Jeff Gordon won four Cup Series championships as a driver. And still, he couldn\u2019t believe himself when Kyle Larson brought home the 15th Cup Series championship for Hendrick Motorsports at Phoenix in November. It wasn\u2019t that he lacked trust in Larson or any of the other crew members on the No. 5 team to win. It was more of a joyful shock that comes in the aftermath of incredible hard work.<\/p>\n
The team vice chairman had been in the pit box of the No. 9 team when Larson<\/a> crossed the checkered flag and confirmed that he was the owner of the 2025 crown. It was only when he got down from the box and began walking towards Victory Lane that the magnitude of the achievement began sinking into his heart. And even now, it isn\u2019t there yet fully.<\/p>\n He told<\/a> the media that being in meetings with crew chiefs, engineers, and drivers makes him realize how badly they want to get to Phoenix and lift the title.\u00a0He said, \u201cThen, when you see them pull that off, that\u2019s what pulls me in \u2013 the trust and belief and excitement and nervousness you have for them. I definitely felt that throughout the whole weekend \u2026 Then it was more, \u2018Holy cow, that just happened.\u2019 And I\u2019d say I\u2019m still a little bit in that mode.\u201d<\/p>\n Years or decades from now, the records won\u2019t speak about all the emotions that were behind the championship. Gordon knows this. He said with mature wisdom that can only be expected from the masters of the sport that it will just be known as the 15th championship of Hendrick Motorsports<\/a> and nothing more.<\/p>\n Even as he hasn\u2019t fully come to terms with what his men did in 2025, he is preparing them to go out and do it again in 2026. Such is the mindset of winners. He quipped, \u201cI think what our folks are so good at, no matter how good you did last year, they\u2019re working equally or even harder at raising the bar the next year.\u201d<\/p>\n The team will be adopting a new Chevrolet body for the 2026 season. Gordon is hard at work tuning the same to optimize performance and keep the good work running. Above all, he is thrilled to see what this \u201cupgrade\u201d can do for the already exemplary program that he has put together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeff Gordon won four Cup Series championships as a driver. And still, he couldn\u2019t believe himself when Kyle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,4385,4386,634,82],"class_list":["post-387803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-jeff-gordon","tag-kyle-larson","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}