The dawn after the "dark" - Uncovering the Past - success of race car driver Jeff Gordon - Brief Article

WHEN CREW CHIEF RAY Evernham left the No. 24 team in order to pursue his dream of motorsports ownership, many people predicted that it would spell the beginning of a slump for his longtime and highly successful driver, Jeff Gordon. At first, the naysayers seemed to have gotten their way. Gordon struggled in his first full post-Evernham season, finishing ninth in the points in 2000-his lowest finish in six years.

So was this the end of Gordon's dominance? Hardly. The next year he won his fourth Winston Cup championship, becoming only the third driver to accomplish that feat. After a short adjustment period, Gordon was back on top. "Some felt Gordon's Camelot career would crumble in the wake of Evernham's departure, but after an adjustment period Gordon is back and as strong as ever--maybe even stronger," we claimed.

The driver himself sensed the shift during the 2001 season. "I've seen this team get better every week," he claimed. "Our guys have really stuck together through tough times and tough races. This could be the best team I've ever been associated with."

Even that transition period wasn't as tragic as many people made it out to be. As we said, it was more "a result of Gordon setting his personal bar so high in 1998, when he enjoyed an incredible 13 victories." The two-year slump in which Gordon was supposed to be mired in 1999 and 2000 was a bit off-the-mark. Over those two years, he won 10 races and nearly nine million dollars. That's not bad for a slump, right?

Since 2001, Gordon has failed to win another championship, but he has been entrenched in the top five of the points race for much of the past two years, more than can be said for most of the stars of the early and mid-'90s. Four years since Evernham's departure, it seems the rumors of the death of Gordon's career were greatly exaggerated.