There just aren't many places where it would be better for Jeff Gordon to be making his return. After eight months of retirement, Gordon is back for Sunday's Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speeway.
Indy is a track with special meaning. He has 11 wins overall at Indianapolis and Pocono, where he will drive next week. Gordon has five of those at the Brickyard.
Gordon will drive Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. Earnhardt is out a second consecutive race with concussion-like symptoms and will also miss the Pocono race. Gordon spent his entire Cup career driving the No. 24 Chevrolet for Hendrick.
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He admits he'll face challenges at Indianapolis, not the least of which starts with qualifying.
Heat could be a factor, too, especially for someone who hasn't been in the car this season. Temperatures will be in the mid-90s on race day.
Gordon knows what he's up against as he steps into the car — but he seems pleased to have the shot.
"There's certainly a lot of preparations that goes into every race and every season as a driver and as a team and all I can tell you is I've done everything I possibly can over the last three days to get ready for this race the best way that I can," Gordon said Friday. "We'll find out what kind of conditioning that I am in, there's certainly going to be challenges this weekend, but all of them I feel like I'm capable of doing. The team has given me a lot of confidence in myself by choosing me and asking me to do this."
He said he questioned team owner Rick Hendrick several times when Hendrick made the call on replacing Earnhardt.
In the end, the decision gave Gordon confidence.
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Now he faces Saturday's qualifying, learning about the digital dash and other things that are new this season. He will practice hitting his pit stall with crew chief Greg Ives. He'll have to adjust quickly to many things — large and small — that have changed since he last raced.
"The biggest thing is going to the 88 stall, not the 24 stall," Gordon said. That stall will be reserved for Chase Elliott, Gordon's replacement in the car he drove to five Indy wins and four Cup championships.
As to the heat and qualifying, Gordon is on a fast learning curve when it comes to practices.
"Qualifying is the first thing that comes to my mind, even before the heat," he said. "To go lay down laps here to advance to the second round, hopefully get to the third round.
"Qualifying is very important here. To do that in a short period of time in the amount of practice we have [Friday] in the heat of the day is going to be tough. As far as hydration and all those things, that's the most important thing for me is just making sure, hydration wise and get through the race in good shape. Jimmie Johnson has offered me his cool vest.
"They know that I'm old and I'm not in the kind of shape that I was."
Jeff Gordon takes a selfie with owner Rick Hendrick and crew chief Alan Gustafson after winning the 2014 Brickyard 400. (Getty Images)
It's his first time back in the car since last year's Cup championship race at Homestead, but his return could have come earlier. Gordon, who turns 45 next month, said that he was asked to drive Tony Stewart's car at the start of the season but wasn't able to do that because of his commitments with Fox Sports.
Gordon has 797 career starts in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. He has 93 wins, third overall all time behind Richard Petty (200) and David Pearson (105). He has an average finish of 9.9 at the Brickyard and has logged 8,372.5 miles there (more than the distance from Indianapolis to the North Pole and back, though it wouldn't quite get one to Antarctica). He won the first Cup race at Indianapolis, in 1994, and took the pole position for the next two. He won again in 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2014.
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He has finished outside the top 10 only five times in 22 starts at the track. And no one has led more laps.
Gordon thought he was done with racing once. He left on a high note. Last season, his last full time in the Cup ranks, he battled for the championship all the way to the season finale.
After the race, he was asked how important it was to him to end on a competitive note.
"Extremely important," he said. "Extremely important to me. You know, I made the decision for a lot of reasons. … The timing of it, I knew that I still have a team and the ability to be competitive out there."
He was later asked how would it feel not to have a race to look forward to anymore.
"On one hand I'm really looking forward to that because I put so much into wanting to be the best and be competitive that I can be for my team every weekend, that, you know,
I'm kind of ready to take a shift in that," he said, adding that he planned to put some of that competitiveness into other things.
"… But when you watch a competitor go out there and pull off a great win or pull off a championship, you know, there's nothing like that feeling, and I'm going to miss being a part of something like that."
Now he doesn't have to miss that anymore, at least not for a little while.
No matter what he faces this weekend, Gordon knows he's at the best place to try to make a return.
"Of any track that I can think of coming, heat or no heat, and come and do a good job for this team, it's right here at Indianapolis," he said.