NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Past Champs Struggling
Jeff Gordon’s chances at a fifth championship are virtually nil…
Tom Jensen  |  Posted October 17, 2012   Charlotte, NC
Jeff Gordon has seven wins at Martinsville Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images)
This isn’t exactly a prime year to be a former NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion.

Oh, sure, Jimmie Johnson, the five-time series champ, is second in points and breathing down leader Brad Keselowski’s neck, but for the other five active past champions still racing full-time, 2012 has been a definite downer.

Kurt Busch, winner of the inaugural Chase for the Sprint Cup, is 26th in points and didn’t come anywhere near making this year’s championship round. Neither did 2000 Sprint Cup champ Bobby Labonte, who is 24th in points.

In some respects, the disappointment is even greater for Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth, the three past champs who did make the Chase this season.

Gordon, Stewart and Kenseth have won eight of the 17 most recent championships. Collectively, they have won a staggering 156 races — nearly five years worth of victories.

This Chase, though, none of the three is even within a single race of the points lead.

Three-time series champion Stewart is eighth in points right now, 50 behind leader Keselowski, while four-time champ Gordon is ninth with the identical point total as Stewart. Kenseth is 11th in points and the only reason he isn’t 12th is that Dale Earnhardt Jr. missed the most recent race while suffering from a concussion.

It isn’t what any of the three wanted or expected, but it’s what happens in this sport sometimes. Even great drivers on great teams struggle sometimes. And there’s little that can be done differently at this point in the season anyway.

Asked last week how he would approach the rest of the season, Stewart was characteristically blunt.

“Same as you always do,” he said. “You can’t do anything different. What are you going to do different? If you are trying to do the things you do to win the race you are doing everything you can do. We are already doing that.”

There is no real pattern to the woes of three past champions.

Stewart hasn’t had any speed in his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet. After winning five of the 10 Chase races last year, Stewart has had a best Chase finish so far of sixth at Chicagoland Speedway. His average finish in the Chase so far has been 13.6.

He looked like he might win at Talladega, but an ill-conceived, last-lap block attempt on the charging Michael Waltrip wound up wadding the field in a huge crash that left Stewart 13th.

Gordon, meanwhile, has been fast but unlucky. He was running fourth in the Chase opener at Chicagoland when his throttle stuck and went hard into the wall, finishing 35th. He was third, second and second in the next three races, but only made up five points on Keselowski during that stretch. Saturday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Gordon went down a lap after a pit-road speeding penalty and finished 18th.

“It’s been a pretty crazy season for us, up and down,” said Gordon. “Not too many things have gone our way, but we’ve found a way to carve our way into the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Of course, then it started the way it did in Chicago.”

Unlike Gordon and Stewart, Kenseth has a victory in the Chase, winning at Talladega two weeks ago. But with Kenseth departing at year-end for Joe Gibbs Racing and some bizarre mechanical issues on his car, this Chase has been anything but fun.

“We had a really rough few weeks in the Chase with parts breaking and following off and not getting good finishes and not running good and everybody was getting close to being at each other's throats and things like that,” said Kenseth. “So it's important for me to try to really try to keep that whole unit as a cohesive front-running championship-contending unit.”

So what’s left for the three if a title is out of the question?

Just win, baby.

“(I’m) hoping we can get another win or two and finish as high as we can in the points and end this thing on a high note,” said Kenseth.

“As long as you’re mathematically in the hunt, you still have a shot,” said Stewart. “If we have a chance to win the championship at the end, trust me, we’re all for that and we would love nothing more than that. But I think right now where we’re at and how many points we need to make up, I think it lets us have a go-for-broke attitude and just go out and try to win races.”

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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