Jeff Gordon Scannerbytes In-Car Audio

Jeff Gordon news, stats, videos, photos and in car audio clips.

You are here: Home / Archives for indianopolis

Brickyard 400 In-Car Audio

by Leave a Comment

Jeff Gordon posted his fifth top-6 finish in the last six races with a 5th place effort in the Brickyard 400. However, after running 2nd to eventual race winner Jimmie Johnson during the mid-stages, Gordon fell to 7th following the final pit stop. He’ll need at least two victories in the next 6 races to qualify for the Chase for the Championship.

Gordon started 9th and moved to 7th by the end of the second lap. He moved to 6th with a pass on Joey Logano on lap 5. However, he complained of a tight handling condition entering the turns and dropped 5 seconds behind race leader Denny Hamlin. He moved to 5th on lap 12 when Carl Edwards slowed with an engine problem, and took 4th from Greg Biffle on lap 19. Gordon came to pit road for a four-tire change on lap 29 and returned to the race in 4th. The first caution waved on lap 40 when Travis Kvapil cut a tire and hit the wall. Gordon opted for two tires, but lost three positions on pit road and restarted 7th on lap 44. Gordon moved up to 5th before the next caution on lap 47 for Clint Bowyer’s spin into the infield grass. He took 4th from Dale Earnhardt Jr on lap 60, and moved to 3rd when Brad Keselowski came to pit road. Three laps later he took the runner-up spot from Greg Biffle.

Gordon closed in on race leader Jimmie Johnson and led 1 lap during a green flag pit stop sequence on lap 74. Following stops, he ran 3rd behind Keselowski and Johnson. Gordon again moved to 2nd on lap 90 following Keselowski’s pit stop. A caution for Casey Mears’ wall contact slowed the field on lap 94. Following pit stops, Gordon restarted in 5th on lap 99. He moved to 3rd shortly after the restart by passing Keselowski and Regan Smith. Gordon took 2nd from Kyle Busch on lap 110, but was more than 3 seconds behind Johnson for the race lead. A caution on lap 124 for Jeff Burton’s tire issue brought the leaders to pit road. Gordon lost four spots on pit road and restarted in 6th place. He dropped to 7th before getting around Ryan Newman with 29 to go. A caution with 28 laps to go slowed the field when Joey Logano spun and collected Matt Kenseth. On the restart with 20 laps to go, Gordon dropped to 8th as Newman and Martin Truex went by. However, he rebounded to pass Truex and Newman in the closing stages to take 5th place.

Turning point
Gordon was running in 2nd when the caution waved on lap 124. A brief problem on the right front caused Gordon to leave pit road in 6th place, thus removing any chance at a possible victory.

JG’s comments
“We had a car that could compete for the win. I think we were one of the only ones who could compete with the 48. Congratulations to Jimmie and Chad, and the whole Lowe’s team and Rick Hendrick. They’re that good and they deserved to be in Victory Lane today. They were the best team and they had a fast race car. We had as good of a race car if not better. We just could never get the track position, and when we did it was so hard to pass. Our car was awesome. We lost some track position and then the restarts I was starting on the outside both times — that definitely didn’t do us any favors. It was hard to pass. I can’t complain about it too much, just would’ve liked to have been up there battling with Jimmie, at least make it a little harder on him. My gosh, he had it pretty easy there at the end.”

ON HIS RACE:
“I don’t think we could have passed him (Jimmie Johnson). Those guys were definitely the class of the field today and had the track position. They’re a strong team. They deserve that win today. They did everything. Jimmie did his job on the track and the team did their job in the pits. And they had a good car.”

YOU CAME HERE TO WIN, BUT IS THERE ANY SATISFACTION IN FINISHING 5TH?

“I’m pretty disappointed really. It’s always nice to finish in the top five but at this point in the season, the way our season has gone with so many missed opportunities that we’ve had, I feel like it was a little bit of a missed opportunity today. We needed track position there at the end and we didn’t get it when it counted most and it cost us.”

TALK ABOUT THAT LAST PIT STOP. WAS THERE ANYTHING SPECIFICALLY THAT HAPPENED OR WAS IT JUST SLOW?

“I have no idea. I have to review it. The one thing about this pit road is that if you get a little bit behind, once you get up here, you’re way behind because they pull out in front of you and the next one pulls out in front of you and that’s what happened. We lost more than we should have but that wasn’t so bad. The worst thing was when you start on the outside lane; my car would just not go on that outside lane. And then they got all jumbled up and we lost even more spots. And then we had another caution on the outside lane again, so it just wasn’t our day.”

YOUR TEAMMATE DALE EARNHARDT JR. TOOK OVER THE POINT LEAD TODAY.

“I give them a lot of credit. It’s really awesome that they’re out front. They’ve been consistent and if they can keep that consistency up and maybe even take it up a notch when the Chase starts, they’re going to be a real threat for the championship. So, they’re running good. It’s good to see it. I’m happy to see it for Junior. I’m really happy to see it for (crew chief) Stevie (Letarte) and that whole team. They’ve put a lot of effort into it.”

WHERE DO YOU RANK YOUR CAR?

“I thought we were as good as or better than Jimmie (Johnson). We just never could get in front of him. That’s what it takes to win. You’ve got to get out front. Track position is very important here. We showed that we could run their pace, but we were always coming from behind.”

WHEN YOU FIRST MET JIMMIE JOHNSON, DID YOU THINK HE WOULD BE THIS GOOD?

“I knew he was special and talented. The type of equipment he was in [Herzog Motorsports] was not the best equipment out there. It was good equipment, but not the best. I knew if you took a guy who had worked that hard and has raced that long with his talents, and put him with a good team, that he’d be able to do something special. I had no idea he was going to do what he has done, that’s way beyond any of our imagination, including his. He’s a great guy and a great driver. He has a great team. They deserve it.”

YOU MADE UP A LOT OF SPOTS IN THE LAST HANDFUL OF LAPS. DO YOU THINK IF YOU HAD A RESTART A LITTLE CLOSER TO THE FRONT, THAT YOU WOULD HAVE AT LEAST FINISHED 2ND?

“I think we were a second-place car really, all day. We could pass everybody but Jimmie. That clean are is really important. So, yeah I think we were good enough to be second, but we weren’t going to pass Jimmie under green flag conditions.”

THE FANS CHEERED REALLY LOUD FOR YOU AT THE END OF THE RACE. WERE YOU HAPPY WITH THE CAR AT THE END OF THE RACE?

“I happy with the car. Other than the first run, I was happy with the car all day. Or, maybe the second run. We were a little bit too tight. We freed it up and from that point on, I thought we had the car to beat. We just never could never quite get that track position and get close enough to that No. 48 to try to make a pass on him. But it was a good solid day for us. You know I love this place.”

source: Jeff Gordon Online

Race Results
Driver Standings

In-Car Audio

MP3 Download
2.47mb – 21:34 runtime
[audio:http://www.scannerbytes.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/2012-07-29-Jeff-Gordon-Brickyard-400-Indianapolis.mp3|titles=2012-07-29 – Jeff Gordon – Brickyard 400 – Indianapolis]

 

[ad#blog-post-ads]

 
MP3 Download – with spotter chatter
3.16mb – 27:30 runtime
[audio:http://www.scannerbytes.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/2012-07-29-Jeff-Gordon-Brickyard-400-Indianapolis-with-spotter-chatter.mp3|titles=2012-07-29 – Jeff Gordon – Brickyard 400 – Indianapolis – with spotter chatter]

 

Photos

Jeff Gordon Press Conference – Indy Test

by Leave a Comment

June 16 — Four amateur shot video clips of Jeff Gordon’s press conference after his test session at Indianpolis Motorspeedway.

Jeff comments on the test results:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSk0wCj2iy4

Jeff asked about the tires “falling off”:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6qqZfIvak4

“How important is a good race at Indy?”:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3PM5Y7gHKU

Jeff and Greg Stucker, Goodyear Director of Race Tire Sales:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq_QotmntWk

 

Transcript of Press Conference

JEFF GORDON: I’m very pleased with the results. I was very surprised to see how much rubber was on the track yesterday when I arrived, and just to see how the tires are reacting from a grip level with the car as well as how it’s wearing the tire, heat in the tire. I mean, everything looks great at the Brickyard 400 and go out there and run hard, and tire wear is not even going to be in the back of our minds.

It might be whether or not we can stay out and how far we can push it, if anything. They’ve done an excellent job. I think a lot of obviously credit goes to Goodyear, all the hard work, effort, time, money that’s been spent to make it right, but obviously there’s been a lot of teams, and I have not been one of them so I don’t get the credit, but there’s been a lot of teams that have contributed to put in a lot of laps in here to get it to where it is today.

So thankful for those guys. I got to kind of come in at the end and have the proven great product and just be able to go out there and put laps in, which is what Goodyear asked us to come here to do.

Q. The guys earlier were talking about falloff rates. What did you see, and are you going to be happy with the amount of falloff to make it a racing race?

JEFF GORDON: Yeah, I like to see falloff, and even with as great as this tire is, this track is so abrasive that you’re going to have falloff. I saw falloff, and I like the grip level from the beginning, I liked how it does gradually fall off. It’s not a huge drop. And I felt like it was enough to where it’s going to make the racing really, really good.

I think it’s always important to have a certain amount of falloff so that you can tune on the car, you can change your line as a driver. You still want enough grip to where if you slide off line a little bit, you can recover. All those things I saw while we were here.

Q. How important is it to have a good tire here, a good race here based on what happened last year?

JEFF GORDON: I think that’s why they spent as much time here testing and all the effort has been put in there. I think that this is an incredibly important race to motorsports in general and to all the companies that are involved, especially Goodyear.

Last year was something that none of us wanted to see what happened last year, and I think that it was determined I think probably before that race was over that it’s not going to happen again. You know, I just really hate that Goodyear took so much of the blame because this track is extremely abrasive. This car we’ve seen wears tires more. There’s a lot of things that have contributed to what happened.

Unfortunately Goodyear took the brunt of it, and because none of the other things changing, they had to really work hard to come up with the compound and this tire. I give them a lot of credit for taking that on head on and resolving it.

You know, it is important to have a good race here. There’s a lot of fans that travel from all over to come to this race, and we know how many people are watching at home, and this is an important event, and we want to go out there and put the race on that we possibly can.

Again, I’m confident this year we’re going to be able to do that.

Q. There’s a lot of fans out there that are holding onto their money probably to see whether or not this thing is going to happen and the way we’ve become accustomed to seeing the 400. Can you guarantee that we’re not going to see a repeat of what happened last year?

JEFF GORDON: I can. I will guarantee it. I’m 100 percent confident. I ran this tire as hard as I possibly could, put numerous laps on them. It’s a dead issue. This is going to be a race here it might come down to fuel mileage, it might come down to a lot of different factors, fastest car, not the fastest car, track position, a double fire restart with ten to go, but it’s not going to come down to a ten lap shootout on whose tires can last.

I told Stu Grant earlier, they’ve actually made it too good, it’s that good. And I’m 100 percent confident, and I can promise all the fans out there that if they want to come to the Brickyard and see a great race and be confident that the tires are not going to be an issue, you can trust me. I hope that’s enough for them. But they’ve got it resolved for sure.

Q. You and Tony are one two in the battle, and you both kind of cut your eye teeth around here. What is your first memory of Tony, and how often did you actually race against him before he came to NASCAR?

JEFF GORDON: I don’t ever remember racing against him. I think somebody said that maybe we raced buns at the Hoosier Dome race, the midget race that they used to do there that was sort of an invitational race.

But I knew of Tony Stewart because I remember when I was leaving USAC and going to run stock cars, I know Bobby was one of them, but I think there were a couple others that had mentioned Tony Stewart’s name and said that he had a bright future, really talented race car driver.

So when I started seeing him on Saturday Night Thunder and hearing his name and seeing his name in the papers, then it was no surprise to me because I remember hearing that name.

He certainly has lived up to all those expectations. He’s a terrific race car driver, great talent, and I think this year even shows his talents to a whole ‘nother level, to be able to change teams, be involved with the ownership side of it and restructure and go to a team that really was not that successful and then be able to have the year that they’re having.

It’s not just Tony’s talent on the racetrack, it’s what he can attract. To me that’s how you really measure what somebody’s value is, what their talent level is, and it’s pretty impressive what they’ve been able to pull off over there.

Q. Earlier this week they suggested that maybe cutting some horsepower, 50 or 100 horsepower might help with the tire situation in general. Can you maybe give your thoughts on that?

JEFF GORDON: That’s somebody that doesn’t drive a race car because that’s just absolutely backwards. The more power that we take away from the engines, the faster we go through the corners. We’ve seen it in the Nationwide Series, we saw it years ago at New Hampshire when they had some of the tragedies there, tried to slow the cars down, take power away, and we went through the corners faster.

You know, just because you cut horsepower down doesn’t mean that it’s going to slow your speed in the middle of the corner down, and that’s where most of the tire wear and abuse comes from is how you lean on that tire through the middle of the corner and the corner speed.

I always say, give us more power, because the more power that we’re going to have, the more difficult it’s going to be to control it, and the car is not going to handle as good, we’re probably going to carry actually less speed. But I definitely am very much against taking power away from the cars.

Now, if you take downforce away, you take grip away, you do a lot of other things on top of the power, then maybe, but just the power is definitely not the answer.

RECENT POSTS