Jeff Gordon survived what he called the worst crash of his career when he was challenging for second place late in the race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway two weeks ago.
His car shot across the second turn and slammed into the abutment of a concrete barrier on the inside of the track, destroying his car.
Gordon was vocal about the fact that portion of the track did not have a SAFER barrier which would have dramatically softened the impact.
But despite such a frightening crash, it didn’t slow down Gordon, who was back in the car the very next day to test at Phoenix Int’l Raceway.
Five days later, he threw caution to the wind to win the pole at Atlanta Motor Speedway, a track that is frighteningly fast.
“That pretty much went away right away because we were at Phoenix testing for two days,” Gordon said. “Sometimes testing can be as grueling as a race weekend. I was just very thankful of the fact that I was able to (one) walk away from that and (two) go to Phoenix and test for two days. I was sore. But none of the soreness affected me in the race car. Weird stuff, like my stomach and my elbow was banged up and some things like that, but on the race track I was able to put that out of the way. To be able to come here and get the weekend started off right like this definitely puts a smile on our faces and hopefully can build that momentum back that was lost from last week.”
After crashing twice in the first three races, Gordon arrived at Atlanta 22nd in points and realized he needed to get back in a positive direction before the gap got even deeper.
“It’s time for us to get ourselves where we need to be up in the points,” Gordon said. “We’ve been running so well and we just need to follow that up and make sure those runs turn into good finishes, which at the end of the day will turn into points.”
He finished fifth at Atlanta and has climbed to 15th in points after four races.
Not bad for someone who ended up in the care center one week earlier at Las Vegas.
Gordon admitted he was surprised when he spun out that his car ended up where it did.
“I wasn’t anticipating hitting that wall,” Gordon said. “The day before when I saw (Clint) Bowyer spin and he spun down to that inside wall, he didn’t hit it very hard but he still hit it.  I remember saying something like I can’t believe he even got to that part of the wall.  Then I noticed that there was no SAFER Barrier there and I was surprised by that.  After what happened in Kentucky (a crash in last year’s Nationwide Series race involving Jeff Fuller), I thought that was enough of a red flag that all the tracks should be aware of it.  And I know Kentucky was a severe situation.”
Gordon stressed that any area of a race track that doesn’t have the SAFER Barrier concerns him and would like NASCAR and its member tracks to do a more thorough survey to determine additional barriers to protect the drivers.
He praised Speedway Motorsports, Inc., Chairman Bruton Smith and LVMS General Manager Chris Powell for the way they handled the situation by calling him and telling the four-time Cup champion that the problem will be corrected.
“I think every track should have soft walls or SAFER barriers on all outside and inside walls,” Gordon said. “That’s just my opinion. If there is any possible way for you to get to the wall, then we should be looking at that. That was a nasty wreck and it’s gotten a lot of attention.
“I only hope that something positive can come out of that. I certainly hope that this is a light bulb going off that we need to look at this. I hope that Monday morning, every race track was thinking about what do we have that could be like that, that we need to work on and fix. And we’re going to find out. We’re going to see what tracks react and which ones don’t. And I’m going to come down hard on the ones that don’t, I’ll tell you that.”