Right track, right time

HAMPTON, Ga. – In any discussion of NASCAR's greatest races, the 1992 Hooters 500 in Atlanta has to come early in the conversation. In sharp contrast to the, uh, perkiness of the sponsor, the final race of the 1992 season was deadly serious. Six drivers entered the race with a chance to win that year's Cup championship, and while Bill Elliott won the race, Alan Kulwicki edged him out for the title.

Strangely enough, though, the two drivers who give that race its most lasting significance weren't among those challenging for the title. Indeed, they weren't even a factor at all, both finishing below 30th place.

One of those drivers was the King, Richard Petty, driving in the final race of his legendary career. He wrecked early, but his crew slapped the car back together, pulled him out of his trailer, and put him behind the wheel for one final run into history.

The other driver was a rookie in his very first race. He ran 164 laps before wrecking and finishing in 31st place. He earned barely $6,000 for his efforts.

His name was Jeff Gordon. He'd get better.

This will make you feel old: Jeff Gordon is going gray. Just a touch, just around the sideburns. Still, it's jarring to see on a guy who's been NASCAR's perpetual boy wonder, the kid with the polite voice and the "yes, ma'am" demeanor. Like the way he arrived on the very day Petty departed, Gordon's gray hair is a reminder that time rolls on, that nobody who keeps driving – not even a four-time champion – stays young forever.

Back in 1992, championships weren't even a dream for Gordon; getting around the track in one piece was the goal. The first time he ran in Atlanta, Gordon was yet another highly touted, but unproven kid.

"He was one of three or four rookies back then that I didn't even know," Petty recalled on Friday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, site of Sunday's Kobalt Tools 500. "I didn't think anything of him, because I didn't know anything about him."

Here's the thing, though. Seventeen years after that Atlanta race, with only two of his 42 fellow competitors that day – Elliott and Mark Martin – still competing, Gordon is once again atop the points standings. He's well aware that his standing is fleeting; finishing out of the top five on Sunday could drop him out. But still, he's there.

"It's obviously pretty early to be bragging on the points," Gordon said Friday afternoon just before qualifying. "But, hey – there's a bunch of other guys that would like to be in the position we're in as well, so we'll take it."

It's a good way to put 2008 behind him once and for all. Last year, Gordon failed to win a race for the first time since 1993. He made the Chase, but was rarely a factor in any race. And for the first time, the word "retirement" began creeping into his conversations.

Was this how it was going to end? Would he go out like Petty, a legend drifting farther and farther back in the pack, getting passed by kids who had grown up as his fans?

Spend enough time behind the wheel, and you go from being hotshot to veteran to inspiration. When Gordon crosses the starting line on Sunday in 16th position, Atlanta will once again take the top spot among all the tracks he's run in his career. And for the first time, he'll be joined at AMS by Joey Logano, who was all of two years old when Gordon first ran in Atlanta. Logano has kept a close eye on Gordon for his entire life, first as a fan and later as a competitor.

"He didn't come in strong, which makes me feel a little bit better," said a laughing Logano, who's off to a rough start in his first full Cup season. "It's cool to watch how someone can come in not as the hottest, and still pile up those chances to win championships."

Logano is still young enough to cop to a bit of hero-worshipping when he's around the No. 24 car. "He was one of my favorite drivers growing up," Logano says. "I'd root for him or Mark [Martin] all the time. So yeah, there have been times I've been racing with him and I've thought, 'Check that out. That's Jeff Gordon right in front of me. That's cool.' "

Logano could do worse than to follow Gordon's lead at Atlanta. Gordon's four career wins at AMS trail only Bobby Labonte's six and Elliott's five. And Gordon's been here enough to know exactly how to challenge the tire-shredding beast that is Atlanta.

"One thing that I take into this race that is a little bit different than most races is just more patience," he said. "You see somebody out there running just really hard, putting down some fast laps, and you can't let that affect how you're running your own race. I feel like at this track you really do have to kind of run your own race, because it is so fast and it is so abrasive on tires. A lot of times those cars that [run hard], the drivers and teams, a lot of times they back up to you, so you just have to be patient."

The combination of the new Car of Tomorrow, a new tire compound and cold temperatures at this race last year had teams tiptoeing around the track like they were ice-skating. With temperatures expected to hit the 70s and another year's worth of data to create tire-car combinations, we can hope that the racing will be a little better this time out. But Gordon has absolutely no illusions about what Sunday's race will be.

"This weekend is really going to be about survival," Gordon says. "I believe that this track, and this car, especially with the temperatures we had today, is possibly the most difficult track in the world to build a tire for. … It's really going to be a white-knuckle, hold-on-tight survival type of race."

Survival has never been a problem for Gordon, and lately, neither has strong on-track performance. Atlanta would be the perfect place to begin the latest chapter in one of NASCAR's most exceptional stories. He's the right driver on the right track at exactly the right time.