“You’re Telling Yourself, Man, Please, No”: Jeff Gordon’s Big Fear While Dominating a Race Amid Kyle Larson’s Bristol Win

Jeff Gordon may have been as worried, if not more so, than Kyle Larson at how Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway would play out.

In fact, Gordon may have had flashbacks from some similar moments in his own NASCAR Hall of Fame career.

Larson absolutely dominated the event, leading a race-high 421 laps of the 500-lap race. It was the second straight Cup race at Bristol (and his third win there overall) that Larson dominated, leading 462 laps during last year’s playoff race there.

But Gordon has seen so many seemingly sure things end up not the way he had hoped for that you can never assume anything until the winning car crosses the start-finish line first.

“As a driver and a team, you’re just waiting for (potential problems to suddenly occur),” Gordon said after Sunday’s race. “You’re telling yourself, ‘Man, please, no, please, no, please, no.’ But usually it does happen, right? It’s almost inevitable when you have a dominating car like that that something happens.”

That’s why, sometimes, it’s best if a race has a close finish rather than to see someone dominate like Larson did in Sunday’s race, finishing more than two seconds ahead of runner-up Denny Hamlin.

“It’s almost like more often than not that the win doesn’t come in a dominating performance like that,” Gordon acknowledged. “So, yeah, you’re feeling every vibration, you know every lap car that you come up to, you just think that something is going to happen.”

Gordon Was Worried If Larson Could Hold On

Gordon’s heart almost skipped a few beats when Larson had a problem with a half-dozen laps left in the race and quickly wondered if Larson could hold on.

“He got in the wall with, like, I don’t know, five or six to go,” Gordon said. “So I think you’re really trying to tell yourself, hey, don’t make any mistakes here, but at the same time, you’re really hoping that the rest of the field doesn’t make any mistakes either.

“So, yeah, for me, I think it was just, like, when is it coming, when is it coming, because I want to be prepared, because I don’t want to be too upset when it comes, and it never came. You’re happy when you have that kind of a performance. You know, you kind of feel like it’s deserving to finish it off.”