Dry spell for Gordon sparks memories of 1998 season

So who do you like at Phoenix this Saturday night? Are you trying to win the race? Are you trying to hang on to the top spot in the race to the Chase? Are you trying to get into the top 12 in points? Do you need to crack into the top 35 in owner points?

I love the honest emotion we have seen from Jeff Gordon this season. This is a guy who loves to win. Don't we all? He was never spoiled by winning and never took it for granted. He has used his success as a platform for the future. He expects to be up front every week, to challenge, to pursue the championship. Sure, he still has never won at Texas. But this week we go to Phoenix. Oh, he has yet to win there, too. Would you like to guess how many top-10 finishes Gordon has in the last 11 races at Phoenix? Ah, c'mon. Try.

He has finished in the top 10 in 10 of the last 11 races there. Four of those are top-five finishes. In his first Phoenix race in 1993 Gordon started ninth and finished 35th. In November of 1997, he finished 17th. His only finish outside the top 10 in the last eleven races at Phoenix was a 12th-place run in April of 2005. In his 16 starts at Phoenix, he has 13 top-10 finishes.

No wins, but good runs at Phoenix.

"I really enjoy the challenge of this track, and we generally seem to run well here," Gordon said. "There were a couple of times I thought we had a shot at the victory but pit strategy or something else ruined those chances. There have been other times, though, when we fought the handling all day but salvaged a respectable finish.

"This race should be very interesting with the new car. It's hard not to compare it to the current car which has a certain feel and comfort level that we don't yet have in the Car of Tomorrow.

"But all teams are fighting through that. It may not give me the comfort level I'm looking for, but we have to get as much speed out of the car as possible while making it handle the best we can.

"Hopefully, we do that better than the competition."

Gordon has not won this season. His last victory came at the Chicagoland Speedway on July 9, 2006. That was at the halfway point of last season. He was 10th in the championship standings. After that win, it was a roller-coaster ride the rest of the year. He made the Chase, but after finishing third at New Hampshire and Dover, not too many good things happened for the 24 team.

That means Gordon has not won in his last 25 starts, the final 18 of last year and the first seven of this year.

In 2005 he won at Martinsville in late October. He did not win again until Sonoma in June of 2006. Two weeks later he got the win in Joliet -- no wins since then. So if my math is correct, that's just two wins in the last 47 races. The only reason I am throwing out all these numbers is because I really didn't realize this was the case. I didn't sit down to write about Gordon. Every few weeks I just like to touch on selected guys, where they are in points, and why. So I started looking at some of the numbers for the 24 bunch. I look at their numbers and think, these guys are impressive. Even when they are not running well, you get the impression they are. Even when they are not winning races, you get the feeling they are about to win again. (Continued)