Jeff Gordon readily acknowledged the drivers he wronged last weekend at Infineon Raceway will “have to get in line” this weekend at New Hampshire.
Gordon has raced long enough to know revenge is coming. He just doesn’t know when.
“We left the race track with quite a few guys upset at us for good reason,” Gordon said. “It was intense racing and some mistakes on my part and, hey, when you make those kinds of decisions and those things happen, then you've got to deal with them.
“It might be this weekend, it might be for the next several weeks, it might be years down the road. Who knows? You've just got to go with it and that's what we'll do."
Gordon called Martin Truex Jr. to apologize but concedes it will take that “and then some” to repair the damage done at Sonoma. But despite Gordon’s apology, Truex obviously still feels as burned as he did following the wreck that left the No. 56 Toyota in 42nd place last week.
“I’m in the same position I was in then, so why would I feel different?” Truex said. “I accept his apology, yes, but things are going to change between me and him. That’s just the bottom line.”
For Truex, who dropped from 16th in the point standings to 19th after last week’s DNF, there will be no more Mr. Nice Guy. Gordon taught Truex a valuable lesson about give and take.
“The nice guy seems to always get pushed around, and I’m tired of being the nice guy,” Truex said. “I’m tired of getting pushed around. I’m not going to stand here and say that I’m going to go out and wreck Jeff, because that’s not me and that’s not how I do things. But some things are going to change.
“I’m not going to take it anymore. I’m going to race him the way he races me. I’m going to race everyone else on the track the way they race me. If they don’t respect me, they’re not going to get anything back. That’s just as simple as it is.”
The Truex incident with Gordon was just one of many that erupted between competitors Sunday. With each lap, some driver was running by — or over — another driver for position. Veteran Jeff Burton was running 10th during the final caution at Sonoma with eight circuits remaining but was taken out of contention by Marcos Ambrose and finished 27th.
Burton called last week’s racing “horrendous” and said the behavior shown between drivers “was completely unacceptable.”
“If our sport is going to become that, then we need to change it from racing to demolition cars, because that wasn’t racing last week,” Burton said. “The track is very difficult. Now that we do double-file restarts, it’s not a bad idea to start thinking about changing Turn 7 and how much we have to slow down for Turn 7 to try to separate the field a little bit before we get to that corner.
“Ultimately, it’s the drivers’ responsibility to have some respect for each other. The last 10 laps of that race didn’t look like we were the best drivers in this country — it looked like we were some of the worst drivers in this country.”
Truex said he hasn’t “seen much respect” from fellow competitors all season. Because the field is so close, he said, drivers take advantage of other drivers “every chance they get.” And the competition among the drivers in range of making the Chase has stepped up considerably — clawing for every point and position.
“Every spot means so much, and there‘s so much pressure on us to get everything we can get,” Truex said. “Guys just cross the line too much. I don’t know what the answers are to fix that. I just know how I am going to do it, and I’m going to do what everybody else does to me every week.”
Even NASCAR vice president of competition Robin Pemberton, who coined the “boys, have at it” phrase at the start of the season, noticed how elevated the intensity was last weekend.
“Well, I think the guys were aggressive,” Pemberton said. “It goes in spurts with different race tracks. It gets that way. It was probably one of the more aggressive races I’ve seen at Infineon Raceway.”
Pemberton wouldn’t predict how aggressive the field would be this weekend, but many in the garage anticipate a high degree of payback.
Jimmie Johnson, the current NASCAR champion and last week’s winner, didn’t witness much of the nonsense that occurred behind him in the pack. Johnson said he doesn’t believe the current level of aggression on the track has anything to do with the sanctioning body’s easing up on control. But he agrees with Truex that the racing is a product of how equal the competition has become.
“Guys are fighting for that track position and doing some things that aren't necessarily fair,” Johnson said. “And it could be the guy passing or the guy blocking and then a feud starts. After a couple weeks of that, you're like, ‘The hell with it. I spent 15 laps chasing this guy, and he ran me all over last week, I'm sending him.’
“So you send him and then he goes home and he's like, ‘OK, when the chance comes back, I'm going to send him.’ And this energy has been created from that.”
Johnson said the “boys, have at it” command hasn’t changed his driving style one bit. When Johnson entered the Cup level, he didn’t possess the moxie to retaliate. Now, if someone challenges Johnson, he’s “going to equal” the score.
After winning four Cup titles, it’s game on for any driver willing to test the champ.
“Some of it is having confidence as to who I am and what I've accomplished in the sport, and I don't really need to take crap from people anymore,” Johnson said. “As a rookie, I was very aware of needing to take two or three lumps before I pass one out.”
Kurt Busch has seen the sport shift dramatically from his rookie season in 2001, when NASCAR “threatened to park” him for “accidentally” hitting his fellow racers.
“NASCAR used to be looking over your shoulder when you had a run-in with somebody or you took it over the line too far and they would step in,” Busch said. “Now, it seems like you can turn a guy over on his lid and get three-week probation. It’s definitely a different game.”
After watching last weekend’s Nationwide race at Mid-Ohio, Burton described the action as “terrible racing” and witnessed the Cup race unfold in a similar fashion. Burton said he won’t discuss the current style of racing with the sanctioning body; it’s up to the drivers to set the tone.
“Everybody in this garage knows how to use the brake pedal and use the throttle and use the steering wheel,” Burton said. “Yet people chose not to do use it correctly because it was either in their best interest to run over the guy in front of them, or they were trying really hard to keep from getting run over from behind.
“It’s just not acceptable. There is nothing wrong with hard racing; I don’t want to get letters from fans saying, ‘Oh, you don’t want to race hard.’ I don’t want to hear it. I race as hard as anybody wants to race. It takes skill to race and not wreck somebody. It takes zero skill to run over top of anybody. It takes no ability whatsoever to do that.”
NASCAR’s darling returns
Danica Patrick didn’t exactly set the stock car world on fire with her return to the Nationwide Series on Friday. For Patrick, New Hampshire marks her fourth NASCAR start and the first time she’s competed in a stock car since finishing 36th at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in February.
During the first practice for the New England 200, Patrick posted a fast lap of 121.967 mph — 43rd of 44 cars. She moved up the speed chart to 24th fastest in the afternoon practice with a lap of 125.368 mph, still well short of Kevin Harvick, who topped the time sheet with a lap of 128.998 mph.
“It’s a bit of an intimidating thing,” Patrick said. “They tell me I look good (in the middle) off the corner, and for me it’s about braking later, deeper, harder, shorter, getting off the brake, carrying speed. At this point in time, the rear just doesn’t feel comfortable enough for me to do that.”
Tony Stewart is one of the drivers who have offered Patrick an open door when it comes to counsel. The former IndyCar and NASCAR champ remembers how difficult it was balancing his stock car and open wheel duties when he started his progression south 14 years ago.
“It is opposite ends of the spectrum,” Stewart said. “You go from a car that has a ton of grip and a real flat platform, as far as how the car just kind of sits on the track and you really don’t feel a lot of movement in it, to a heavier car that moves around more and obviously has a lot less down force.
“It is a big transition here. It is quite a bit different, so this will be a challenging weekend.”
Patrick tested with the JR Motorsports team twice since her absence, at the Milwaukee Mile and Chicago Speedway. Dale Earnhardt Jr. took his driver for a lap around the Magic Mile in a rental car on Thursday night to teach her the preferred line around the track.
Patrick said there’s still plenty of learning to do, particularly because it’s her first time competing on a short oval.
“What I need to remember is, I am a confident driver,” Patrick said. “I know what I need. If I can’t feel it, it’s not there, don’t make it up in your head.
“It’s going to take time, and I’m going to have to learn a lot of this stuff for myself. Even with everyone’s help, you still have to feel it. You have to feel it in your gut and your butt and your hands and know for yourself.”
Say what?
Busch on Gordon and payback: “I would say that I’m in the line, but I’m not at the top of the list. There are a lot of guys in front of me that want to go talk to Jeff ‘Bulldozer’ Gordon.”
