Homestead could be ‘fairy-tale’ ending for Gordon – Nascar

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Though the gravity of the end of his stellar NASCAR career is becoming more and more real, Jeff Gordon has maintained that the full impact won’t be felt until the checkered flag falls on Sunday’s finale. The same could be said for his longtime team owner, Rick Hendrick, who claims at least partial responsibility for keeping Gordon’s career going to this point.
 
Hendrick, who helped bring Gordon to NASCAR’s big leagues in 1993, has coaxed a handful of extra seasons out of the 44-year-old driver in the twilight of his career, so much so that he’s actually turned “one more year” into a verb. On the plane ride back from last Sunday’s race at Phoenix, which left one more weekend ahead of them as driver and owner, Hendrick couldn’t resist one more playful request for a 2016 return to the No. 24 Chevrolet.
 
Gordon declined, especially at peace with his decision with one more championship to pursue.
 
“It’s hard to believe,” Hendrick said Thursday, days ahead of Gordon’s 797th start in NASCAR’s top division. “It just seems like yesterday that he got started. … He just doesn’t look like he’s ready to retire. When I look at him and how young he looks, how good he is, it’s like, man, but I’ve one-more-yeared him a couple of times, so I think I ran out of rope.”
 
The rope might end Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway in the season-ending Ford EcoBoost 400 (3 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM), but Gordon won’t be completely forgoing a career in motorsports. He’ll be staying with Hendrick Motorsports to groom successor Chase Elliott in his transition to the No. 24 ride and will remain a fixture in the TV booth with NASCAR broadcast partner FOX Sports.
 
But Gordon also left open the possibility for potential driving detail on the horizon, in a part-time role.
 
“That’s the beautiful thing about racing. It doesn’t mean that I won’t ever drive a race car again,” Gordon said. “There’s a lot of different types of series and cars out there that I maybe have never driven before and may have an interest in doing that. But currently, you know, I’m very content with the decision. I don’t plan on doing any Cup races in the future. I know what a disruption that is to Hendrick Motorsports and the team that I’m still going to be involved with, and I’ve got enough things on my plate that are going to keep me very, very busy.”

Plenty of those busy activities — watching his kids’ soccer games, spending more time at home and being there with his family — won’t take place inside the microcosm of the race track. Admittedly, it was a decision Gordon had lobbied for earlier, but one where the timing never quite sorted itself out.
 
When Gordon made his final announcement Jan. 22, Gordon sat poised to improve upon 2014, a season where he racked up four wins but fell short of the championship round by a single point. As the farewell gifts stacked up this season, the wins didn’t, but Gordon & Co. still relied on their remarkable consistency and scrappy spirit.
 
When the No. 24 finally broke through, clinching a title berth with a rousing victory at Martinsville Speedway, Gordon received further confidence that his career-altering decision was the right one.
 
“That win in Martinsville, solidifying our chance to come here as a championship contender, that just sealed it for me,” Gordon said. “I was more disappointed of how earlier in the season we weren’t getting the results. We weren’t putting the performances together. We weren’t running as good as we wanted to. I was making some mistakes. I was thinking to myself, man, I don’t want to go out like this, I want to go out being competitive, battling for wins. That’s what would make me happy.
 
“And we did — all through the Chase we’ve been able to step up and perform the way I was hoping that we would, and then of course the Martinsville win, and now here we are with that same opportunity. That’s how you want to go out, and that’s how I hope I can.”
 
Gordon’s demonstrative celebration at Martinsville might have warranted a penalty in the NFL, but the jubilation was nowhere near excessive considering the impact on one of the sport’s greatest drivers with a chance for a fifth series championship.
 
Should that crowning achievement come true Sunday, Hendrick said the moment would mark a celebration — much like this season — worth sticking around for.
 
“You know, that’s going to be an emotion that’ll happen — I think we’ll all go bananas,” Hendrick said. “It’ll be just like what you saw at Martinsville on steroids, because everybody will be so proud and happy for him and the fact that he can — and some of you guys are the ones that said it to me early; it’s a walk-off home run, and I don’t know how it could get any sweeter than to see a guy, especially for me, that meant so much to me personally, to our organization, could end his career that way. It would just be a fairy-tale story. I think it would be probably the biggest championship won in the last I don’t know how many years.”