Luckless Jeff Gordon enters Sonoma as early race favorite

There is every reason to believe that Jeff Gordon’s string of bad luck will end on Sunday, allowing him to join his Hendrick Motorsport teammates as a winner in the 2012 Sprint Cup season.
Now that the dust has settled on Dale Earnhardt Jr.‘s return to victory lane, all eyes shift to the rolling hills of Sonoma - a road course. When going through a list of favorites, only one name seems remotely plausible - Jeff Gordon.
It must seem crazy, right? After all, the four-time champion has yet to cross ‘falling meteors’ and ‘locusts” off his race win-negating bingo card. The bad luck has to run out at some point and Sonoma seems as logical a choice as any entering this Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350.
Sound crazy? Here’s the reasoning.
Jeff Gordon is the active wins leader at road courses, winning nine times in 38 starts, including four at Sonoma. While he hasn’t won there since 2006, Gordon hasn’t finished out of the top-10 since.

He has recent success too, finishing second to Kurt Busch in last year’s race. Gordon was the fastest car on the track in the closing laps but simply ran out of time.
Conventional wisdom says this sort of bad luck can’t last forever. The summer schedule features some of Gordon’s most successful tracks including Sonoma, Daytona, Indianapolis, Pocono and Watkins Glen. Gordon’s running out of time to save his season but Brad Keselowski’s impressive summer last year set precedence. Gordon can make the Chase. He can even crack the top-10 but the consistency has to start with wins.
Recognizing the opportunity that Sonoma represents, Gordon wasted no time tossing the gauntlet. In practice, Gordon clocked-in at 1:15.653, easily the fastest car in the session. He backed that up in qualifying, and was on pace to take the pole until the final two corners.

Is this the race where Gordon finally gets back on track?
“I’m really pleased with the car right now,” Gordon said. “It was doing a lot of the things that you need it to in order to have a good race car. Hopefully, we can back that up on Sunday.”

Gordon set the goal, now it’s time for the four-time champion to execute.

Complete qualifying results can be found after the jump.

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