By The Commish

It’s simply the best time of the racing year -- the week before Daytona. The souvenir rigs are already on the road to Florida, stuffed with hats, T-shirts, and hope. New crew members have been hired and are slowly fitting into their slots on the team. All the new cars the teams have built since October, both traditional bodies and Cars of Tomorrow, $19 million worth per team are being lovingly bodied, buffed, and decaled. While engineers crunch the numbers from January’s tests, the crews stock the haulers, PR reps mail out press kits, and everyone focuses on the first week of a 40-week grind with excitement and anticipation. Right now, every team is tied for the lead in the Nextel Cup standings.

For Jeff Gordon's team, this looks to be a watershed year. While last year's sixth-place finish was a considerable improvement over 2005, the team experienced its fair share of growing pains under new crew chief Steve Letarte. Inexplicable mechanical failures, other people’s wrecks, a few instances of undeniable error, and the increased competitive level of the Cup series left Gordon with only two wins for the season. For a team used to being at the top of the Cup standings, 2006 was a worrisome year for the DuPont squad. Whether the 2006 results showed a young team about to hit its stride, as Gordon contends, or an aging champion slowly receding from the front remains to be seen. For the first time in many years, few if any NASCAR prognosticators have picked Gordon to win the 2007 championship. Many are speculating that his star may be fading as younger, hungrier drivers emerge to challenge his legacy. And the "Gordon will be distracted" voices are sounding their chorus, pointing to Gordon's recent marriage and impending fatherhood as signs that racing no longer takes first place among his priorities. Gordon himself has admitted that he doesn't know what the impact of having a child will be on him, even as he denies that he has lost any of the hunger for victory that has driven him in the past.

This new year, too, brings changes to Gordon's status in the Cup series. When Mark Martin misses his first race, Gordon will become NASCAR's 'Iron Man,' with the longest sequence not only of starts but of consecutive starts without missing a race in the series. Hard as it is to accept, this will be Gordon's 15th trip to Daytona. It seems like yesterday that he was clutching his trophy in the Twin 125's in Victory Lane in 1993 and a grudging Dale Earnhardt was admitting "that Gordon kid" would be someone to watch. This also makes the sixth year that Cup has returned to Daytona since Earnhardt's death, and more than half the starting field for the 2007 Daytona 500 will never have raced with Earnhardt at the Cup level, so much has the cast of characters in NASCAR changed. Where Gordon was once the much-younger kid of racing, now he's one of the elder statesmen, along with Martin, Dale Jarrett, Ken Schrader, Bobby Labonte, and the returning Ricky Rudd. By comparison, Jeff Burton is almost 100 starts behind Gordon and Tony Stewart nearly 200 starts behind him; the entire rest of the field falls further back than these. Gordon's drive and determination, coupled with strong team support, have kept him so far from falling into the competitive twilight his peers have embraced. But how long can this continue?

And it’s even a question as to whether Gordon is still clearly the dominant face of Hendrick Motorsports, given the mercurial rise to success of his teammate and protégé Jimmie Johnson. Of course, the last time Gordon lost a championship to his teammate was 1996, and we all remember 1997 and 1998, the two most dominant years of Gordon's Cup career, where he won a total of 23 races, had 48 top-five finishes, and won 8 poles. If Gordon reacts to the challenge thrown down by Johnson by returning to his winning ways, it will be a thrilling season for Gordon fans. But much has changed in the series in the last decade, and it’s highly unlikely one car could dominate by so much any more, no matter how determined or talented its driver may be.

Still, fans hope and pray that this year will be Gordon's year once more and that he’ll race back to the front and reclaim his position as a dominating force in the sport. Though there may be grey in the sideburns and a few wrinkles around those blue-grey eyes, fans still see Gordon as the first and brightest Young Gun in NASCAR racing. And so as they point their attention toward Volusia County, sync up their computers and polish their TV screens, and prepare for their treasured trips to the track, Gordon Nation faces the new season with measured hope and growing excitement. Right now, Gordon is tied for the lead in the standings. He's on top, where his fans want him to stay. The season of hope is upon us. Gentlemen, start your engines!

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