From Winner to Champion, Part 4: Execution, evolution and some radio magic

Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment in a seven-part series celebrating the 30th anniversary of Jeff Gordon’s first NASCAR Cup Series championship and the first for Hendrick Motorsports in 1995. Join us each Thursday as we relive all the moments and talk to many of the players involved in one of the organization's and the sport's most unforgettable and important seasons.  

For Jon.

CONCORD, N.C. - February. Daytona Beach, Florida. 

Crisp morning breezes are combated by mid-day sun, with enough warmth and light bathing the coast - and a certain 2.5-mile, historic, asphalt loop - to hint at spring on the horizon. 

For a race car driver, crew chief, team member or fan, nothing arrives with more promise or hope than Speedweek at Daytona International Speedway. 

Of course, back in 1995, it was still, "Speedweeks", with the biggest discernable difference being more valuable time at the World Center of Racing at a mighty fine time of year to be in eastern Florida. 

Armed with a brand-new hot rod - the aerodynamically pioneering Chevrolet Monte Carlo - and coming off of a season that included his first two career wins, Jeff Gordon certainly rolled into Daytona that February with a spring in his step and hope in his heart. 

“I know we were building momentum, and the confidence was building right along with it and I think early testing of the Monte Carlo showed a lot of promise, so I think we were pretty optimistic,” Gordon told HendrickMotorsports.com ahead of this series. 

Optimistic, yes. 

Realistic? Well, at least somewhat according to Gordon. 

After all, Dale Earnhardt was entering the year fresh off of his record-tying seventh NASCAR Cup Series championship and his fourth in five years. He was seemingly poised to rule stock car racing for the unforeseeable future. And when it came to the crown, he already had an established and formidable pack of chasers, names like Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin. Both drivers had finished in the top three in points in each of the prior two seasons. 

REWIND: Jeff Gordon wins inaugural Brickyard 400 in 1994

Undoubtedly, with the aforementioned victories - the 1994 Coca-Cola 600 and the Brickyard 400 - Gordon made strides in his second full-time season. He'd also improved his points standing from 14th to eighth. 

But with an established gridlock atop the sport, did Gordon really believe his team was ready for a title push? 

“If I had to guess, (crew chief) Ray (Evernham) was probably thinking championship, but I don’t know that I was quite yet," Gordon admitted. "It’s a big leap to go from where we were to feeling like you’re championship material."

There were a few key numbers that illustrated the gap Gordon alluded to. 

Speed wasn't an issue. The team had proven that from the jump, winning its Daytona Duel race to open the 1993 season and showcasing it again at two of the biggest events on the '94 calendar. 

If anything stood in the way of the 24 team ascending to the highest echelon of stock car racing it was consistency, or a lack thereof. Between 1993 and 1994, Gordon piled up 14 top-five finishes to go with 25 top 10s. But also, across those same 64 starts, he had as many DNFs as he did lead-lap finishes (21). 

RELATED: From Winner to Champion, Part 3: Championship Metal

“If you look back at 1994, they won a couple of big races but they tore up a lot of stuff too. I think they went through 16 rear clips or something like that," Hendrick Motorsports teammate Terry Labonte said. "I didn't think they could've gotten that good in that short of a period of time."  

And that seemed to be the prevailing thought as the season was set to open. 

Winston Kelley, now the executive director of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, was establishing himself as a voice of the sport with the Motor Racing Network. He'd done all 31 races in 1994. 

“Going into it, I don’t know if anyone would’ve had him in the Mount Rushmore of potential candidates in terms of the title, but I would say given the promise they’d shown in 1994, they would’ve been in the conversation,” Kelley told HendrickMotorsports.com. “Maybe top 10 or 12. But would I have thought they’d be in the top three or four or five? Probably not. You had Dale, Mark, Rusty and those guys. Dale Jarrett had started running good too.” 

Even with the progress the team had shown in '94, Gordon had still finished second within his own garage. Labonte scored three victories in his debut season at Hendrick Motorsports, powering his way to a seventh-place finish in the points standings. 

For Evernham, Labonte's success only sharpened his desire to hasten his team's march forward. 

“It was almost competitive between the three teams and that in itself drove us,” Evernham said. “You want to be the leader of your pack, so that competitiveness between the three cars actually worked in our advantage.”

RELATED: From Winner to Champion, Part 2: Championship Material

As teams descended on Volusia County that spring, few could've guessed that the apple cart was about to be upset. Even fewer would've guessed that it would be the 23-year-old driver/37-year-old crew chief combination clad in rainbow-colored uniforms that would upset it. 

And that way of thinking likely didn't change after the DAYTONA 500, either. 

It takes time to progress from winner to champion. It also takes time to change the perception of a race team. 

But as the 1995 progressed, Gordon and the 24 team parlayed an explosive but volatile start into a consistent reliance that showed up, along with speed, each and every week at the race track. 

Brian Whitesell, now vice president of manufacturing at Hendrick Motorsports, was an engineer and a key car builder on the 24 team that year. 

"We had started to bring a little different way of racing that happens even now and every few years, the script changes and you have to continue to adapt," Whitesell said. "We hit on that with Jeff’s talent and a little different methodology. We did a lot of work to make the cars consistent, which played into the points standings at the time. A lot of the things we did coupled with Jeff’s talent, that's where we slowly pulled away. Back then it was common to have suspension failures, hub failures, brakes, engines, radiators - there was a myriad of failures and eliminating those one-by-one and piling up points ... and then we also had the performance to back that up."

And for Gordon, it was time to start fulfilling the promise Evernham had seen years prior. 

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"He captured it the first time he stepped on campus before he was hired. We talked after that and he was like, 'Man, if you can't win races and a championship at that place, you can't do it anywhere. They've got everything you can possibly need,'" Gordon recalled. "To hear that from him, someone I had a lot of confidence and trusted in his knowledge ... to me, maybe other people didn't see it or recognize it at that time but all that mattered was the people on the team that we were going to surround ourselves with. 

"And I know one thing; it didn’t take long once the season started to feel like this is the year we can get it done.” 

'Magic on the radio'

It's funny how statistics and results can read three decades removed from the moment. 

Just empty numbers on a page, void of context.

For instance, if one were to look up the 1995 DAYTONA 500 today, he/she would find that Gordon finished a nondescript 22nd. Sure, the 61 laps led might arch an eyebrow, but if anything, it would only speak to the inconsistencies that had limited the team through the growing pains of its formative years. A ton of speed with a middling finish.  

This time around, it wasn't driver error or mechanical failure that took Gordon out of contention for the win. After spending much of the afternoon as a fixture at the front of the field, a slow pit stop relegated Gordon to the middle of the pack. After making up ground, another miscue on pit road - dropping the jack too early - damaged the 24 car and it never drove the same. Shortly after, with the stretch run approaching, Gordon brushed the wall and had to pit, losing a lap along the way.

It would've been easy, even understandable, for a 23-year-old, hungry driver looking for a breakthrough, all while under the pressure of driving for an organization still searching for its first championship, to play the blame game. NASCAR history is littered with radio transmissions of angry voices from inside the cockpit lambasting crew members after miscues. 

That's not what happened on that afternoon in Daytona Beach. What did happen, according to Evernham, was a moment that would loom as large in the 1995 championship chase as any of the seven wins the 24 team would go on to gather. 

RELATED: From Winner to Champion, Part 1: 'One Hot Night'

“Instead of Jeff unloading on everybody that day, he said, ‘Look, we had a great day, we had a great car, we’re going to get them next week.’ That was like magic on the radio that day," Evernham said. "I think everybody stepped up and never wanted to let Jeff Gordon down again.” 

"Jeff was always mature beyond his years. For a young guy who had his first chance to win the DAYTONA 500 - and they had a really good car, probably the strongest car in the field along with (eventual winner) Sterling (Marlin), who was always good at Daytona - to pick the crew up says a lot," Kelley echoed. "I think that chemistry you hear about from everybody, things like that make championships. How people deal with a bad day has more impact than how they celebrate wins." 

Race wins and humbling moments

Gordon and the No. 24 team would get several opportunities to celebrate wins in 1995, and they presented themselves early and often. 

If Gordon's performance throughout the majority of the DAYTONA 500 was a hint of things to come, a dominant performance in a victory at Rockingham Speedway (then North Carolina Motor Speedway) the following week served as confirmation. At least in terms of speed, the No. 24 would be a force in the weeks to come. 

Starting from the pole, which would be a staple of the team throughout the mid-to-late 90s as well, Gordon led 329 of 492 laps including the final 83 in holding off Bobby Labonte by 1.19 seconds. 

During a postrace interview, pit road reporter Ned Jarrett remarked, "The car was so good, it looked like at times there that you couldn't back up even if you wanted to."

For Gordon, gone were the tears and aw, shucks-ness of the Coca-Cola 600 win. Certainly, his third career victory came with joy, but the maturity Gordon had shown in handling adversity at Daytona came through in his television interview as well. 

"The new Monte Carlo is an awesome car. I never thought we'd have them like we did today," Gordon told Jarrett. "The longer we went green the better that thing was. And we had to work on it; it wasn't that perfect at the beginning. It came to us; the track came to us. Ray Evernham and the Rainbow Warriors, they did a heck of a job."

But while the team was pushing its speed to new heights, the lows continued to hinder its big-picture process. A week after the win, Gordon was right back on the pole at Richmond Raceway but a mechanical issue took the No. 24 out of the race less than halfway through, resulting in a 36th-place finish. 

Meanwhile, Labonte visited victory lane, moving up to fourth in the points standings. Gordon plummeted to 13th. 

“The car was strong, the team was strong. I felt like I was just really getting comfortable and confident in knowing what I wanted in the car at all the different tracks,” Gordon said. “Obviously, wins do a lot for you, but it’s a long season. You gain this confidence. It’s, ‘Yeah, we can win every week,’ and then you get knocked down a little bit and you’re like, ‘Woah, hold on, we’re going to have to work really hard at this and it’s not going to come easy.’”

“It was never just, ‘We’re on a stretch that nobody is going to touch us. It just seemed like it was week-to-week of, ‘Man, we’re good.’ We’d get on a streak of winning some races and then there were some humbling moments too.” 

But the group kept fighting. A week after Richmond came the first of two dates at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The second would serve as the season finale. 

As it turned out, both would be pivotal events on the 1995 schedule for the 24 team. 

For the second time in four races, Gordon was able to finish off a dominant day, this time pacing 250 of 328 laps in rolling to victory lane for the fourth time in his career. 

But again, the team couldn't get off the roller coaster. 

Race No. 5 came at Darlington Raceway. Gordon collected his third pole of the young season and yet again, had what was likely, the best car, pacing 155 of the first 199 circuits. Yet, Gordon was collected at the front of the field when Bobby Labonte made contact with the lapped car of Randy LaJoie just past the start-finish line on a restart. 

REWIND: Ray Evernham pit call sends Jeff Gordon to Coke 600 win in 1994

The beginning of the 1995 proved a couple of things - one, the team had reached a new level in terms of performance capabilities and two, it had as much fight as it did speed. 

And that mentality trickled down from driver and crew chief. 

“It took a lot of effort to establish that reliability and Jeff’s talent pushed us to operate at his level as well," Whitesell recalled. "It just kept feeding on itself to continuously improve what we were doing. Every component from a radiator hub to the gears to the transmission, all of those things kept improving to get that consistency to operate the entire vehicle.”

So, when the NASCAR Cup Series marched on to Bristol Motor Speedway the following week, Gordon and the team was ready. 

This time, it was 95 laps led and the team's third win of the season that pointed the No. 24 back in the right direction. 

In just six weeks to open 1995, Gordon earned more wins (three) than he had in two full seasons prior. That was the good news. 

However, those three victories were paired with three finishes of 22nd or worse. And as good as the wins felt, in the big picture, it added up to a fourth-place points standing, 154 markers behind the leader, Earnhardt. 

Yet, despite the bumps in the road, everything felt different. While the results weren't quite consistent yet, the race-winning speed was, and the 24 bunch was bringing it to the race track every week. 

“We won more races in the first six events of that year than we did the first two years of our team, so that was really cool," Evernham said. “A lot of it was maturity and confidence. Jeff and I had little experience in Cup when we came in and did that. It took us a long time – Jeff figuring out the cars and coming into his own."

'...And then, they showed up'

A funny thing happened after the win at Bristol: Gordon followed it up with another great run, finishing second at North Wilkesboro Speedway. Then came a third-place run at Martinsville Speedway. 

Yet another second-place showing at Talladega Superspeedway following that briefly put Gordon in a tie for the points lead with Earnhardt. It would be short lived, Earnhardt responded with a victory at Sonoma Raceway, the only road-course win in his career. Gordon would then finish 33rd in the Coca-Cola 600 after starting on the pole, pushing him back to fourth and 101 markers behind. 

History is never recognized in the moment. Even as Gordon continued to display his driving prowess and as Evernham and company continued to crank out fast race cars, few could've seen what the rest of 1995, and most of the rest of the decade, would hold. 

But with every lap led and with every new race track conquered, the 24 team began to acquire an aura of inevitability. Bad days started to become less frequent and when Gordon wasn't crashed, he was usually out front. 

Whether he was a preseason favorite or not didn't much matter by the time the Cup Series headed to Dover Motor Speedway on June 4 of that year for the 12th event of the season. What no one could've known, is that a run-of-the-mill sixth-place finish would kickstart the first long run of brilliance in Gordon's career, one that would turn the 1995 season on its head and push the No. 24 team to the pinnacle of the sport. 

Yet, there had been enough signs already. And team owner Rick Hendrick could sense the tide turning for good.  

“Jeff had shown flashes – winning the 600 and the Brickyard were huge moments – but we knew the key was consistency," Hendrick told HendrickMotorsports.com. "Ray had built a team that was incredibly tight-knit. They trusted each other. Jeff was still young, but he was mature beyond his years in the car. You never counted out Dale Earnhardt, but it did feel like a shift was happening.”

REWIND: Jeff Gordon ties Dale Earnhardt on all-time wins list at Phoenix

“I feel like by race 10, it was, ‘OK, we’re starting to see who the players are and we’ve got to get through the summer and really understand it,'" Gordon added. “I was so nervous because we’d never won a championship. I’m sure Ray was feeling a lot of pressure. The whole team was feeling a lot of pressure because Mr. Hendrick had never won a championship at that point. Nobody on the team had ever won a championship and we’re going up against some fierce competitors."

Speaking of which, they were starting to take notice as well. Even the ones in the same race shop. 

“It was obvious (Gordon) was very talented and obviously, he was going to do well,” Labonte said. “To be that young and be as good as he was and when you look at these race tracks, it’s not like he was winning at the same track every weekend. Typically, that takes four or five years in the Cup Series just to gain the experience at different tracks because everything you learned this weekend doesn’t really apply to next weekend.” 

Earnhardt, as expected, was in the midst of yet another championship-caliber season. He'd started 1995 with five-consecutive top-four finishes and had a pair of wins and only three showings of worse than sixth place by the conclusion of the Dover race. He led the points standings by 100 tallies and seemed to be more than a third of the way toward a ground-breaking eighth title. 

And there were others. Sterling Marlin would parlay an opening win in the Great American Race into likely the best season of his career and he was planted in second place behind Earnhardt when the checkered flag waved at Dover. The ever-steady Martin was fourth and putting pressure on Gordon in third. 

REWIND: Jeff Gordon wins fifth and final Brickyard 400

But fresh off the win at Sonoma, a sixth place at in the 600 and a fifth at Dover, the mood was still fairly rosy in the No. 3 camp. But Earnhardt's crew chief Andy Petree, who shared a friendship with Evernham and who'd played a vital part in pairing him with Gordon, could feel the storm brewing. 

And the rest of the year would birth what would become one of NASCAR's greatest and most endearing rivalries. 

“We kind of knew it was coming, you just never know when," Petree said. "I felt confident in the fact that we were going to be more consistent; nobody scored points like Dale did and he had a sense for that old points system. He never threw away points. We felt like we could handle it. Mark Martin and Rusty Wallace had been our biggest competitors, we were probably more looking toward them and how were we going to beat them ... And then, they showed up.”