Gordon looking for lessons, winning ways at Loudon

LOUDON, N.H. (June 22, 2010) – This Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Jeff Gordon and Team DuPont will be looking ‘outside the box’ in search of a little magic. The 301-mile NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event begins the “Race to the Chase” – the 10-race stretch before the “Chase for the Sprint Cup” begins. With both kicking off at “The Magic Mile,” Gordon and company cannot help but think ahead. “Any racetrack that is in the ‘Chase,’ we’re thinking about what is going to happen when we come back here the second time,” said the four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion. “It’s important that we be good at that track – not only the first time, but primarily to get prepared for the second time. “We will experiment a lot more the first time around to try to get an edge. You want to be good, but you want to find something that is really ‘outside the box’ that nobody else is doing. “You want an edge on the competition when you return for the ‘Chase.’” In 30 starts at the 1.058-mile track, Gordon has collected three wins, three pole positions, 13 top-five finishes and 16 top-10s. He has finished second three times in his last six races at the New Hampshire track – including this event last year when he led 64 laps but trailed Joey Logano when rain ended the event 28 laps short of the scheduled distance. However, Gordon’s last win here occurred in 1998. “It’s been so long, it feels like I’ve never won at New Hampshire,” Gordon joked. “We’ve been good, and it’s still one of my favorite tracks. “It’s a difficult, challenging racetrack, but we just haven’t been able to always put all the pieces in place. We’ve been really fast here recently but we haven’t been good on restarts. We’re trying to look into the setups to figure out what we can do to take off a little bit better. “When Joey won, I felt like that was the best shot we had here in a long time. If we can perform like that again this year, then I feel like we’ll get back to our winning ways in New Hampshire.”