"When a certain number of races went by, then they (the fans and media) started wondering, is it the personal issues? I can't really say that the personal side of things was preventing us from winning races. We were in position and had things break or had wrecks happen. I don't see how anyone could possibly say my personal life caused that. But the stuff going on in my personal life compounded what was happening on the track and made for a tougher first half of the year."
While the entanglements of divorce were a daily consideration, if not a distraction, for Gordon, when he got in the car, racing was his sole focus, Loomis says.
"I tell people all the time, whatever was in the car, he got all of it out of it," Loomis says. "When he got out of the car, he had to think about what was going on with the divorce stuff. But when he was in the car, he was 100 percent into it."
Racing provided Gordon with what he called "an amazing kind of therapy," and so did his parents, team owner Rick Hendrick, and others whose opinion he could trust.
"I never allowed the distractions to really affect me in my work with driving the race car," Gordon says. "I don't think people can really understand that unless you get behind the wheel of a car and drive as hard as we do.
"I always put my faith in God and allowed Him to guide me. I'm not somebody who dwells on problems and worries too much, but certainly I'm going to talk to people about certain issues: people I respect and trust."
Down To BusinessAt the same time, however, Loomis had to re-examine his relationship with Gordon in order to cure an on-track disease called "mediocrity." Through the end of May, Gordon had managed only three Top-5 finishes.
"For the first two years, we had strictly a business relationship, but then that evolved into a friendship as well," Loomis says. "And I was trying to be careful about that because I'm friends with both Jeff and Brooke. And then you see what happens with Bobby Labonte and (crew chief) Jimmy Makar, who are two of the best in the business. They were really good friends, but eventually I think that hurt their racing. It was kind of the same thing with Jeff and me, and by about the third or fourth month, we got back around to mostly a business relationship because that's what we, as a team, needed."
By that point, Gordon and Loomis were painfully aware that they had lost ground in a sport that never stands still. Human nature set in, and the fear of fixing what wasn't broken came back to haunt the team on race day. They didn't fall behind the rest of the pack because they were liberal in their thinking, but because they weren't getting radical enough, Gordon says. "We were using setups that worked well for us in 2001-setups that won six races and a championship. That's proof of how fast things develop and how you've got to be ready to expand and grow and move."
Loomis says history should have taught him to be unafraid of being bold. In his short tenure at Hendrick Motorsports, he had already experienced the pitfalls of conservatism in Gordon's chassis options.
When Loomis left Petty Enterprises after the 1999 season and signed on as Gordon's crew chief, he was understandably leery about being too pushy too soon. The result was relatively catastrophic, as Gordon finished ninth in points-his worst showing in the standings since his 1993 rookie season.