Jeff Gordon has a different mindset these days. Credit: Autostock

Gordon: Sharper edge needed in today's racing

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Jeff Gordon might not be as mad as hell after last weekend's on- and off-track Bristol slugfest, but he said this week he's not going to take much more off his competition.

At Martinsville Speedway on Friday, several of Gordon's competitors said the four-time Cup champion was entitled to a change in attitude, if he felt it was needed.

NO LAST-LAP CAUTION AT BRISTOL BAFFLES GORDON MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Jeff Gordon on Friday voiced displeasure that NASCAR chose against throwing the caution flag on the final lap of the Food City 500 last weekend.  But not because he stood to redeem positions lost when Matt Kenseth spun him out, as some initially speculated.  According to NASCAR spokesman Kerry Tharp, the driver that causes the caution is prevented from benefiting from the frozen field.  And because all lead-lap cars on the track passed Gordon coming to the checkered flag, he would have finished as the last car on the lead lap regardless whether or not the field was frozen.  That's not Gordon's issue.  "I think the caution should have flown, and I'm a little disappointed in that," Gordon said. "That's something that hasn't been talked about much, and I'm really surprised the caution didn't come out."  Gordon said he'd neither spoken with NASCAR about the situation -- "we spent too much time talking about other things" -- nor seen enough replays to gauge for himself why it didn't fly.  Tharp said the caution wasn't thrown because by the time Gordon came to a stop, race-winner Kurt Busch had already taken the checkered flag and thus the race had ended.  -- Marty Smith, NASCAR.COM

It was harder to pin anyone down on what to expect in Sunday's DirecTV 500.

"Yeah [veterans seem more aggressive], but there's no doubt that it's a totally different type of racing now," Dale Jarrett said. "It's a little more in-your-face and stand your ground. You have to do that.

"That's just what this has evolved into and you're gonna see a lot of people react like that when they feel they did nothing wrong."

That was Gordon's take, five days after the outburst.

"We're all trying to win races and we're all out trying to occupy the same amount of real estate," Gordon said. "As competitive as it is these days, it's just so hard to get those opportunities, to keep those positions and win races.

"I would expect we're going to see more and more of it. It's good for everybody to see how competitive everybody is but we also have to have our limits and keep things in check."

Ironically, Jarrett was in the middle of one of the contentious moments when Matt Kenseth, who was leading the race, drew close to him in the closing laps.

Jarrett didn't give way, race winner Kurt Busch caught Kenseth, knocked him out of the way and set in motion a chain of events that ended with Kenseth spinning out Gordon on the last lap and Gordon giving Kenseth a two-handed shove on pit road that ultimately resulted in a $10,000 fine and probation for Gordon.

And it also brought on Gordon's change-in-attitude statement.

"That's slightly out of character for Jeff Gordon, but so is blackening Mike Bliss' eye at the airport last year, too," Mark Martin said Friday. "So I guess you can believe that his character is changing a little bit over the years."

Even if it is, Gordon said Friday he completely understood what being on NASCAR probation meant.

"It means you don't get out of the car after the race and go push somebody," Gordon said. "When I talked to [NASCAR president] Mike Helton about the probation, I wanted to make sure that this isn't something where other people could take advantage of me in that situation.

"He assured me that it's not. They want people to go out there and race and they expect that. Every single race is an isolated situation. I guarantee if somebody goes out there and pushes me out of the way, I'm going to push them back on the racetrack [but] I'm going to try and keep it on the racetrack."

Kenseth, who said he was going to Gordon last week to apologize for hitting him at the end of the race, was penitent then and continued in that mode Friday when he forgave Gordon for his "out of character moment."

"Everybody gets mad," Kenseth said. "It was bad timing for me to try and go up to talk to him [because] you've got a lot of emotion. Everybody is out there trying as hard as they can try, so when things don't go right, you're always gonna be upset."

Martin said Gordon was entitled to his opinion.

"Who hasn't changed over the years?" Martin said. "I think everyone has. Everyone is the sum of all their experiences and everything that has happened to them in the past and the things that they've learned and experienced, so I don't see him that much different than anyone else."

	Credit: Autostock
	GORDON FINED NASCAR fined Jeff Gordon $10,000 and placed him on probation through August for pushing Matt Kenseth on pit road at Bristol.  •   Complete story, click here

And like Kenseth, Jarrett said Gordon's emotion was totally justified.

"If that would have happened with 100 laps to go, he would have had time to cool down but to have it happen on the last lap like that -- people don't understand," Jarrett said. "You haven't sat in these racecars and tried to do our job, especially at a place as difficult as Bristol.

"You get a lot of spots taken away from you at the very end, then you can't understand the reaction sometimes. That's the normal reaction as far as I'm concerned."

Jamie McMurray agreed.

"I'm usually pretty calm, and Bristol has brought out the worst in me before," McMurray said. "When you've been out there all day long and somebody takes it away from you at the end -- it's a long race, and when it goes away with one corner to go at the end, it's tough.

"I think if you don't get out and show how angry you are, then it shows you don't care."

At Martinsville, a short track for the second consecutive week, the ultimate fear is getting wrecked when other competitors potentially take out grudges. But Martin said that's all just an inescapable part of the sport.

"You don't have time to worry about all that," Martin said. "Whether it's retaliation or a lack of patience it's all the same -- it's still a wreck.

"One is not much worse than the other -- they're both mistakes."

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. was one driver who said he looked forward to the show.

"I'm not concerned -- I like it [and] I think it is fun to watch," Earnhardt said. "I won't get caught up in any of them [because] it isn't like they are going to cause an 18-car wreck here; they will just spin each other around is about all there is to it.

"There isn't any harm in it. I don't think we should think anything about it. If you don't like one another, just take a little extra care around each other."

Earnhardt said such antics only increased the sport's appeal.

"I think it is awesome -- I think it is good for our sport," Earnhardt said. "It is really entertaining for the fans and it is really entertaining for the other drivers [so] I hope it keeps going."

Gordon, a seven-time winner at Martinsville -- including both races last season -- said the mistake of settling a grudge was a bad idea for a lot of people.

"I think the smartest thing for anybody to do is try to put that behind you and go racing because to pay somebody back means you're probably going to get paid back again somewhere down the road," Gordon said. "It will keep going and linger.

"You got your team that has put a lot of hard work and effort into building your racecar. You need to go out there and get finishes to be in the Chase, win the championship and win races.

"If you're out there knocking guys out of your way because somebody hit you the week before, you're just heading in a bad direction. I called Martin [Truex Jr.] this week and I apologized to him. I already talked to Matt [Kenseth] in Bristol and I'm ready to go racing Martinsville."

The other protagonists also think contact at Martinsville is not as contrived as some observers might think.

"I don't think there's very much chance for payback," Kenseth said. "I don't think that really happens as much as you guys want to say it happens [and] if it did, I certainly don't think it would be the next week."

"You don't go in thinking about [payback]," Jarrett said. "Most of the time when you've got five or six days to settle down you put those things aside and you don't worry about it.

"But if they do, here is a place that you have more time to react to that, but I don't look for much of that to happen."

Kenseth said, as Jarrett did, that the nature of the sport leads to a lot of emotional overflow on the racetrack.

"We basically do [get along]," Kenseth said. "We basically all get along pretty good, but there's a lot of pressure [and] everybody is trying really hard.

"Everybody wants to win and everybody is racing as hard as they can. Everybody is trying hard and everybody is racing hard and you know you're gonna have things happen."