Is Jeff Gordon the G.O.A.T of NASCAR?

When the conversation comes up, who is the greatest of all time in NASCAR, the usual names that pop up are Richard Petty,David Pearson, Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Jimmie Johnson. I mean how could they not be, with 451 wins and 23 championships between the 4 of them. One driver that often gets overlooked, however, is Jimmie Johnson’s teammate Jeff Gordon.

It’s hard to overlook the stats. In 761 starts, Jeff has 92 wins and 454 top tens. That means he has won about 8.2 % of the races he entered, and has finished in the top 10 in about 59% of the races he entered. Now, it’s easy for doubters to say “well he only won all those because he had the best equipment.” People tend to forget that when Richard Petty raced, he had pretty much no competition, and they ran races more than once a week, up to 64 races a season. NASCAR doesn’t run 64 races at short tracks or dirt tracks anymore. One year Richard Petty won 27 races in a SINGLE season, an impossible feat in this 36 race schedule. Jeff, running 33 races in 1998 won 13 races, the closest anyone has ever gotten to that sort of record. Let’s not forget that Jeff also has 4 championships, and if it were not for the Chase for the Sprint Cup, he would have 7(with the most recent coming in 2014), and teammate Jimmie Johnson, who has 6 championships(5 in a row) all under the Chase format, would only have 3 championships. http://www.jayski.com/news/pages/story/_/page/NASCAR-Sprint-Cup-Chase-History#classic.

Also, we must remember Jeff’s perseverance throughout his illustrious 22 year career. If Jeff starts the first 27 races of 2015, he will tie “The Iron Man” Ricky Rudd’s consecutive start record of 788 on September 20th, 2015, at Chicagoland Speedway (the first race of the Chase) and he would break it the next week on Semptember 27th at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. His streak has not come without problems. Jeff has seen his fair share of extremely hard crashes, and even last year was having problems with his back that caused him to sit out practice for the Coca Cola 600, and almost even the race. He ended up racing the entire 600 miles and finishing 7th.

If you ever find yourself wondering “who is the G.O.A.T of NASCAR, never forget to add the driver of the no.24 Chevrolet into the mix.