A Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship has put Todd Gordon among the sport’s elite crew chiefs.
Like so many working in a variety of areas in the sport, Gordon started at the local level. His early career was spent in the short track world mainly at New York state’s Oswego Speedway. But even though he had aspirations to move up the stock car racing ladder, Gordon could not imagine reaching the pinnacle like he did this year helping guide Joey Logano to the 2018 title.
“No, when we packed up and moved south I was just hoping to work in racing, and that was back in ’98,” Gordon remembered. “But you know, it’s a testament to opportunity, and this guy to my right (team owner Roger Penske), he believed in me. I got a shot at the Xfinity program, then Nationwide, and showed a little bit of promise and got this opportunity.
“I think you’ve just got to keep your head down and good things can happen.”
Winning this year’s championship was an even more impressive accomplishment for Gordon and company after what happened in 2017, when Logano missed the playoffs entirely. A penalty after an April Richmond win disallowed the victory as an automatic berth on the playoff grid and Logano went the rest of the regular season without visiting Victory Lane again.
Gordon says that experience as well as other near-misses provided additional motivation for this season’s effort.
“You take every situation, obviously ’14 and ’16 we were in the hunt,” Gordon said. “We just didn’t completely cleanly execute. That’s a learning opportunity. You look at those things and say, hey, we made it this far, now how do we clean up what we need to get through. I think it helped kind of mold the path of what we needed to focus on this weekend, and it was successful in understanding that.
“You take situations when I think you learn more from your mistakes and your faults than you do from your successes, and those are learning opportunities.”
Through it all Gordon believes the biggest strength of his team is the bond shared among all members of the organization with Logano.
“You can’t say enough for what the whole team, everybody on the Shell Pennzoil team, they believe in him,” he said.
“They’re friends. I think that’s the biggest thing is we’ve got a group that are all friends and comrades, and they believe in him and would do anything for him, and he came in standing his ground.”
