolutely to the limit.

“We push each other really hard and ask a lot and we're both greedy in ways and have probably put each other in positions on the race track that he (Gordon) hasn't liked and I haven't liked and found myself in that position in Texas and decided to express myself a little bit. We've talked, for sure. Everything is fine and in good shape and we'll just keep racing,” said Johnson.

Gordon agreed. “When you’re out there on that race track and you’re a competitor, you want to win,” he said. “You want to do everything you possibly can to get that win. There are times when that competitor and you are going to push things maybe too far. I feel like that’s a little bit of what happened this past weekend, and why it’s good that Jimmie and I were able to communicate about it. ... We took it a little bit too far there, but yet we’re still going to race one another a lot as the year goes on.”

So life goes on at Hendrick Motorsports, so much so that Johnson joked about the rumors of bad blood between he and Gordon.

“Did you guys hear about the fight we got into?” Johnson said, laughing out loud. “Man, we just got into a hell of a fight."

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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