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DARLINGTON, S.C. — The level of concern has increased, Jeff Gordon admits, as the cutoff for this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup nears.
With only two races remaining to secure one of the 16 bids in this year’s field, Gordon and his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team find themselves 15th in the Chase standings.
A victory in Sunday’s Bojangles’ Southern 500 (7 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, Sirius XM) here at Darlington Raceway would all-but guarantee the 44-year-old Gordon an 11th appearance in the 10-race, championship-determining playoff. Gordon can qualify mathematically as well, depending on where other non-winners on the Chase bubble finish Sunday night.
Putting the question of ‘are we in or aren’t we?’ to rest before the series travels to Richmond for next weekend’s event “would be huge,” Gordon said Friday at Darlington.
“We definitely feel pressure and it’s a little bit stressful right now being on the bubble. I felt like we were in a pretty comfortable position about a month ago, we just had some misfortunes.”
A year after he scored a pair of regular-season wins and entered the Chase as the No. 2 seed, Gordon finds himself winless in his last 31 starts with just one top-10 finish in his last five outings. He was 42nd at Indianapolis, 41st at Watkins Glen, 17th at Michigan and 20th two weeks ago in Bristol, Tenn. The lone highlight in the midst of the free fall — a third-place run at Pocono.
He had finished no worse than ninth in the three outings previous to the Indy setback.
“I feel like we have performed well enough to securely be in by points,” Gordon, a seven-time winner at Darlington said. ” I can’t say we have performed well enough to be real confident coming in here, that we are going to be one of the cars to beat.
“But … the amount of hard work that Alan (Gustafson, crew chief) and the team, everyone at Hendrick Motorsports has been putting in the effort for this weekend especially. … I’m pretty happy with the car. I think we’ve got a shot at doing that.
“No matter what we realize it’s really important for us to execute really well this weekend … to get those points we need to go to Richmond and be a little more comfortable anyway.
“Other than a win this weekend, Richmond is going to be stressful but the good news is we’ve dealt with it before.”
As for Darlington, Gordon’s enjoyed more success than most on the rugged, old, oddly-shaped 1.366-mile track. During a stretch between September of 1995 and ’98, Gordon won three consecutive races here (two of which were Southern 500 victories) and five out of seven overall.
Outside of Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, where he has eight career wins, Darlington has been most kind to the four-time series champion. He closed the books on the former Winston Million bonus program in 1997 with a victory as well.
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With only two races remaining, Gordon is taking nothing for granted. He knows what his team has accomplished before, and what it is capable of today.
The stress is there. But so is the confidence.
“It certainly helps when you’ve been through it a number of times,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that it goes away.
“You know what’s on the line. You know what you have to do.”