“Obviously, to do anything 20 years later is significant and a big deal in any form of sports and certainly motorsports. That first (Brickyard 400) win in ’94 was just a gamechanger for my career and sent us on the trajectory at Hendrick Motorsports and the 24 car took things to the next level from that point forward. So, 20 years later, to be able to win again and the fact that the Brickyard was celebrating its 20th anniversary, and we were celebrating our 20th anniversary from the first win, was amazing and we were highly competitive that day.”
Jeff Gordon
Editor’s note: This is the third in a 40-part series highlighting 40 of the greatest wins in the history of Hendrick Motorsports to finish its 40th anniversary season. A new installment will be released each day from Nov. 22, 2024 through New Year’s Eve. Votes were taken from Hendrick Motorsports employees as well as representatives of the NASCAR Hall of Fame and Racing Insights with all unanimous selections being ushered in automatically. The remaining wins were deliberated and decided upon by a small panel.
CONCORD, N.C. - Everywhere Jeff Gordon looked around Indianapolis in 2014, there were homages to his Indianapolis Motor Speedway history.
The only problem? He didn't feel like he was done making it.
On Friday that weekend, Gordon was presented with a No. 24 placard from the scoring pylon at the hallowed racing site. On Sunday, he was presented with his own day, "Jeff Gordon Day", in the city of Indianapolis.
By the end of that Sunday, he was presented with something else - another big trophy and spot all of his own in the NASCAR history books.
Twenty years after winning the inaugural Brickyard 400, Gordon got the better of Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kasey Kahne on a restart with 17 laps to go and pulled away to score his fifth and final victory in the NASCAR Cup Series crown jewel event. That remains the mark for the most Brickyard 400s in a career and the organization's 11 are six more than any other team.
“Obviously, to do anything 20 years later is significant and a big deal in any form of sports and certainly motorsports,” Gordon said in an interview last week. “That first (Brickyard 400) win in '94 was just a gamechanger for my career and sent us on the trajectory at Hendrick Motorsports and the 24 car took things to the next level from that point forward. So, 20 years later, to be able to win again and the fact that the Brickyard was celebrating its 20th anniversary, and we were celebrating our 20th anniversary from the first win, was amazing and we were highly competitive that day.”
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| RACE FACTS | |
|---|---|
| Date: | July 27, 2014 |
| Venue: | Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Brickyard 400) |
| Winner: | Jeff Gordon |
| Hendrick Motorsports win: | No. 225 |
| Laps led by winner: | 40 |
| Starting position of winner: | 2nd |
| Top 10: | 1. Jeff Gordon; 2. Kyle Busch; 3. Denny Hamlin; 4. Matt Kenseth; 5. Joey Logano; 6. Kasey Kahne; 7. Kyle Larson; 8. Kevin Harvick; 9. Dale Earnhardt Jr.; 10. Austin Dillon |
| Did you know? | Hendrick Motorsports has won the Brickyard 400 in every year that ends in ‘4’. Gordon has three of those wins (1994, 2004 and 2014) while Kyle Larson, who finished seventh as a rookie in 2014, won for Hendrick Motorsports in 2024. The victory gave Gordon five total Brickyard 400 victories, which still stands as the most all time. |
"Competitive" may be under selling it a bit. Especially if you ask crew chief Alan Gustafson.
The veteran pit boss just finished his 20th season as a crew chief in the Hendrick Motorsports organization, working with Kyle Busch, Mark Martin, Gordon and Chase Elliott along the way. He recalls that specific No. 24 Chevrolet SS, black with flames down each side, was as fast as its paint scheme indicated, even if Gordon wasn't necessarily thrilled with it to start.
“I remember that car was built specifically for that Indianapolis race and we unloaded it and he was instantly griping about how loose the car was,” Gustafson recalled. “He was griping about how bad the car was and I look at the time sheet and I’m like, ‘We’re killing them.’
"So, we changed the left-rear trailing arm on the car and he's like, 'We're good.'”
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And they were, from the jump. Gordon was fourth in final practice and qualified outside on the front row next to pole-sitter Kevin Harvick.
That speed continued into the race as Gordon snatched the lead away from Harvick on the second lap. But due to rain the night before, a competition caution was thrown on lap 21 and as often is the case at Indianapolis, varying strategies began to cycle cars in and out of the lead and up and down the leaderboard.
As the day unfolded, Kahne, who would lead the most laps with 70, seemed to have positioned himself best for the stretch run. He made his final pit stop with 33 laps to go, two circuits before Gordon, and had cycled back to the front by the time the caution waved for Ryan Truex, who stalled out in turn two.
Gordon was in second place. Just 22 laps remained.
“I have never in my life heard the confidence from a driver or Jeff Gordon than I heard under caution that day. There was no question. He’s beating (Kahne) off of turn two. He was like, ‘We’re good,’ and there was no wavering in him and I knew ... I knew.”
Alan Gustafson, crew chief
It's funny how a driver's memory works and the way that losses can stick in greater detail than victories. As he lined up to the outside of Kahne for a final restart, Gordon began to replay a race that had occurred a year prior. A race at Pocono, when he and Kahne again shared the front row late, but with the positions flipped.
“It went back to this Pocono (Raceway) race where I totally screwed up,” Gordon recalled. “I've got the lead, I've got control of the race, it’s a green-white checkered (finish) and I get a huge launch going down into turn one. I’ve got a fairly significant lead and I’m like, ‘All I’ve got to do is just get the car to the bottom of the apex and drive off the corner and this thing is over. Based on that, I lifted a little earlier than I needed to and Kasey did the opposite. He’s like, ‘The only way I’m going to win this race is to blast this thing as far down in the corner as I can and get to his outside.’ And he did just that. And I was a sitting duck.”
Kahne held his ground on the outside and swept past Gordon in the tunnel turn, going on to prevail that day.
But this day was going to go differently. Come hell or high water.
Back on top of the pit box, Gustafson said that Gordon didn't necessarily divulge his strategy to wrestle the lead away. But whatever he said, Gustafson remembered Gordon's tone dripping with certainty and poise. And even with all the chips in the middle of the table, Gustafson was at ease.
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“I have never in my life heard the confidence from a driver or Jeff Gordon than I heard under caution that day,” Gustafson grinned. “There was no question. He’s beating (Kahne) off of turn two. He was like, ‘We’re good,’ and there was no wavering in him and I knew ... I knew.”
Sure enough, the green flag dropped on a drag race between Kahne and Gordon as they barreled toward the entrance of turn one.
In the moment, Gordon had thought about that Pocono race. Eleven years later, sitting in his office in Concord, North Carolina, it still came to mind in great detail.
But on that day in Indianapolis, it was Gordon's time to return the favor.
“I basically did the same thing where I just threw it down there as hard as I could and got to his outside and was able to clear him,” Gordon recalled.
With the lead in hand coming off of turn two, and with pit stops completed, Gordon was gone. His final winning margin over second-place Kyle Busch was 2.325 seconds. Kahne faded to sixth place.
Sunday, July 27, 2014, was Jeff Gordon Day in Indianapolis. It was also Jeff Gordon's day at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
For Gordon, who a good portion of his teenage years in Pittsboro, Indiana, just 29 miles or so to the west in the sunrise shadow of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the significance of the venue and the Indianapolis 500 was never lost. It still isn't.
He's still the first to deflect comparisons of his success in the Brickyard to that of the legends of the Indy 500. But there's no hiding the pride in accomplishing more than any other stock car driver at one of auto racing's holiest cathedrals.
"My heroes were Rick Mears and A.J. (Foyt) and those guys that have four wins in the Indy 500 (also Al Unser and Helio Castroneves) but that goes all the way back to 1911, so that's a whole different set of circumstances," Gordon said. "But still, it does get compared outside myself and against competitors within NASCAR and to win at any track four or five times is a big deal. But to win at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the fact that nobody else had ever done it, it was big."
Even for Gustafson, a native of Daytona Beach, Florida, who came up in the shadow of a different revered, 2.5-mile circuit altogether, the 2014 Brickyard 400 checked a box that had long been atop his list.
“That’s my favorite win,” Gustafson concluded. “Growing up in Daytona, everybody thinks, ‘Daytona 500’ but Indianapolis was the race I wanted to win. To me, Indianapolis is the pinnacle of motorsport … You have to have a really fast car that drives good, that’s aerodynamically good, the driver has to be on point, strategy – there is no margin for error.
"I wanted to win that race. The work that went into the car, the performance of the car and then Jeff's fifth on (Jeff Gordon) day? Just doesn’t get much better."