LOUDON, N.H. — After crashing out of last Sunday’s race at Chicagoland thanks to a stuck throttle, Jeff Gordon showed up at Loudon clean-shaven, at least in part on the premise that the mustache he brought back for the Chase opener didn’t bring him the good luck he had anticipated.
Gordon had kept a promise in growing the sort of mustache he had worn as a Cup rookie in 1993.
“I did the mustache because somebody said, ‘Hey, bring back the mustache,’ ” Gordon said. “I said, ‘Well, if we make the Chase then I’ll bring it back.’Â So I brought it back, and then with the way that it went last week, I was like, ‘OK, I’m done with the mustache.’Â I just changed my mind.”
Though Gordon trails Keselowski by 47 points with nine races left, he doesn’t believe the deficit is insurmountable. As a measure of how deep the hole is, however, Gordon could win all nine races and conceivably not claim the title, if Keselowski runs second each week.
Perhaps Gordon was looking for a reverse Sampson effect — and perhaps it worked. After shaving the facial hair, Gordon won the pole for Sunday’s race.
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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