CUP: Hard Knocks For Gordon

Sprint Cup

CUP: Hard Knocks For Gordon

Jeff Gordon’s 2006 Pocono crash was one of the most severe of his career...

Tom Jensen | Posted June 06, 2009 Long Pond, PA

Jeff Gordon is a four-time NASCAR Cup series champion. (Photo: Getty Images)

One of the reasons that champions are champions is that they plan for worst-case scenarios, something Jeff Gordon knows all about, especially at Pocono Raceway.

In the June 2006 Pocono race, Gordon went sailing into Turn 1 at about 205 miles per hour when the braking system on his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet had a catastrophic failure in the form of an exploded front brake rotor, sending the car spinning and hard into the outside wall, driver’s-side first. Even today, it’s a sickening impact to witness.

“The wreck here is probably No. 1 in spectacular for me,” Gordon said Friday at Pocono Raceway following a steady day of rain that wiped out qualifying. “I had come here for however many years and I can tell you that every year, not necessarily when you’re driving, but just thinking about Pocono you basically say to yourself, ‘Man, the last thing I would ever want to have happen to me is a brake failure going into Turn 1 at Pocono – I can’t think of anything worse.’ And then you have it happen and it’s a scary moment.”

Actually, scary might have been an understatement. The car hit the wall with the left rear corner and then the entire left side slammed into it, ripping virtually all the left-side sheetmetal off the car. Remarkably, Gordon was uninjured, a testament to the value of soft walls and solid car construction.

“I felt pretty fortunate to have SAFER barriers and the seat and the foam and everything that we had in that car because I don’t think under other circumstances that the results would have been quite the same,” Gordon said.

The one good thing to come out of is was a better braking system for all the Hendrick Chevrolets. “Today we have a completely different brake package here than we did back then,” he said. “You used to be able to get away with that. That brake package that we had then we had for years and it was fine. hen you go faster, your set-ups are different, you put more stress on things and you have a failure like that which is pretty catastrophic and you at least have to learn from it even though it was pretty bad.”

Gordon said that although his qualifying crash at Dover International Speedway last week was nowhere near as spectacular as the 2006 Pocono crash, it was almost as hard.

“Believe it or not, that impact last week in qualifying was in the top-five,” said Gordon. “People don’t realize how hard that is. We got the information from NASCAR and it was a huge hit.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED,” and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to

Play Super 7 Sweep Fantasy Racing powered by Wind Tunnel!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Jensen

MORE BY THIS AUTHOR

JENSEN: The Crew Chief’s Advantage
The Sprint All-Star Race was an interesting affair ...
CUP: New Hall Of Fame Class To Be Announced
The late Curtis Turner is among the nominees to the NASCAR Hall of…
CUP: All-Star Power Rankings
Jimmie Johnson remains atop the FOXSports.com/SPEED.com Power Rankings...…