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Friday, December 28

Jeff Gordon
By Jerry Bonkowski
ESPN.com

Team: Rick Hendrick Racing
Car/sponsor/make: No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet

Jeff Gordon
Gordon

STATS

Year
Rank
Wins
Top 5
Top 10
Money
Best finish

2001 1 6 18 24 $6,649,080 1st, six times

Career 58 147 190 $41,335,903 1st, 58 times

2001 recap
The good: After finishing 9th in 2000, his worst showing in the Winston Cup standings since he was 14th in his rookie campaign in 1993, Gordon came back in strong fashion by winning his fourth Winston Cup championship, the most of any active driver on the circuit today. And because he's only 30 years old, Gordon has the potential to eclipse NASCAR's record for most championships by a single driver -- seven titles, shared by the retired Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt.

Season highlight: Gordon put together a streak of two wins, three runner-up finishes and one third-place finish in a seven-race stretch that started at California and continued through Sonoma. It was during that stretch that he vaulted into first-place, where he would stay for 22 of the last 23 weeks of the 36-race season. What's more, Gordon was very much a streaky driver -- four of his six wins in 2001 were back-to-back efforts, while a fifth win was followed the next week with a runner-up finish. In addition, in the 13 races he started from either the inside or outside pole, he wound up winning three times, finished second three other times and finished third two other times in eight of those starts.

The bad: It's hard to find fault with Gordon's effort in 2001, but two things stand out. First, his uncharacteristic burst of temper with archrival Tony Stewart at the spring race in Bristol, as well as some lesser run-ins between the pair during the rest of the season. Second, Gordon could mathematically have wrapped up the championship with as many as five races left in the season, but for one reason or another, he didn't clinch the title until the second-to-last race at Atlanta.

Season lowlight: Without question, Gordon was the most consistent driver on the Winston Cup tour in 2001. In fact, he finished out of the top-30 only four times in the 36-event schedule, with his worst outing coming at the spring race in Darlington, where he started from the pole, but wound up with his worst showing of the season: 40th-place due to handling problems that knocked him out after 228 of the race's 293 scheduled laps.

Jeff Gordon
Jeff Gordon leads all active drivers in wins.

Key stat: While not so much a stat, the key to Gordon's success in 2001 without a doubt was the way he was finally able to jell together with crew chief Robbie Loomis. As hard as they tried in their first season together in 2000 (after Loomis replaced Ray Evernham), the Gordon-Loomis combination struggled to find continuity and a common baseline. It seemed that the harder they tried, the more they fell behind. Hence, Gordon's 9th-place finish, and Loomis nearly resigning at season's end. But in 2001, the duo became the hottest thing in Winston Cup. They developed a synergy and sixth sense to know what the other was thinking that became almost spooky. It got to the point where Gordon would start a sentence and Loomis would know how to finish it.

2002 outlook
What needs to be done: When you're the defending Winston Cup champion, you don't have to tinker around or make a whole lot of changes. Look for Gordon and Loomis to stick with the same basic game plan they followed this past season in 2002. About the only cautionary measure is Gordon cannot afford to become complacent, or allow himself to fall victim to the kind of misfortune that befell the previous two Cup champions, Dale Jarrett and Bobby Labonte, when they tried to defend their respective championships in the following season.

Prediction: How can you NOT pick No. 24 to repeat as Winston Cup champion in 2002? He has the talent, the experience, the top crew chief and crew members in the game, one of the most successful team owners and the kind of deep-pocketed sponsor to once again put everything together in 2002. Gordon is both the present and future of NASCAR, against whom all other drivers will be measured for many more years to come.

Your take
Will Jeff Gordon repeat as Winston Cup champion? Here are your thoughts.

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