During that off-season, Loomis and his short-term predecessor, Brian Whitesell, agreed to take a new approach to Gordon's setups for 2001. The change of battle plans resulted in twice as many victories (six) as Gordon scored in 2000, 18 Top-5 finishes, a championship, and nearly $11 million in earnings.
A Rookie GuideIn spite of the one-year turnaround, Gordon's team fell victim to human nature and got conservative again. Magnifying Gordon's on-track problems was the immediate success of Johnson and his crew chief, Chad Knaus.
As a first-year pairing, they weren't shackled by tradition and didn't feel compelled to follow established Hendrick blueprints. Their ideas worked in ways that Gordon's and Loomis' didn't, and Johnson consistently outperformed his teammate/boss. Johnson scored his first Winston Cup victory on April 28 at California Speedway, and then won again on June 2 at Dover.
With the latter win, Johnson took over second in the point standings with Gordon one spot back. But Gordon still didn't seem to be hitting on all cylinders, and he and Loomis agreed to rely less on the past and more on the present, in effect casting their lot with Johnson and Knaus.
"They were going against the grain with setups, and they had so much success the first of the year," Loomis says. "We weren't winning, and we needed to open our minds to those kinds of different things that Jimmie and Chad were doing."
Loomis admits that changing course was a way of saving his own skin.
"We're in the performance business, and I know that, like a head coach in the NFL or the NBA, we get paid to perform," Loomis says. "There was a time when I was very concerned over my future. I knew I'd have a job somewhere in Winston Cup racing, but I wasn't sure whether it would be with Hendrick Motorsports or Jeff Gordon. I felt like we had a good team, but having two cars in-house made things different across the board."
The breakthrough came as the circuit returned to its Southern roots for a late-summer run. Gordon ended his drought at Bristol, leading the most laps and then shoving Rusty Wallace out of the lead to capture the Sharpie 500. The win, also an end to the losing streak, was a huge relief to Gordon and Loomis. "Bristol brought me off the respirator," Loomis says. "I was breathing on my own again after that."
A week later, Gordon was back in Victory Lane, this time in the Southern 500 at Darlington, where he led all but three of the final 127 laps. It was Gordon's fifth victory in NASCAR's oldest superspeedway event, tying the mark held by Cale Yarborough. It also moved Gordon into second in the points, just 91 markers behind the leader, Sterling Marlin.
But just as quickly as the team found its groove, it lost it-big-time. Gordon's engine broke the following Saturday night at Richmond, and then he could only muster a 14th-place finish at New Hampshire. The next week, at Dover, Gordon ran poorly and then was swept up in a crash.
A win a week later at Kansas City was followed by yet another blown engine at Talladega, and that 42nd-place finish was the death knell to his title hopes. He finished 36th at Martinsville after being shoved into the backstretch, then rebounded to finish 6th, 5th, 3rd, and 5th to end the season and capture 4th in the points. The finale at Homestead saw him start from 37th-the first time in his career that he had used a provisional to make the field.