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laconic1 · 04-29-2005, 03:12 PM

Hmmm. One of the thing you have to keep in mind when comparing Gordon's winning percentage to Petty's win percentage is that Richard didn't win a race in his last eight years driving. Realistically a combination of his team falling behind the times, and Petty's skills fading after his prime led to him basically being a backmarker the last 6 or 7 years of his career. Gordon has publicly stated that he doesn't plan to keep driving past the age of 40 so I don't think his numbers will be diluted by end of career mediocrity like Petty's were.

As for Earnhardt, the thing you have to keep in mind is that with the exception of his first championship year in 1980, Earnhardt was in some terrible race cars for the first half of the 1980's. From 1981 to 1985 he only won 9 races. A race driver is really and truly in their prime during their early thirties. Bud Moore, Earnhardt's car owner in '82 and '83 has always said Earnhardt was the best that he had seen. This from a guy that has had the likes of Curtis Turner and Joe Weatherly in his cars. Moore also stated they would have won about a dozen races a year those two years if they hadn't had so many problems with engines blowing up. Back then the Ford teams had major problems with valvespring reliability, and they weren't able to solve it until Earnhardt went back to Richard Childress. When Earnhardt went back to Childress it still took a couple of years to get the reliability of Childress' Chevrolets up to snuff. This was back in the days when $1.5 million a year was a huge budget and teams didn't have as much access to R&D as they do today, not to mention improvements in technology. Compare this to Gordon who has been in top caliber equipment his entire career, in an era where reliability has never been better.

Gordon is very good, but I don't think it is even possible to accurately compare him to Earnhardt, Petty, Pearson, Yarborough, Curtis Turner, Fireball Roberts, Junior Johnson and others, just because they all drove in different eras with different approaches, and were in their primes at different times.

04-29-2005, 03:12 PM	#17 (permalink)
laconic1 Junkie	Hmmm. One of the thing you have to keep in mind when comparing Gordon's winning percentage to Petty's win percentage is that Richard didn't win a race in his last eight years driving. Realistically a combination of his team falling behind the times, and Petty's skills fading after his prime led to him basically being a backmarker the last 6 or 7 years of his career. Gordon has publicly stated that he doesn't plan to keep driving past the age of 40 so I don't think his numbers will be diluted by end of career mediocrity like Petty's were. As for Earnhardt, the thing you have to keep in mind is that with the exception of his first championship year in 1980, Earnhardt was in some terrible race cars for the first half of the 1980's. From 1981 to 1985 he only won 9 races. A race driver is really and truly in their prime during their early thirties. Bud Moore, Earnhardt's car owner in '82 and '83 has always said Earnhardt was the best that he had seen. This from a guy that has had the likes of Curtis Turner and Joe Weatherly in his cars. Moore also stated they would have won about a dozen races a year those two years if they hadn't had so many problems with engines blowing up. Back then the Ford teams had major problems with valvespring reliability, and they weren't able to solve it until Earnhardt went back to Richard Childress. When Earnhardt went back to Childress it still took a couple of years to get the reliability of Childress' Chevrolets up to snuff. This was back in the days when $1.5 million a year was a huge budget and teams didn't have as much access to R&D as they do today, not to mention improvements in technology. Compare this to Gordon who has been in top caliber equipment his entire career, in an era where reliability has never been better. Gordon is very good, but I don't think it is even possible to accurately compare him to Earnhardt, Petty, Pearson, Yarborough, Curtis Turner, Fireball Roberts, Junior Johnson and others, just because they all drove in different eras with different approaches, and were in their primes at different times.