page_title: NASCAR Cup Series career of Jeff Gordon
section_title: 2015: Final season
hierarchical_section_title: NASCAR Cup Series career of Jeff Gordon / Career / 2011–2016: Final years / 2015: Final season
caption_attribution_description: English: The green flag flies on a new season of NASCAR.
context_page_description: American stock car racing driver Jeff Gordon enjoyed a successful career in the Cup Series, the top category of NASCAR. Gordon spent his entire driving career with Hendrick Motorsports, making 797 starts between 1992 and 2015 in the No. 24 Chevrolet for 24 seasons. He briefly came out of retirement during the 2016 season by competing in HMS' No. 88 Chevrolet for eight races, giving him a career total 805 starts. Gordon's career achievements include four championships, 93 points-paying victories, and 81 poles.
context_section_description: On January 22, 2015, Gordon announced that 2015 would be his last season as a full-time driver, but did not rule out retirement entirely. On January 29, Gordon stated he does not plan to run any more Daytona 500s after 2015.
  During the 2015 season, various tracks performed acts in tribute to Gordon. Atlanta Motor Speedway president Ed Clark gave him a Bandolero racing car with the names of his children, Ella and Leo, inscribed on it; at the following race, Las Vegas Motor Speedway's president Chris Powell gave him a customized blackjack table. For the Food City 500 at Bristol, Ella and Leo were the race's grand marshals. On April 29, Gordon announced that he would be serving as the pace car driver for the Indianapolis 500, the same day as the Coca-Cola 600. At Sonoma and Kentucky, he was given an 18 litres (4.8 US gal) wine bottle and 96 bottles of bourbon whiskey, respectively. For November's Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500, Phoenix International Raceway was renamed "Jeff Gordon Raceway". For the season-ending race, Gordon's Hendrick teammates painted their car numbers with the same yellow that Gordon had used on his cars.
  Gordon started the season by winning the pole for the Daytona 500. Despite leading 87 laps, Gordon began slipping, and crashed on the final lap, finishing 33rd. In the next race at Atlanta, Gordon, along with twelve other drivers, were unable to complete a qualifying lap due to inspection of the car's rear camber exceeding the length of the first round of qualifying, and as a result, he was relegated to 35th. In the race, he was clipped by Jamie McMurray with 70 laps to go, sending Gordon into a concrete inside wall, a few feet short of the SAFER barrier, but was not injured; Gordon finished 41st. In the wake of Kyle Busch's injury in Daytona's Xfinity race the week before after colliding with an unprotected wall, Gordon stated, "I don't think we can say any more after Kyle's incident at Daytona. Everybody knows we have to do something, and it should have been done a long time ago. All we can do now is hope they do it as fast as they possibly can."
  In qualifying for the Kobalt 400, Gordon won his second pole of the year and first ever at Las Vegas with a track-record speed of 194.679 miles per hour (313.305 km/h) and time of 27.738 seconds, but his car was so badly damaged following contact with Danica Patrick during final practice that he needed to use his backup car and started the race at the rear of the field. After rear-ending Jeb Burton, he never recovered and finished one lap down in 18th. During the year, Gordon won the pole at the two Talladega races (GEICO 500 and CampingWorld.com 500), completing a Hendrick sweep at plate tracks in 2015. At the Goody's Headache Relief Shot 500, Gordon capitalized on Team Penske drivers Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano's crashes (the latter caused by Matt Kenseth intentionally, making Kenseth the second Joe Gibbs Racing driver in five years to miss the Texas race because of intentionally crashing another driver after Kyle Busch wrecked Ron Hornaday in the 2011 Trucks race at Texas) to claim his 93rd and final career Cup victory; the win advanced him to the Championship Four at Homestead. In the 2015 Ford EcoBoost 400, Gordon qualified fifth, the second-best of the Championship Four, and led nine laps. As the race continued, Gordon battled a poor-handling car to a sixth-place finish.
caption: Gordon leads the field to the green flag at the Daytona 500
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