Not what NASCAR wanted, but this '07 Chase is over (cont'd)

Gordon is left to wonder what might have been. There was a time, and it wasn't long ago, when he seemed destined to win his fifth championship.

Instead, he has spent the last month watching his teammate from Hendrick Motorsports get on a roll the likes of which the sport hasn't seen since, well, the last time a driver won four consecutive races.

That was in the summer of 1998, when Gordon won 13 races and captured his third series championship in four years -- fueling widespread and fairly confident speculation that he would one day perhaps surpass the all-time record of seven titles that is shared by stock-car titans Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt.

Gordon wistfully remembered when Sunday.

"It's like everything is easy," Gordon said. "When you're in the racecar, it's like you're not even working. The hardest I've ever driven a racecar is when you're running 15th and 20th. When your car is working good and track position is there and the pit stops are working, it's like you can drive it with one finger.

"Jimmie's a great driver. He's driving the wheels off of it. But those guys are doing everything together -- and that's why they're winning races and why they're where they are in points right now."

What's next?

It's no doubt not what the powers-that-be in NASCAR want to hear, but where Gordon is right now mentally is focusing on next year. This year, in his mind, is finished.

He won six races, second only to Johnson, and reeled off more top-10 finishes than any other driver this season. But in the end, it wasn't good enough to win another championship. Since that magical season in 1998, he's won only one more -- and none since 2001, pre-dating the current Chase format that so many of his fans like to argue has cost him at least one more title.

He'll turn 37 years old next August. He has won 81 races in his career, more than all but four others who have pulled on driver's suits in the history of the sport.

But now he has an elephant in his own backyard. The elephant's name is Jimmie Johnson, and he's big enough and powerful enough and resourceful enough that Gordon is beginning to wonder if he can ever conjure up that kind of magic again himself.

And even if he does, will Johnson somehow find a way to be even better?

"Those guys have flat-out killed everybody," Gordon said of Johnson's No. 48 team. "You've got to give credit where credit is due, and those guys deserve a lot of credit. We didn't step up and win the races when we needed to. We gave them a run for a while, but now we have to figure out how to get the best finish we can at Homestead and go into the off-season on a positive note."

In other words, with one to go, Gordon already is locked into wait-until-next year mode.

"We've got to go to Homestead and try to end the season with our heads held up high and do something to take us into the off-season," Gordon said. "We've done the consistency thing and we've gotten beat. So obviously we've got to figure a way to get the performance up, if we're going to compete with these guys in the future. I really thought the average finish that we have would do it, and it hasn't -- because those guys have been that spectacular.

"So to me, right now it's not about the championship. It's really about the off-season and next year and getting ourselves where we need to be. I guess I need to change. I've got to figure out how to go faster; I know that -- because what I'm doing now isn't getting it done."

Well, not if he wants to be the best at Hendrick Motorsports again.

The opinions expressed are those solely of the writer