Team: Hendrick Motorsports
Car/sponsor/make: No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet
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STATS
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Year
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Rank
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Wins
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Top 5
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Top 10
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Best finish
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2002
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4
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3
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13
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20
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First, three times
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Career
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61
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89
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96
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2002 recap
The good: After a miserable start to the season that saw him fall uncharacteristically to 11th-place after just four races, and 10th after six events, Gordon began to mount a comeback that propelled him to a fourth-place finish in the final standings, just 193 points behind champion Tony Stewart. While he had hoped to defend his fourth career Winston Cup title from 2001, Gordon can't feel too bad about finishing as high as he did and overcoming the adversity that he did.
Season highlight: Back-to-back wins at Bristol and Darlington in late summer. The Bristol win snapped a 31-race winless streak for Gordon, the second-longest of his Winston Cup career. He also made a late-season rush, with three top-five and one top-six finish in his last four starts, allowing him to climb from seventh to his eventual fourth-place showing in the final standings.
The bad: That he was held winless for the first 23 races of the season, and 31 overall dating back to the latter part of last season, caused great concern within the Gordon and Hendrick Racing camps. Much speculation on the reason for the slide was centered on Gordon's pending divorce battle, not to mention tabloid fodder that tried to paint him in a less than flattering light, totally contrary to the All-American Boy persona he's known for.
Season lowlight: To show how strange a year it was for Gordon, after he broke his winless streak and won two races in a row, he tanked worse than he had previously in the season, scoring four finishes between 36th and 42nd in his next seven starts.
Key stat: Despite the inconsistency in the standings that he battled all season, Gordon incredibly managed to finish 33 of the season's 36 races, being knocked out of only three events, twice due to engine problems and once due to a crash. He ended up completing more than 95 percent of all laps run in Winston Cup competition this past season. One other milestone: with the nearly $5 million he won in 2002, Gordon went over $50 million in career earnings.
2003 outlook
What needs to be done: While Gordon is one of the best when it comes to preparing a mental game plan before a race, 2003 could be as hard or even harder as 2002 as his divorce battle goes to court and will be splashed across the papers and on radio and TV. If he can ignore the distractions of the negative press and keep his mind focused on the task at hand -- winning races and trying to finish as high as he can in each of the season's 36 events -- it's quite possible Gordon could come back and win his fifth championship. If he does that, it perhaps might be the sweetest title yet for him, knowing he overcame such great personal adversity and yet still managed to pull it together to win it all.
Prediction: Unless something unexpected or unfortunate happens, Gordon will likely be a top-5 finisher, if not the likely champion in 2003. He has something to prove, that he hasn't lost his edge, that the foibles of 2002 were a fluke and not a new norm for him or the No. 24 car. Don't be surprised if he starts out the season with a win at Daytona.
Your take
Will Jeff Gordon score his fifth Winston Cup championship in 2003? Here are your thoughts.
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