NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Title Or Not, Gordon Driving On
Jeff Gordon’s last NASCAR Sprint Cup championship came in 2001…
Tom Jensen  |  Posted October 24, 2012   Charlotte, NC
Jeff Gordon won't win the Sprint Cup Series title this season. (Photo: Getty Images)
Now in his 20th full season of NASCAR Sprint Cup racing, four-time series champion Jeff Gordon is nothing if not a realist.

Gordon has had one of the oddest seasons of his long and distinguished career. At times, he has strung together streaks of top-five finishes that made it look as though a fifth title was a real possibility this year.

Yet at other times his luck has been so miserable it seemed as though he’d been afflicted with every plague short of locusts, frogs and boils. He went upside down at Daytona in February, had a tire popped by Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s header at Bristol, got wrecked at Martinsville and Talladega, lost an engine in Michigan.

And, most damningly, he had his throttle stick in the opening race for the Chase for the Sprint Cup at Chicagoland Speedway. Gordon was running fourth when that happened, but when his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet slammed into the wall, it dropped him to 35th in the final rundown.

Gordon left Chicagoland 47 points behind leader Brad Keselowski. In the subsequent three races, Gordon finished third, second and second, but only made up 5 points in the process.

Now, after finishes of 18th at Charlotte and 10th at Kansas, Gordon’s Drive For Five is all but over for 2012.

“It was about two or three races ago that I said it's going to take a miracle,” Gordon said of his title hopes. “It's going to take an even bigger miracle now for us to win number five. We had the issue in Chicago that got us far behind. But we're making great strides at coming back.”

Until Charlotte, that is, when a pit-road speeding penalty dropped Gordon a lap down, which he was never able to make up.

“If a couple two or three guys at the front had faltered, then we had a shot at it,” Gordon said. “Unfortunately, then we faltered in Charlotte, and we just missed the setup. I was speeding down pit road, and that ultimately cost us a lot of points. Then in this past weekend a 10th-place finish. Those just aren't good enough results to make up the points that we had lost in Chicago.”

That said, Gordon is still going all out.

“We never give up,” he said. “We never quit. We go to every race giving it everything we've got. But obviously the chances are pretty slim of us winning number five this year.”

This week, Gordon returns to one of his favorite race tracks, Martinsville Speedway.

In the spring race here, Gordon led 329 laps and was half a lap from victory when David Reutimann stalled, bringing out a yellow flag. On the restart, Clint Bowyer slammed into Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, knocking the two leaders out of contention and opening the door for Ryan Newman to win.

Gordon will be looking for a reversal of fortune on Sunday.

“We're certainly very excited about Martinsville this weekend,” said Gordon. “We had a great race going earlier in the season. Of course, any time you have a late-race green/white checker at Martinsville, you know it's going to get pretty crazy and it did. We got the bad end of it.

“But we had so many positive things to come out of that race, and Martinsville is one of my best and favorite tracks. Just had meetings with the team today in preparation for Martinsville and feel like we've got some really good things to try this weekend to make ourselves even a little bit better.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.
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