In My Opinion | Roaring back
with a vengeance

Gordon focuses on rebounding after lost victory

DAVID POOLE, dpoole@charlotteobserver.com

Saturday, Aug. 18, 2007

BROOKLYN, Mich. – Jeff Gordon is the most recent Chevrolet driver to win at Nextel Cup race at Michigan International Speedway. That was 12 races ago at this 2-mile track, in June 2001.

“We’ve been in position to win some races here, it just hasn’t worked out,” said Gordon, who’s on the pole for today’s 3M Performance 400. “I don’t think there's really any major thing. …But if I was the last one I hope I’m the next one to do it too.”

Consider this fair warning: That’s precisely what might happen Sunday.

That’s not necessarily a prediction, although in the ridiculously inexact science of picking a race winner, Gordon gets the call here. It’s more like an observation, based on years of seeing what makes the driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet tick, and on a gut feeling about how he’ll bounce back from what happened to him last week at Watkins Glen.

“I take a lot of pride in what I do out there, and I want to do the best I possibly can every single time I’m out there,” Gordon said. That’s why it still bugs him so much that he drove into Turn 1 too hard while leading with two laps left at Watkins Glen and opened the door that eventual winner Tony Stewart drove right through.

“That was a very tough one to get over, and I'm really good at letting things roll off my back and getting past them,” Gordon said. “This has been a tough week.”

At Texas earlier this year, Gordon was in contention late when he got a little too aggressive with his car and slapped the wall. Jeff Burton and two others went on to pass Gordon that day, and the four-time champion was kicking himself.

And yeah, he still remembers that.

“I told the team I was going to make it up to them,” he said. Gordon won the next race, at Phoenix, and won two of the next three races after that, too.

“It happened last week and I want to make it up to them again,” Gordon said. “I’m not saying it has to happen this week, but my way of making it up to them is to come to the track prepared with the intensity that it deserves.”

If a little extra determination from a driver who has won 79 career Cup races and who leads the current standings doesn’t seem like enough reason to expect Gordon to do well today, there’s also the fact that Gordon’s team will be back to full strength with the return of crew chief Steve Letarte.

Letarte and Chad Knaus, crew chief for Jimmie Johnson, have served out six-week suspensions levied by NASCAR for unapproved modifications on the bodies submitted for inspections at the race at Infineon Raceway in June.

Gordon hasn’t exactly wallowed in anguish with Jeff Meendering filling in for Letarte – finishing no worse than ninth and more than doubling his points lead from 171 to 344 in the interim. But Gordon thinks Letarte can make a difference.

"We did a really good job without him being here, but he's…the decision-maker for the team,” said Gordon, who said he and Meendering and other members of the team shared that responsibility in recent weeks. “We’re not in that position at all times. We did a good job with it but it's not our role, it's not what we do. So to have Steve back and him be the decision-maker, the guy that all things funnel and all information funnels into - and his job is to worry about that - will take the burden off of myself, off of the other guys and we can all focus on our jobs a lot more.”

Letarte brings some focus and determination with him to the race track today, too.

“I’m fortunate enough to have two children, and it has kind of been like watching your kid play a sport or a game,” Letarte said. “You want to help him, but you can't. You have to let him learn on his own.

“With us, I can do everything I can Monday through Thursday to prepare them, give them my notes, give them my ideas…but when they leave and come out to the race track, they're kind of on their own. People make all this about communications, this and that, (but) this is way too competitive a sport. The only way this can be handled is to be handled at the race track by really elite guys.”

If Gordon has his way, he’ll handle the task of making up for Watkins Glen the best way he knows how Sunday.

“I don’t like to make mistakes,” he said. “I take it very personal. When the team puts me in the position to win, then we need to win. I don’t want to make those same mistakes twice.”

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