HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Jeff Gordon will always consider 2007 as the favorite year of his life. He became a father and raced better than ever in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series.
While life off the track with his wife, former model Ingrid Vandebosch, and his daughter, Ella, brought him happiness, he had returned to the top of his profession.
But it wasn’t enough for him to win his fifth Cup championship.
When NASCAR went to The Chase format in 2004, it created a new system to determine the champion. Kurt Busch won the title in the 10-race format that, at that time, pitted the top 10 drivers after the 26th race.
Under the old point system, Gordon would have won the title that year, which would have been No. 5.
He missed The Chase in 2005 and returned last season to finish sixth before staging a dominant season in the first 26 races of 2007, leading by more than 300 points after the 26th race and cutoff for The Chase.
He started off strong and led the points through the first seven races before Jimmie Johnson took control with a win at Texas Motor Speedway on Nov. 4. Johnson won his fourth-straight race the next week at Phoenix, and Gordon entered the finale trailing the leader by 86 points.
He knew it was over, that Johnson was running too well for him to make up that kind of ground in one race.
So after finishing fourth in Sunday’s Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Gordon could still smile and look back at a great year.
“What a year,” Gordon said. “It really was an amazing year for me. To be in my 15th season and still be competitive, win races and become a first-time dad and then battle it out to the finish, it was definitely an awesome year. We put together one heck of a total year.
“On one side I love The Chase, but when I look at our whole year, it’s a little tough. We just came up a little short. There’s nothing for us to hang our heads about.”
Add it all up and Gordon’s accomplishments were worthy of a title. He won six races, finished in the top five 21 times and had 30 top-10 finishes in 36 races — all remarkable numbers.
But instead of celebrating a championship, Gordon was left to wonder what went wrong.
Actually, nothing went wrong. He still had a fine season. Johnson just got hot at the right time — in the final 10 races.
Remarkably, Gordon’s average finish over the 10-race Chase was 5.1. But Johnson, through his four-race winning streak, squeaked by with an average finish of 5.0.
“He did an awesome job, put up great numbers,” Johnson said of Gordon. “We just went on an awesome tear. He has had an amazing season. We were just able to squeak out a bit more.
“The victories made all the difference. We needed every point we could coming in here and that’s why I attacked it like I did.”
Gordon applauded Johnson’s strategy of racing hard. It’s a strategy that isn’t normally used in the home stretch of a points race.
“You have to push your limits by leading laps,” Gordon said. “What makes those guys so good is they were able to push the limit and not make mistakes. What they did this year was incredible. I’ll take a 5.1 average for the rest of my career in The Chase and take my chances winning a championship.
“Those guys got aggressive, and we played it conservative. They got the wins at crucial times when we were conservative and those guys beat us.”