By Mark Zeske
CBS SportsLine Motorsports Writer
Sept. 29, 1998

Forget Jeff Gordon's titles. Ignore the deals with soft drink, oil, paint and toothpaste companies. Throw out all the victories, which have been piling up at record rates. Trash the good looks, the million-dollar bonuses, the Madison Avenue spotlight.

Related Links Winston Cup Sortable Stats Jeff Gordon driver page Forum: Will Jeff Gordon win the title easily this year?

The young superstar will never be the champion he wants to be, the legend NASCAR needs him to be, the greatest driver of all time his fans want him to be.

Unless, that is, Gordon can end this season on a high note. A victory somewhere along the way would be nice.

Gordon always will be a wimp unless he can go out with a bang.

SURE, HE KEEPS FILLING UP THE record books. But if you check those same sources closely, you'll get the impression he backs into his titles. He finishes each year like he's a run-of-the-mill driver trying to earn a few extra bucks in a heat race.

The Winston Cup circuit heads into its stretch run this week at Charlotte. Gordon never has won the October race at Charlotte. He hasn't won any of the races that follow, either. Yet he has managed to capture two Winston Cup titles and one second-place points finish in the past three years.

In 1995, Gordon won his first Winston Cup title. Of his seven victories that year, two came in September. He led by 302 points with four races remaining, but managed to win the title by just 34 points over Dale Earnhardt. In the last five races of the '95 season, Gordon finished ninth, 30th, 20th, fifth and 32nd. With Gordon 14 laps behind in the finale, Earnhardt drove with a swagger. He led 268 of 328 laps on the way to victory.

Gordon earned his first title, but it was a case of bad public relations.

IN 1996, GORDON LOOKED LIKE A sure thing to repeat as champion with just four races left. Starting with the Southern 500 on Labor Day, he had won four of five races, giving him 10 for the season and vaulting himself ahead of teammate Terry Labonte in the points standings.

Gordon has yet to prove he can win down the stretch. (AP)

But Gordon suffered a cracked cylinder head at Charlotte and finished 31st while Labonte won. Trailing by 47 points in the last race of the year, Gordon suffered mechanical problems and found himself two laps down just 10 laps into the race.

Gordon finished second in the points race that year. It appeared he and his Rainbow Warriors choked down the stretch.

Last year, Gordon won the first fall race in New Hampshire, giving him 10 victories in 25 races. He didn't win again, though he did finish in the top 10 four times. Over the last four races, he finished 35th once and 17th twice -- hardly the stuff of legends. The result was the closest three-way race in NASCAR history, with third-place Mark Martin just 29 points out.

Gordon knows exactly what everybody thinks about his end-of-the-year fades.

"In 1995, we just started winning races and leading a lot of laps, and before we knew it we were running for the championship," Gordon said. "The next year was the first year we went into the season with the goal of winning the championship and had some DNFs (did not finish) and weren't all that competitive at the end of the season.

"Then, last year was a real battle down to the end with Martin and Jarrett, and we could have lost it just as easily as we won it. Once again, we weren't very strong at the end of the season. We have some newer equipment than we've had in the past at the end of the season and we've made a real effort to improve our end of the year performance."

GORDON IS A GREAT TALENT, BUT IMPRESSIONS are everything. By all accounts, he should erase the stretch-run blemish from his record this year. In fact, don't be surprised if he clinches the title before the last race of the season.

Gordon has won at five of the six tracks left on the 1998 schedule. The only driver with a real shot at the title is Mark Martin, who trails by 199 points. Martin has had a superb season, but he usually is one step behind Gordon, who is having one of the best seasons in NASCAR history

Gordon has 14 consecutive top-five finishes, a streak that began at Michigan in June. That streak includes seven victories, four second-place finishes, two thirds and one fifth. For Martin to have any chance of winning, Gordon must go out early in at least one and maybe two races.

"We've got six races to go," Gordon said. "There's a lot of racing left. Mark and I keep trading five and 10 points back and forth. That's not what it's going to come down to. It's going to come down to us either having a failure or something like that.

"I feel better about running for the championship this year than I have any other. We've been much more consistent this year than we've ever been in the past."

If Gordon wants to put this late-season issue to rest, he'll have to power into victory lane a few more times and win this year's title pulling away.