CHARLOTTE, N.C. – The opening round of the 2015 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup was drama-filled, to say the least.
So with the Challenger Round out of the way, it’s a chance to take a breath, right?
“It only intensifies from here,” Jeff Gordon said. “It doesn't get any easier.”
The driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet SS said that the pressure consistently rises from one Chase race to the next, culminating in what amounts to a winner-take-all battle at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
“Everybody is pretty loose and relaxed going into Chicago, and then each race that goes by, it gets less and less, and now you go into this round and all the people are relieved to be in this round, a lot of us, because it was a nail‑biter,” he said. “At the same time it's like you instantly switch over to getting the intensity ramped up to the next level because you know you've got a big job ahead of you the next three weeks.”
The job begins Saturday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway, a track where Gordon has won five times in his career.
Last season in the Bank of America 500, Gordon took home a runner-up finish, and he noted that the track is so much different in the fall race than the 600-mile event in the spring. The main culprit? The temperature affects the track conditions.
But the four-time Cup champion feels good about his team’s preparation for the 1.5-mile track.
“I think we showed at Chicago that we've improved our mile‑and‑a‑half program. Let’s hope that continues these next two weeks,” he said. “But it's full‑on reset. We came into this thing very far behind in bonus points, and now we're on an even playing field as far as points are concerned. You've got to just play to your strengths, and I think our strengths are that we're very consistent. We've got a lot of fight in us, and we've had to, to fight through a lot of things this year, so we've got a lot of experience at that. And then hopefully we can step up like we did in Chicago and do something special on these mile‑and‑a‑halfs the next couple weeks.”
That includes Kansas, a track where Gordon found Victory Lane just last season.
And the two tracks become all the more important when the third race – when four more drivers will be eliminated from the Chase – comes at the always-unpredictable Talladega Superspeedway.
“Nobody wants to go to Talladega ‑‑ even if you're Dale Earnhardt Jr. and you feel like you're the most dominant car on those restrictor plate tracks, and we've been, I think, as dominant as he has been just without the victories -- I still don't want to go there and have to be in the top 10,” he explained. “You know, it's just one of those tracks where there's too many variables that can reach out and grab you and things that are out of your control.”
Regardless, Gordon said he’s excited for the entire round. After a regular season he acknowledged wasn’t his “best year,” he is proud of the way his team has overcome adversity to put itself in a position to continue racing for a championship in his final full-time Sprint Cup season.
From here on out, he can only worry about what he can control, starting this weekend.
“All we can do, like I was mentioning, is play to our strengths, do what it is that we do well, which is consistency, steadily improving,” he said. “I think we've really been focused on getting more solid pit stops, and I think that's coming around, as well. We've had some of the most solid races that we've had all year long since the Chase started, and that certainly has me excited to feel like we can make it to Homestead.
“I think last year we certainly proved that you get us to Homestead and we can be a big threat for it.”