Jeff Gordon’s final race at Atlanta Motor Speedway ended much like his first one back in 1992, a race in which he and Richard Petty, making his final Cup start, both crashed in separate incidents.
On Sunday in the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500, Gordon had been running with the lead pack all afternoon and was in 10th place for a Lap 256 restart when Denny Hamlin and others ahead of him began crashing off Turn Two. Gordon appeared to be in position to avoid the crash but was tagged by the spinning car of Jamie McMurray. That sent him slamming first into the outside wall and then hard into the inside wall.
Both impacts were against concrete walls not covered by SAFER barriers, marking the second straight week that a top-flight NASCAR driver struck an unprotected wall. After Kyle Busch was injured in a crash at Daytona International Speedway when he hit a concrete wall, NASCAR officials and officials from AMS surveyed the track and added 130 feet of barrier protection, but not in the area where Gordon crashed.
“It wouldn’t have been too bad except that I found that one spot where there’s no SAFER barrier,” Gordon said. “I can’t believe it. That’s amazing to me. Anyway, hopefully soon that will get fixed. It was a pretty big impact.”
Gordon added that it’s time SAFER barriers are placed in every place a driver could hit on every track on the circuit.
“I am very frustrated with the fact there are no SAFER barriers down there,” Gordon said. “I don’t think we can say any more after Kyle’s (Busch) incident at Daytona. Everybody knows we have to do something and it should have been done a long time ago. All we can do now is hope they do it as fast as they possibly can.”
The crash put a damper on a weekend in which plenty of things were going Gordon’s way. On Friday he received a Bandolero car for his son Leo from track officials as a retirement gift. There was a “Thanks Jeff” logo painted in the grassed area alongside the frontstretch and on Lap 24, every number on the scoreboard flashed 24, Gordon’s car number.
He was in position to post a top-five finish when he was collected in the crash.
“We had gotten ourselves into the top 10 right there,” Gordon said. “We might have had a shot at a top five but we won’t know now. It’s an unfortunate way to start the season. We just have to dig ourselves out of this hole.”
Gordon heads to Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the third race of his final full-time season in a hole points-wise, as he also crashed near the end of the Daytona 500.
About the Author
