Jeff Gordon clearly had a car on Sunday that could contend for the win at Dover (Del.) International Speedway and you could hear the disappointment in his voice when he described afterwards how another chance at a victory slipped away.
Gordon spoke to members of the media immediately after the race:
Gordon: The fastest car doesn’t
always win the race. And we’re sitting here in 13th or whatever; it’s
silly.
Q: AS BAD AS YOUR
MISFORTUNE WAS, IT SEEMED LIKE IT WAS GOING TO WORK OUT AND YOU WOULD BENEFIT
FROM IT.
Gordon: Until that debris
caution? Yeah, I can’t wait to see that debris on TV. I’d like to see it because
I certainly never saw it. I’m not going to make any comments until I see what
they’re reasoning for it was. I don’t know who you blame if there really wasn’t
much out there because all the media has been talking about all week long is oh,
there’s no cautions, there’s no cautions. It used to be debris cautions. So, who
do you blame that on?
Q: IS IT FRUSTRATING
BECAUSE YOU WERE IN THE LEAD AND THEN YOU HAD THE TIRE PROBLEM AND YOU WERE
MAKING YOUR WAY BACK?
Gordon: Ultimately, we put
ourselves in this position to get his finish. So, that’s very frustrating. We’ve
had things out of our control this year. And I’m not really sure what happened.
But obviously something happened. And then I don’t know. I don’t know what
happened. But we definitely had a loose left rear. It didn’t go on right to
begin with and the left-rear tire-changer knew that. And so when I started to
complain about it, we knew that there might be an issue there and there was. So,
in some ways we got fortunate today. I could have stayed out there and wrecked
because it wasn’t really vibrating. It was getting real
loose.
Q: WERE RESTARTS AS
CRITICAL AS THEY LOOKED?
Gordon: You know, it was the
greasiest restarts that I’ve ever felt here. There was just zero-grip for the
first three, four, or five laps. So you really couldn’t even race one another on
a restart because you were so out of control. And there’s a lot of rubber laid
down on the race track and then the way the rubber on the tires matched up to it
after you got going there was horrendous. Other than that, the tire was awesome.
I really liked it. We ran great with it and the restarts were definitely
hairy.
Q: YOU’VE HAD SO MANY
FRUSTRATING MOMENTS THIS SEASON. DOES THIS ONE TAKE THE CAKE? OR HAVE YOU JUST
HAD SO MUCH CAKE THAT IT’S ALL THE SAME?
Gordon: It’s always more
frustrating when you’ve got a car that can win; and you show it by going up
there and taking the lead. We don’t care about finishing top 15 or top 10 right
now. That does nothing for us. We need wins.
