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Jeff Gordon‘s final Cup Series win came at Martinsville Speedway 11 years ago this weekend, and it sent him to the season finale with a chance at a fifth championship in his last full-time season.
Gordon won the Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 on November 1, 2015, in the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. It was the 93rd Cup win of his career and his ninth at Martinsville. NASCAR shared his post-race celebration on X ahead of Sunday’s Xfinity 500.
https://x.com/NASCAR/status/2115806024984576388
How Gordon won it
Gordon led 35 of the 500 laps. He passed A.J. Allmendinger for the lead with 21 laps to go, the last lead change of the race, and held off Jamie McMurray on a restart with two laps left.
After the race, Gordon climbed out of the car, stood on top of it and raised his arms to the crowd.
A shot at a fifth title
The win locked Gordon into the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway three races later. He finished sixth there, third among the four title contenders.
Gordon, a four-time Cup champion, is third on the all-time Cup wins list with 93.
After Martinsville
Gordon retired from full-time racing after the 2015 season and joined FOX’s NASCAR broadcast team in 2016. That summer, he came back to drive Hendrick’s No. 88 Chevrolet for several races while Dale Earnhardt Jr. was out with concussion symptoms.
He stayed in the FOX booth through the 2021 season, then became vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports. He was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2019.
Hendrick at Martinsville this weekend
Gordon’s team brings Chase Elliott, the winner of the spring race at Martinsville, and Chase leader Kyle Larson into Sunday’s race. Larson can clinch the Cup title at Martinsville if he leaves with a lead of at least 77 points.
The Xfinity 500 is Sunday, November 1, at 2 p.m. ET on NBC from Martinsville Speedway in Ridgeway, Virginia, 11 years to the day after Gordon’s last win.
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