Jeff Gordon said today
that fans may be in for a re-run of the
Daytona 500 Sunday, when the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races in the Aaron’s 499
at Talladega Superspeedway.
In the 2013 season-opener at Daytona, drivers elected to remain safe and
maintain their equipment until the final 30-40 laps, before unleashing the
three and four-wide draft in an effort to race to the front. The four-time
series champion said he won’t be surprised to see more of the same Sunday.
“It was hard to pass in
Daytona,” said Gordon. “And it’s not that it’s just hard to pass, it’s that
nobody wanted to get out of line. Everybody protected their position until
those crucial moments in the closing laps. I think that there could be some
more of that this weekend and I made some mistakes by getting a little bit
over-confident that we could make some moves with some other cars and drive to
the front. Until we see that happen here, I think it’s going to be more of
start up front, try to have good, solid pit stops and strategy and stay up
front and go after it in the closing laps.”
“The only thing that is
different is this is a wider race track,” Gordon said. “You don’t have to worry
about handling, where handling was a little bit of an issue at Daytona. You
might be able to push a little bit more aggressively and we’ll look at the
temps, but I think it’s going to be just as challenging and difficult to jump
out of line and to get a line formed on the inside. It certainly could happen,
and it could have happened at Daytona, it just didn’t seem like enough guys
really wanted to get organized to do it.”
With the weather
forecast calling for a 90% chance of rain tomorrow, Gordon said posting a fast
practice speed today becomes much more important.
“Obviously, we are going
to put a lot of effort into going fast in this practice session, which means
you’re going to have to work the draft,” he said. “We want to make sure that
we’re starting up front. It’s not crucial here, but it’s important. And with what
we learned in Daytona, I think track position is more important these days at a
restrictor plate race than they used to be.”
If qualifying is rained
out, the field for Sunday’s race will be set based on practice speeds.
“If we didn’t practice
at all, it wouldn’t even affect my mindset,” he admitted. “I don’t think we’re
going to learn a lot in practice, so it is kind of exciting that we’ll be able
to go out there with a purpose for a potential starting position for tomorrow.
It will be interesting to see how that plays out.”
He said he was unsure whether
the four-car Hendrick Motorsports stable will risk drafting together this
afternoon, saying, “If that’s what’s going to help us start up front tomorrow,
then we’ll do that. We’re going to consider all options, but we’re actively
going to work the draft to try to go fast. Typically, we would just go out
there and see how the car is in the middle of the draft and look at our temps,
look at our handling and look at the options of pushing or not pushing, being
pushed and all those things.
“We’ll still do some of
that, but we’re also going to try to put up a fast number.”
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