Jeff Gordon Says Back Pain Could Curtail Career

CONCORD, N.C., May 21 -- With a wary eye toward NASCAR's longest race of the year, four-time champion Jeff Gordon was injected with an anti-inflammatory this week to quiet the nagging pain in his lower back.

So far, the treatment is working.

And as long as his No. 24 Chevrolet is handling well enough that he doesn't have to use the brakes too much entering the high-banked corners of Lowe's Motor Speedway, Gordon said he ought to be fine in Sunday's Coca-Cola 600.

But for the first time since acknowledging his back trouble earlier this year, Gordon conceded Thursday that if medication or surgery can't alleviate the discomfort over a full season, he will be forced to retire sooner than he had hoped.

Gordon will line up third in NASCAR's Memorial Day weekend marathon after being nipped for the pole Thursday by Ryan Newman (188.475 mph), whose Chevrolet runs on engines supplied by Gordon's team, Hendrick Motorsports.

Kyle Busch broke the chokehold Hendrick-built engines had on the top five starting spots by turning in the second-fastest lap around the 1.5-mile superspeedway in a Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota as daylight gave way to dusk.

Gordon, 37, started racing at age 5 and won more than 600 short-track events as a youngster. Schooled to contend for the Indianapolis 500, the phenom switched gears at 19 and headed south to try stock cars.

And on the way to his first lesson at Buck Baker's driving school in Rockingham, N.C., Gordon visited the famed oval just north of Charlotte, now known as Lowe's Motor Speedway. He was awestruck and could only imagine what it would be like to race there one day.

At 22, Gordon won his first major NASCAR race there, the 1994 Coca-Cola 600.

Less than three months later he won NASCAR's inaugural Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. And in short order, he supplanted Dale Earnhardt atop the sport's pecking order and won four championships in his first nine seasons.

At the time, Gordon seemed well positioned to match -- or possibly surpass -- the NASCAR record of seven championships, shared by Earnhardt and Richard Petty.

But his supremacy stalled in 2001, eclipsed in part by his younger teammate Jimmie Johnson, whom he helped land a job at Hendrick Motorsports.

Gordon hasn't won a Coca-Cola 600 since 1998. Since 1999, he has won just one race at Lowe's Motor Speedway -- the 500-miler in fall 2007.

But he insists he feels good about Sunday's race, despite the 600-mile distance. Short tracks such as Bristol Motor Speedway and Richmond International raceway, he said, jar his lower back far more, as do the circuit's two road courses.

But any amount of pain-related distraction behind the wheel is too much, Gordon added -- particularly when you're battling heavy traffic at 190 mph.

"A racecar driver -- to be 100 percent focused to make the car go as fast as it can, and to focus on the adjustments you need to make -- you have to be thinking about the car," Gordon said. "You don't want to be thinking about anything else or feeling anything else."