Only Yesterday: When Jeff Gordon’s Car Was Damaged by a Faulty Track

The NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series had barely begun to race the inaugural event at Naval Base Coronado before a manhole cover had come loose and wound up lodged in the grill of Corey Day’s car. The wayward cover damaged the radiator and the oil cooler, which would have been the end of Day’s chance to contend.

Then NASCAR made the highly unusual choice to allow the No. 17 team to repair the car during the red flag condition. I saw phrases such as “unheard of” being used to describe the situation and wondered how that made Hendrick Motorsports executive and former star driver Jeff Gordon feel.

After all, Gordon found himself in a similar situation during a race at Martinsville Speedway in April of 2004. But the rule stringency was drastically different on that day. 

Gordon came into the eighth race of 2004 buried in ninth place in the standings. He had only one top five finish in the first seven races and only managed to lead a lap in four of them. But Martinsville was one of his best tracks, having won both of the events there from the pole in 2003. 

Then he qualified on the pole for the third straight time and seemed to be poised to continue his recent dominance. He was strong out of the gate, leading 180 of the first 272 laps. 

Then while running second under caution, Gordon suddenly sustained damage despite not hitting another car or the wall. It was revealed via replay that he had actually impacted a piece of the racetrack that had come up in turn 3.

Gordon was absolutely livid, feeling that he and his team were a victim of the condition of the facility. He told crew chief Robbie Loomis over the radio that the hit was so jarring that it jerked the steering wheel right out of his hands.

He pitted for the crew to replace his tires and assess the damage during the yellow flag. In an interview, Loomis said that he felt that NASCAR should allow the No. 24 to regain the track position that they lost by pitting to make repairs.

The red flag was displayed and the cars were brought to pit road while officials determined what would need to be done to fix the track and then made the repair. Gordon was shown on television talking to then NASCAR president Mike Helton, no doubt making his case to get his place back.

Gordon told FOX Sports reporter Dick Berggren: “I’ll tell you what happened. A huge piece of concrete was in my way. I’m laughing about it now but I’m not happy about this. We work so hard to get that track position and we’ve got such an awesome race car.”

He continued, “There’s no doubt in my mind that we can do it, but man is it gonna be a lot of hard work. First, we’ve gotta come in to fix it … it’s mainly just the fender. It’s just unfortunate.”

Helton then examined the front of the No. 24 Chevrolet during the red flag. Ultimately, when the race resumed under caution, Gordon was not allowed to retain his position from prior to sustaining the damage. The team had to make multiple stops to make repairs without losing a lap.

He restarted in 21st, the last car on the lead lap. Gordon worked his way up through the field but ran out of time, crossing the finish line in sixth. 

Rusty Wallace was the primary beneficiary of Gordon’s troubles, as Wallace picked up his 55th and final career Cup victory. Gordon would only have to wait one more week for his first triumph of 2004, as he would edge Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the checkered flag at Talladega Superspeedway.

NASCAR has a lengthy history of not permitting things that they feel would affect the outcome of a race. While seemingly fair in this situation, they held on to that hard stance and gave the Hendrick Motorsports team no concessions.

Day should consider himself rather fortunate as he was given a break that even a four-time champion didn’t get.