Jeff Gordon ties Dale Earnhardt: The story of a big win and a bigger flag | 40 wins in 40 days

Editor’s note: This is the 16th 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. - As his driver, Jeff Gordon, completed a pass around Tony Stewart for the lead with 13 laps to go and began to pull away, Aaron Kuehn knew his moment had arrived. 

He turned from pit road, starting in a brisk walk before breaking out into an all-out sprint for the No. 24 hauler. There, truck driver, Jeff Craven, was already in action, pulling the garbage bag with Kuehn's name on it from a closet and unwrapping it. 

Kuehn took the package like a baton in a relay race. He turned an about face and rushed back toward the track as the final laps in the 2007 spring race at Phoenix Raceway were ticking off. He made it just in time. 

"Jeff Gordon, I've got a special flag for you at the start-finish line. If you want it bud, come and get it," Kuehn shouted over the radio. 

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Gordon had just taken the checkered flag. He quickly drove toward Kuehn in search of a different one.

With his 76th career victory, Gordon had just tied Dale Earnhardt on the NASCAR Cup Series all-time wins list. It was a milestone victory 25 races in the making since Gordon had claimed No. 75 at Chicagoland Speedway in July of 2006. 

The ensuing celebration, one of Gordon flying a black flag bearing Earnhardt's No. 3 during a victory lap in front of the Phoenix fans, remains one of the most memorable in the sport's history. 

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The flag

The story of the now famous flag begins long before that week in the desert. Really, its origins trace way back to the fall of 1993.

Kuehn, now 45 years old, was a young tire specialist for the No. 24 team and worked at Hendrick Motorsports from 2002 until 2008. It was the realization of the pursuit of a lifelong passion for NASCAR. 

Right after Gordon won his 75th race, Kuehn began to brainstorm on an idea to honor Earnhardt when No. 76 came. There were talks of a No. 3 hat, but for Kuehn that wasn't good enough. 

Sometime in the following days, Kuehn had an epiphany. He had grown up a Davey Allison fan and thought back to the 1993 season finale at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Rusty Wallace won that race while Earnhardt finished off his seventh and final Cup Series title. Afterward, they did a joint victory lap with Earnhardt flying a No. 7 flag in memory of Alan Kulwicki and Wallace displaying a No. 28 flag for Allison. Both drivers had died earlier that year. 

Just like that, Kuehn knew what he and the team had to do.  

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"I said, no way, heck with that, we've got to do a three flag," Kuehn told HendrickMotorsports.com. "Jeff was kind of on the fence. The Earnhardt fans didn't like Jeff and he didn't want to do anything to upset anyone. And I was like, 'Listen, I'm going to go get the flag and I'll get everything set up.'" 

Kuehn contacted a friend in a souvenir hauler three weeks later at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and asked for an Earnhardt flag. But upon receiving one, he realized the task would be a little more difficult than he'd originally thought. 

"It was the biggest flag you can imagine," he said. "It had a No. 3 on it with Dale's name across the bottom of it and I thought, 'Dude, there's no way he's going to be able to fly this thing.' So, I went up to the top of our trailer at Indy, grabbed a roll of duck tape and borrowed a bunch of bobby pins from some of the (public relations) girls we had at the time and I started to cut the flag down." 

His next step was to contact Rodney Wise, a veteran NASCAR flagman who hooked Kuehn up with a stick in which to mount the black banner. And after some more work with pins, tape and some staples, Kuehn had his finished product. 

It wasn't perfect. In replays, it's fairly easy to tell that the flag is upside down. 

But it was plenty good enough. 

Now all there was to do, was wait. 

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The wait

Little did Kuehn or anyone else know just how long that flag would collect dust. 

July of 2006 turned to August turned to September, fall became the offseason and Gordon remained stuck on No. 75. 

Only a few people on the 24 team were privy to the flag's existence. Kuehn, Gordon, Craven and PR rep Jon Edwards were all in on it. But as for Steve Letarte, the team's crew chief at the time? 

Not so much. 

“I didn’t know anything about the flag. I didn’t need to know, there was no upside to me knowing,” Letarte said in an interview last week. “I’m not a real superstitious person when it comes to racing but I’m thankful he didn’t ask me because I would’ve said, ‘No.’

"Whoever generated that idea, more power to them."

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In order to hide the flag in plain sight, Kuehn wrapped it in a trash bag and stuffed in the fire suit cabinet in the hauler. Fearing someone would come in and move things around in the offseason, he wrote his name on it along with a message that said, 'Do not remove.' 

Wouldn't you know it, the package survived the winter and hope sprung eternal at Daytona International Speedway to begin 2007. There were five top-five finishes in the season's first seven races. There was the debut of the Car of Tomorrow at Bristol, a race in which Gordon came home third. 

And still, the skid continued. 

“It was a curse!” Gordon laughed during an interview last week. “We had this flag, we had it in there way longer than we wanted to, but there was no doubt that whenever it happened and wherever it happened, we were going to do that.” 

Kuehn remained steadfast. 

"I kept telling them, 'It's not a jinx,'" he said. "We were running well; we were going to win eventually."

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The race

With a 25-race losing streak in tow, few could've figured that Gordon would be poised to finally break through at Phoenix of all places. After all, Gordon had never won at the 1-mile track in the desert, just one of three venues on the 2007 slate in which he was without a victory. 

Even when Gordon grabbed the pole that weekend, the 59th of his career to tie Darrell Waltrip for fifth on the all-time list, it wasn't necessarily a good omen. To that point, no driver had ever won at Phoenix from the first starting position in 22 events dating back to 1988. 

He led the first 28 laps to start the race, but Denny Hamlin found a way past before the night's first caution flew for debris. From there, Gordon was a fixture in the top five while Hamlin, Kevin Harvick and Tony Stewart traded stints in the lead. 

Stewart, who would lead a race-high 132 laps, was out front when things ultimately fell the way of the 24 team. Running second at the time, Gordon peeled down pit road with 29 laps to go, trying to short pit Stewart to take advantage of fresh tires. But as Gordon crept toward the waiting crew, a crash involving Martin Truex Jr., Dave Blaney and JJ Yeley erupted, necessitating a yellow flag. 

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Gordon, who was already on pit lane, was able to complete his service and come out without falling a lap down. When Stewart and the rest of the lead-lap cars came to make their stops, Gordon cycled to the lead..

However, Stewart had one last run in him. Taking advantage of Truex, who was in the midst of a battle with Gordon to stay on the lead lap, Stewart shot the middle between the two to take the lead with 14 laps to go. One corner later, Gordon got back under Stewart and cleared, setting sail the rest of the way. 

It was a tough drive against one of the sport's all-time toughest competitors. A gassed Gordon, still grinning in victory lane, said as much. 

"I drove my guts out, I've never had to drive so hard for a win," he said. 

The win

Certainly, in tying Earnhardt, there were historic connotations to Gordon's victory that Saturday evening in Phoenix. 

But that just part of the exuberance displayed in victory lane. 

Again, Gordon checked off yet another box in terms of wins at different race tracks, a fact perhaps lost a bit in the postrace festivities but not on Gordon. And certainly not on Letarte. 

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“Jeff Gordon had done everything in the sport. He’d won championships with (former crew chiefs) Ray Evernham and Robbie Loomis filling in behind him,” Letarte said. “One race Ray and Robbie were never able to win was at Phoenix. So, for me, even more special than the three flag, I remember that day and that moment, being able to win at that race track.”

That victory was also just a sign of better days ahead. While it'd had taken the better part of a calendar year to match the Intimidator, Gordon passed Earnhardt just one week later, claiming a victory at Talladega Superspeedway. He went on to win six races in 2007 and registered a new-series record with 30 top-10 finishes in 36 starts, accumulating an average finish of 7.3 along the way. 

Gordon would've won the championship by a cool 353 points under the old points system but ultimately finished second to Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson, who won 10 races that year including four straight in the Chase for the Nextel Cup. 

It was the second of a record five Cup Series titles in a row for Johnson. 

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The controversy

Shortly after coming up with his flag idea, Kuehn had the opportunity to clear it with Dale Earnhardt Jr., who gave his blessing. 

In addition to the victory lap, TV cameras caught an emotional moment that night in Phoenix as Earnhardt Jr. walked over to congratulate Gordon before he climbed from his car in victory lane. 

But Gordon had long been viewed as the elder Earnhardt's bitter rival and the black-clad, No. 3 fanbase had, for the most part, very much treated him as such. Even during the celebration that night, a few bottles and cans were thrown from the stands at the No. 24 car. 

For his part, Earnhardt Jr. defended Gordon's tribute in the media and called for a stop to the hurling of trash after races the following week at Talladega. 

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Certainly, Earnhardt Jr.'s embrace of the dedication helped put Gordon at ease and he believes the gesture may have begun to turn the tide of public opinion, further showing that the relationship between himself and Earnhardt Sr. was only heated on the race track and far from contentious off it. 

“I don’t think a lot of people up until then maybe realized the respect we – our whole team and our whole organization – had for Dale and for what he had done to build the sport up, and what he accomplished in all that was what paved the way for all of us,” Gordon said. “So, even though we were fierce competitors on the track, I had a decent relationship with him off the track and he took me under his wing on different occasions for business and trying to make the sport better and to grow the fan base.

“I think the fans and maybe some of the media thought, ‘What’s this? That’s his rival! He can’t carry that flag!' But (Earnhardt) Jr. coming up and embracing it and appreciating it, that really solidified it, and I think it opened up the fans’ eyes to say, ‘Hey, this guy actually does respect Dale and the competition they had was just that.'” 

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The legacy

Gordon has given well over an hour of interviews for this series and noted that years later, landmark victories and moments throughout his career have taken on new meaning than perhaps they held in the moment. 

Undoubtedly, as he crossed the finish line that night in Phoenix the significance of tying Dale Earnhardt on any NASCAR list was a big deal. 

But with 17 additional years of life experience and gained perspective, he's perhaps even more appreciative of his place in the sport's history and the reverence in which his battles with, and relationship to Earnhardt will forever be held. 

One week after win No. 76, Gordon collected his 77th and immediately turned his focus to No. 78. Such is life as a Cup Series driver. That kind of short memory is what a 36-race schedule demands. 

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But while that victory in the spring of 2007 finally put him on equal footing with Earnhardt, comprehending his place there - even as the wins continued to pile up all the way to 93, good enough for third on the all-time list - is still a bit bewildering. 

Even for Jeff Gordon. Even after all this time. 

“When I came into NASCAR, Dale was this unattainable god. He just seemed to be bigger than the sport,” Gordon said. “He had his fan base and his success, and he was a seven-time champion – it was like, I couldn’t even believe I was on the same track as him, let alone competing against him. I go from, ‘Oh my god, this guy is a legend’ and three years later, I’m competing against him and winning a championship.

“Obviously, things were happening at a pretty rapid pace as we were stacking up these wins. I never dreamed to ever even get there and then we get close to it, we lose Dale and then we tie him and it’s like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe this just happened.'

“I was emotional as well. We felt like the only way to have that win done right was to pay tribute to him. It was very cool, carrying that flag."