Jeff Gordon : 7 wins - 13 losses

By M.L. Morgan

(August 11, 1998) - One of my very astute colleagues posed an interesting question to me recently. With all the recent hoopla surrounding Jeff Gordon's dominance of Winston Cup Racing, how did he manage to lose 13 races already this season ? Good question, I thought, certainly worthy of a good answer. But I didn't have one.

The next step was to start an exhaustive research of how this seeming anomaly could exist. After literally many minutes of research this is what we uncovered. And this is an exclusive - trust me.

As we all know, Nascar hired a new consulting firm prior to the start of the 1998 season to change Nascar's image among their ever-growing fan-base. Nice idea. Problem is, Nascar took their usual 'Let's go with the lowest bidder' approach and hired a company who is merely moonlighting from their full-time job as choreographers for professional wrestling matches. AHA! The little light bulb starts to glow ! Now I can see how Dale Earnhardt can win his disputed Daytona 500 and follow it up with 19 mediocre performances. It was Earnhardt's day to be the good guy.

We can fast-forward through the first few tests of the newly imposed 5 & 5 rules, allegedly implemented to give the Ford teams competing in the new "4-door" Taurus an even break. Of course the results were not very conclusive. By the way, the racing version of the Taurus has the same amount of doors as the racing versions of the Monte Carlo and Grand Prix - none. By this time an upstart named Jeremy Mayfield was strongly in contention for the points championship and this obviously didn't suit the new spin-doctors. What to do ?

The solution was obvious - let the wonder kid whom the fans seem to enjoy booing win a few races. So he did. But the kid started ignoring the script. He was winning more races than he was supposed to win - going as far as ignoring an on-track reminder from Rusty Wallace at Richmond. After 20 races Gordon had won 7 of them, sometimes almost effortlessly.

King William II can see the natives are getting restless since this kid has been winning with such frequency and ease. That jeopardizes his Nascar coffers. Not acceptable. Must have parity.

It is all too predictable what will happen now. Jeff Gordon will suffer a rash of unexplained mechanical problems (not the sort that Rusty administered) and we will see a new, surprise driver in victory lane. Too bad Ted Musgrave is unemployed - he would have been the perfect new winner; long-suffering non-winning Ford driver. Not necessarily an exclusive club but then again these new consultants aren't very knowledgeable.

Have comments or questions ? E:mail:M.L. Morgan

Home | Past Editorials | Racing Links | M.L's NASCAR flags | Ask Uncle Mike