"Every season's different," Gordon says. "You never know what it's going to take or who's going to get on a roll. When we won Bristol and Darlington back to back, I think everybody thought, 'Shoot, here we go on a run to the championship.' Then we had a couple of the worst weeks we had all year long.
"You never take anything for granted. You go all out, hope it's your year, and do the things you think that it takes to get on top. You've got to fight from the first race to the last race. There's not one point in the season that you race for points or do things where you let up.
"That's probably what's changed most about our sport in recent years. I mean, you not only have to fight hard every race, you fight hard every lap of every race. Six or seven years ago, you could save tires, save the car, cars would fall out and all you had to do was be there at end; and if you played smart, you'd be there at the end of race. Now you've got pit strategy involved in ways that it wasn't before, you've got cars that are stuck like glue the whole tire run because of the downforce the cars make, and the tires last forever. A lot has changed, and it's tough to keep up with all of it all of the time."
A Season Of ChangeMore changes were in store for 2003. Some in Gordon's pit crew have been replaced, and then there's the learning curve inherent in a redesigned Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS. Those kinds of regular shake-ups, Loomis says, help to keep a team excited about its short- and long-term tasks.
"The new car has better balance, downforce-wise, front to rear and with less drag, and that's what we've been up against with Dodge and Ford the past two years," Loomis says. "We're pretty excited to be able to come out with a package like that and compete on more equal terms."
Loomis believes the Chevy camp should whip the Monte Carlo into shape quickly thanks in part to the defection of Joe Gibbs Racing (the title team in 2000 and 2002) to the Chevy contingent.
"The new Chevrolet and the new (Pontiac) Grand Prix should help the GM teams a lot when it comes to racing in traffic," Loomis says. "For the last two years, if we were out front, we were extra strong, but if you got behind somebody, you couldn't get around them. I think the 2003 Monte Carlo and Grand Prix will definitely bring some parity between the manufacturers."
And as if those changes weren't enough to keep a team stoked, there's always Gordon's rock-solid confidence that he can do special things with a race car.
"You go through times when you work just as hard at doing everything the same and it's just not happening," Gordon says. "You just start to question a lot of things. My confidence in my driving, I don't think that I ever really questioned that."