NASCAR CUP SERIES: TOYOTA / SAVE MART 350

June 9, 2024

Jeff Gordon

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Jeff Gordon with Hendrick Motorsports, the race winning team of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet driven by Kyle Larson.

Q. Jeff, we've always known that Kyle doesn't know a lot about cars --

JEFF GORDON: I can't wait to see where this question is going. He obviously doesn't need to.

Q. And it came out a lot in Indianapolis where he'd be asked questions and he'd have no idea what people were talking about. Today he said I had no idea what we were doing on strategy. How is it that a guy who knows so little about the car and has so little understanding of how it works is able to be so successful?

JEFF GORDON: Because he drives the wheels off of it. I think if you're making lap time, making good decisions, he was really good through making up positions on the restarts when he needed to. When those other guys came into pit and he's out there on a little bit older tires, maintaining lap times the way he was, those are just the things that great drivers do and do well, and he's one of the greats.

I think it's obviously extracting the most speed out of a car. You don't have to know anything about a car to extract speed out of it. I think where it comes down to -- where he probably is a little too humble in some of the things he says is that he's a key element of what the car is doing to be able to give that communication information back to cliff and the team to get more out of it. There's a lot of data these guys that they can go off of, but still, if the car is loose or tight or whatever the balance is, he's got to give them that feedback in the race, and he gives great feedback.

But I think mostly it's when Cliff says, hey, we've got to make up some spots here or hey, we need to run this kind of a pace, he's able to do those things. I guess he just does the things he needs to do right. You don't have to worry about the others.

Q. All the stuff that was surrounding Larson this week, obviously he said he wasn't too stressed about it. He said he was less stressed than people probably thought he was. Some drivers would probably get pretty bent out of shape that they'd be in limbo about waivers and it would maybe derail them. Is it any surprise how he handled this process and was able to bounce back and win right away?

JEFF GORDON: Yeah, I would say he's very calm and cool through a lot of things, maybe even too much sometimes. But it is just sort of his personality and his upbringing and the way that he handles things, and that really works well for you when you've had a bad weekend or something that hasn't gone well.

It works against you when you want to savor the victory and enjoy it because you're able to move past things fairly quickly, good and bad.

I mean, I definitely saw a little bit more in him than maybe he's letting on, too, of some of the concerns when Monday came around. I kept telling him not to worry, but I was worried, too.

Q. Jeff, given how chaotic that first part of the race was, watching that last stage unfold that way, were you nervous that somebody was going to slide out on the track and rack them up again for a restart, or did it feel like things were playing out and he was going to be able to do at least attempt to do what he needed to do today to win?

JEFF GORDON: I mean, you're always worried about that when you're playing out a strategy and things have to go your way, you're concerned about that. The beginning of the race, it was pretty crazy being on the radio listening to the crew chiefs and who they kind of converse with on the radio about strategy. At first it's like, oh, these cautions are good, stay out and get our track position, and then it was like, oh, now we're going to a place where this is going to get a little bit difficult because now others have come in. So you knew there was going to be a lot of sort of flip flopping on strategy. But you just weren't sure how it was going to play out.

I thought all of our cars really were in a pretty good position, but when they came in, not the very last time but the time before that, I got concerned because I saw where there was only like a 12- to 15-lap gap between fuel and tires, and even though that -- if it went green, that could play out well, but if it didn't, that gap gets narrower and narrower where the advantage is not there.

It even got to a place at one point where like the 48, you saw they came in, as soon as they knew they could make it to the end, and just said, hey, let's just get fuel as soon as we can and no tires. And had the 5 and the 9 done that strategy, they wouldn't have got the win or the position that the 9 got.

I'll tell you what, these races are never easy to win. On the racetrack as you're navigating the track and the competitors, but boy, on the pit box, these guys and the stress that's going on of when you have a car that you think is capable of winning but not sure if you're making the right decisions, that's where the real stress is.

Q. I know we talked about Larson, but how was the team and the organization as a whole over the last eight days before finding out about the waiver, and was there a sense of relief afterwards? Would you have expected a different approach or maybe mindset from the group if the decision had gone the other way?

JEFF GORDON: Yeah, I didn't see it affect the the majority of the team. I think it was on the minds of Cliff and Kyle and Rick and Jeff Andrews and myself and Chad, at that level, maybe on the PR/media side of things. But as far as how that trickled down the team, I didn't see where they were really wavered by it.

But no, they seemed to be business as usual and prepping for the next race, the next two races, the way they normally do.

I think the best medicine in any of those situations is getting back to the racetrack. Especially when they got here, home track for Kyle, and I think a track that they enjoy racing at, and a lot of the competitors do.

I think that put a lot of that to rest.

Q. It seemed like Kyle on the radio, they just kind of let him drive, but when it came down to Turn 11 near the wall here, it was barely two wide and very slow at points, but Kyle would get at least second on the end there every time. Is that something you talked about at all as an organization or it just played out as it did?

JEFF GORDON: Yeah, I think you extract the speed where the car gives you feedback. If you're able to get a little bit more out of the brake zones, you get a little bit more out of the brake zones.

This is one of those tracks where you have the low-speed stuff and you have a setup that might be good for the low-speed stuff, but how do you make the car good on the high speed, as well. This has always been a compromise type of racetrack as a driver and as a team setting the car up.

Yeah, I was mainly focused there at the end on the 19 car because even though Kyle got by him, after he got by him, the 19 held with him a lot more than I thought with the tire differential.

You know, I thought that the 19 was good enough coming down the hill on the high-speed stuff that he might be able to get back to his bumper, but Kyle I thought was just really good at the areas where his car was launching off the corners and into 11 he was making time up there, so was able to build a little bit of a gap.

Q. A lot was made coming into this weekend about the repave and how tire degradation was not going to be as big of a factor. It looks like Kyle Larson ended up winning because he had fresher tires. Is that something -- is that a strategy call that's made on the fly? Maybe you could speak to maybe one of the strengths of the 5 team is their strategy calls?

JEFF GORDON: I think everybody had a lot of concerns going into the race because we saw that there was some blistering from just a lot of heat being built up with the extra -- with the faster lap times and the new pavement and what Goodyear has to do to a tire to be more durable. I think they saw some heat that caused a little bit of blistering coming into the race.

But the tires held up really, really well today, so maybe it's just rubber being laid down from having all the cars on the track at one time. Maybe the pace was just a little bit different.

But I think we knew that if the tires didn't have these blisters that the pace would hold on pretty good, and so it did. So it really just turned into a track position race. All the cars were running so close in pace and speed that if you could get off strategy, then you might have either a fuel or a tire advantage, and that's the way it worked out.