Take 5: Five Takeaways From The Third Chase Race

Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports

Take 1 – Don’t make Jeff Gordon angry.

2014 has been one of the best years in the career of Jeff Gordon and the No. 24 team and easily his best season in the past seven or so years. One of the most interesting things about Gordon this season is what happens when he has a poor finish. Four times in 2014 Gordon has finished outside of the top-20 and four times he has come back the next race and won. Clearly poor finishes do not make Gordon happy and the result of that are victories the following week. One of the coolest things about this stat is that things like this don’t ever seem to happen four times. Sure there are most likely thousands of scenarios where you can say a driver has a bad finish and the following week they run in the top-10 or they perform well or whatever the case may be. But for Gordon to follow up each of his poor finishes with a win is quite remarkable. I mean, twice is a coincidence and three times is happenstance but four times is a pattern. If Gordon has a poor finish in the ninth race of the chase and still qualifies for the final round, the championship might be as good as his.