Gordon's woes at Texas continue with early crash

FORT WORTH, Texas -- He came into the weekend looking to build on the little bit of momentum he seemed to establish one week earlier at Martinsville, when he finally climbed back into the top 12 in driver points.

Never mind that Texas Motor Speedway was one of only two current Sprint Cup tracks where Jeff Gordon has never won (Homestead in Miami, Fla., is the other). He had pulled off three consecutive top-10 finishes at TMS, in addition to earlier in his career putting together a streak of four consecutive top-fives.

So Gordon said he didn't fear the track prior to the running of Sunday's Samsung 500.

Maybe he should have. But it turned out the track was only part of his problem. The bigger issue was his No. 24 Chevrolet, which pretty much was a piece of junk from the start to its very premature finish.

Gordon lasted only 110 laps into the scheduled 334-lap event at the 1.5-mile track before losing control of his car and slapping the wall (watch video). Then he immediately took it behind the wall to the garage, telling crew chief Steve Letarte over the radio: "Come on, let's change everything. I can't drive it like this."

They tried, but couldn't do anything of a positive nature with it. Gordon returned to the track for a few laps, but soon was done for the day. He finished dead last in the 43-car field.

"I can't remember the last time we struggled this bad," Gordon said. "It is just a bad day gone worse for our team."

It may have been in 1999, when Gordon registered the only other last-place finish in his Sprint Cup career -- in the Primestar 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. On Sunday, Gordon said he struggled to keep the car on the track from the moment the green flag was dropped.

"Today was about trying to find a problem we've been dealing with all weekend long with just not having the handling and comfort there for me," Gordon said. "We've tried every setup we can find, but none of them seem to work.

"I hate that I damaged the car. But I was just hanging on every single lap."

He finally could hang on no longer on Lap 110.

"You get frustrated. The car is not doing what you want it to do," Gordon said. "You're trying to figure stuff out and change your line and everything and I lost control and got in the wall."

Gordon didn't sound like he was all that surprised that he struggled.

"We haven't had any time to test here," he said. "This is a tricky racetrack. We have been very hit or miss here. Ever since we started practicing here on Friday, we were bad. We have been very far off the pace and I've been uncomfortable.

"If the car isn't pretty close at this racetrack, I am terrible. I can't get around this racetrack; I don't know what it is. To be off like we were and as slow as we were, the car was even harder to drive."

In the end, at least part of the problem for Gordon was indeed the track. Despite the string of top-10s heading into Sunday's event -- and the earlier string of top-fives -- he finally admitted he isn't too fond of the place.

"I just don't think I have ever been very good at Texas," said Gordon, whose 81 career Cup victories rank sixth all-time. "That's why we have never won here. We have had our moments, when the car has been really good. But you know what? When the car is off, I am lost here. I mean, I haven't felt this lost at a racetrack since my rookie year."

For those keeping score at home, Gordon's made his rookie debut in 1992 and ran his first full-time season in '93, when he finished 14th in points. Since then he's never finished lower than 11th in a season -- but Sunday's struggle dropped him five spots to 14th seven races into this one.

"It's just boggling my mind," Gordon said. "There are some crazy setups going on in these cars right now. And I guess when you don't hit it right, it's not much fun."