Gordon grabs fourth Winston Cup championship
By Marty Smith, Turner Sports Interactive
November 18, 2001
6:53 PM EST (2353 GMT)
HAMPTON, Ga. -- Skeptics galore presently stand united in embarrassment, having been proved wrong by Jeff Gordon, Robbie Loomis and the rest of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports contingent.
Throughout the past two NASCAR Winston Cup Series seasons, such cynics denounced the Gordon regime, assuming the dynasty built at Hendrick Motorsports had been a fluke: A product of Ray Evernham’s genius, a rare collaboration of elite talent assembled to make Gordon appear more capable than he really was.
This year served as proof otherwise.
At Atlanta on Sunday, Gordon finished sixth to clinch his fourth NASCAR Winston Cup Series championship in seven years.
Gordon now moves past Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson and Lee Petty into sole possession of third place all-time in Winston Cup championships won.
With his fourth title, Gordon joins Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt as the only drivers in Winston Cup history to win more than three championships in a career.
“It’s starting to sink in a little bit,” Gordon said. “I think it’s going to take a little while for that number -- four -- to sink in. I look at who had three, who had two, who had one, and then who had seven. It’s an unbelievable league of company to be with.”
Heading into Friday's season finale at New Hampshire, Gordon has six victories, 18 top-fives and 24 top-10s, pushing his lead over second-place Tony Stewart to an insurmountable 376 points, enabling him to clinch the title. Gordon took the lead for good on July 29 with an eighth-place finish at Pocono.
At that time, he held a 45-point advantage over Ricky Rudd. After a win the following week in the Brickyard 400, Gordon extended that advantage to 160 points over Dale Jarrett and 179 points over Rudd.
After yet another victory the next week at Watkins Glen International, Gordon was up 194 points on Rudd. From there, his advantage never dipped below 212 points.
“This is too good to be true,” he said. “Without the perseverance God gives us, we wouldn’t have been able to get from last year to this year the way we did. These guys are just awesome, the way they came together.
“I don’t know how (Petty and Earnhardt won seven championships). There’s just so much into being a champion. It takes so much out of you. I don’t think we’re ready to think about seven. Maybe we’ll just start out thinking about five.”
Gordon’s last championship came in 1998, when Evernham was at the helm of the 24 team and Hendrick Motorsports was in the midst of four-consecutive championship seasons.
Midway through the 1999 season, however, Evernham departed the Hendrick organization to head up Dodge’s return to the Winston Cup Series.
Despite winning a series-high seven races, Gordon finished sixth in the standings.
Then, after the season, the Rainbow Warriors jumped ship to join Dale Jarrett’s championship-winning No. 88 team at Robert Yates Racing. With an entirely new crew, including Loomis, Gordon won three times in 2000 and finished eighth in the standings -- his worst finish since he was a rookie in 1993.
Many assumed Gordon had been exposed. They assumed the reeling No. 24 team was proof that Evernham’s guidance was the source that had produced three titles in four years, not Gordon’s talent.
Now, he has won championships with two entirely different teams and the skeptics stand silent.
“A championship in anything is hard to come by, and to do it multiple times is amazing,” car owner Rick Hendrick said. “We had three in (four years), then we stumbled. We had lost our pit crew, head fabricator.
"Then we had to start all over, and to come back to the top of the mountain after being knocked off is awfully sweet.”
Gordon’s title marks Hendrick’s fifth as an owner. He also won the 1996 title with driver Terry Labonte. Moreover, Hendrick won the 2001 Craftsman Truck Series championship with Jack Sprague at the wheel, and has eight major NASCAR championships overall.
“You start this series and you never think you’ll win (a championship),” Hendrick said. “When you win the first one, you never think you’ll win again. To win the fifth, it’s just unbelievable.”
While Hendrick has multiple titles at his disposal, this is the first for Loomis, who faced his own skeptics when he was hired at the outset of the 2000 campaign.
“It feels great, man,” Loomis said. “It’s all about these guys down here. So many people sacrificed to make this happen. I told Jeff this is his championship. I think he let the cat outta the bag this year. He’s a pretty good driver.”
Most certainly, the skeptics now concur. Their silence is deafening.
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