Jeff Gordon doesn't care if Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin are his Hendrick Motorsports teammates, all he wants to do is win Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series AMP Energy 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
Gordon knows a victory in Sunday's seventh race of the season is all but necessary in his hopes to overcome Martin and Johnson in the standings as the clock ticks down to the end of the season.
"I think that you get to this point in the season and the Chase and you start to separate yourself when you're battling them for the championship,” said Gordon. “We'll go to our debriefs and we'll share information and do all those things, but when it comes to what's going to happen on the race track, I don't see the No. 48 [of Johnson] having a lot of friends out there. I might not either, I don't know. I think that we're all in the situation.
"“We're more of in a 'must win' situation and they're not. And I know Jimmie is going to be driving like he always does. And if I see it being a position that's going to help us get to the front.”
While Gordon exepects the competition to be intense between everyone on Sunday, including his battle with Hendrick stablemates, he also understands there is an element of assistance that needs to be part of the equation when racing in a restrictor plate race.
“We work together to better ourselves," he said. "It's hard for people to understand that, you know?” he said. “You are teammates, but there is no pecking order. There's no, ‘This is the guy that we all have to help.’ If I were in ninth in points right now, I'd be out there to do whatever I could to help, no doubt about it."
“But until we're mathematically not in this thing, then we're still out there trying to beat those [No. 48] guys and the No. 5 and the No. 42 and the No. 14 and we're treated the same way."
As with any race at the 2.66-mile Talladega track, the possibility of any driver getting taken out by "The Big One" exists. However Gordon isn't looking at that happening to anyone as a means of climbing up the standings.
"You can't wish anybody that,” Gordon said. “The championship is going to play out the way it's going to play out. Whatever is meant to happen is going to happen. All you can do is go out and work really hard and what I'm doing as a driver and everybody else on my team is doing the same thing and we just go out there and try to put ourselves in the best position and in the best finishing position and hopefully that's a win."
