A grandfather clock is far better than a gold watch.
All in due time.
For now, Jeff Gordon's sublime final season as a full-time Sprint Cup driver continued to defy expectation and common sense, as he used his ninth career win at Martinsville Speedway to collect not only the ornamental time piece that serves as its trophy but a chance at one more championship before he retires at the end of the season.
Winless this season before Sunday, the 44-year-old four-time series champion has traversed a treacherous Chase for the Sprint Cup format has that unleashed the id of once-genteel drivers and blurred lines of competition, and now he automatically advances to the one-off final at Homestead-Miami Speedway. There, the top finisher among the four finalists will be the champion.
Gordon has done enough and seen enough through a spectacular 93-win career that began with wild success, flattened midway and bloomed in its final seasons to ever expect this. The sport is too unforgiving to even hope for this. But it’s happening.
"No, I wasn't allowing myself to go there," he said. "I didn't want to allow myself to go there coming into Martinsville because I knew we were going to have our work cut out for us today.
"I just wanted to hopefully seize that moment, then just experience it to the fullest. I did. I'm going to continue that all the way through Homestead."
The potential of winning a championship in his last attempt, what would be his first since 2001, was beyond the scope of what reality would allow when Gordon announced in January that his 24th season would be his last as a full-time NASCAR driver. Credited with a self-awareness often uncommon among race car drivers, Gordon had opted to leave a sport he’d helped redefine while still competitive. He won four races — his most since 2007 — and finished sixth in points in 2014. It wasn't that he wasn't good enough to do it again. But the storybook nature of it would be absurd.
This season had been more of a struggle despite his Chase qualification. He would hang around a few rounds, so went the thinking, bow out and be celebrated anyway. It would be sentimental but an unfulfilling conclusion after the hope of 2014 and a chance, he admitted, that almost slipped away.
"This whole year has been, I don't know, I can't even put it into words," Gordon said. "I made the announcement. I was super emotional about it. Then we went to work. We were getting our butts kicked. We weren't competing the way we wanted to. I'm like, 'Man, this is not the way I thought I saw this season going, the way I was hoping it would go.' "
Teammates Jimmie Johnson, a six-time champion, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. have been pared away in the first two Chase rounds, leaving Gordon to represent a Hendrick Motorsports team for which he was raced his entire Cup career.
Now, Gordon’s retirement tour, tempered by his management team with each last stop on tour so he could focus on this final season, will be feted with heightening anticipation in the two weeks preceding the championship. Judging by the initial reaction from respectful drivers and giddy fans, it will be a fitting send-off.
Now, crew chief Alan Gustafson said, he feels as if he and Gordon are "playing with house money." They don’t intend to just participate in the final, but win it. But getting to this moment, Gustafson admitted, was fraught with difficulty.
"I think the thing that's probably been more of an impact on me is just when we haven't performed the way that we want to, the way that I feel like we should, you just feel like you're disappointing people. That's tough. That weighs on you," he said. "You sit there, I don't even know how to describe it, but you just constantly have that over you. Not pressure as much as I don't know how to describe it. ... It's like your father when you're a kid. You want to please him, do everything you can to make everybody happy. We weren't doing a great job of it.
"Hopefully, everybody's a little bit happier now and we can give everybody something to cheer about at Homestead."
They seemed ecstatic.
Grandstands that had minutes earlier echoed with cheers when Matt Kenseth intentionally wrecked race leader Joey Logano surged with fans attempting to snap shots on cell phones through the catch fence as a victory stage was pulled onto the track with a tractor.
Gordon had on Friday received a scale model train from track president Clay Campbell celebrating each of his previous victories at the storied half-mile track, a nod to the tracks that meander above the backstretch. On Sunday he lustily collected the checkered flag as his crew rushed along the pit road restraining wall, then momentarily tapped the roof of his No. 24 Chevrolet as if realization and 500 laps into the growing darkness had overwhelmed him. He jumped into the crowd.
Fans chanted his name, his number, and seemed to share the disbelief that one of the best the series has ever produced would have such a chance at such a final chapter. Campbell even promised him a caboose for his train.
Earnhardt Jr. appreciated the spectacle and the history in progress.
"That would be awesome for Jeff, going out as a champion in his retirement year," he grinned. "Nobody’s ever going to be able to do that. So if he can accomplish that ... holy moly, that’s some closure on a hell of a career, I guess."
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