For Gordon, there's just something about Sonoma

SONOMA, Calif. -- The birthday party was planned for Saturday evening, complete with cake, croquet, and several glasses of Jeff Gordon red wine. The annual trip to Northern California for NASCAR's race at Infineon Raceway is always a big event for the four-time series champion, a native of nearby Vallejo with plenty of friends and family members living in the area. But this year, with his daughter Ella celebrating her first birthday, the weekend holds even more significance.

"It's going to be quite a bash," Gordon promised. "It'll be something she'll probably never remember, but something we will never forget."

For Gordon, there's just something about Sonoma, beyond the dusty-colored hills, the great restaurants and his skill on the serpentine, 1.99-mile track. His engagement to his wife Ingrid happened during Sonoma week. His daughter was born during Sonoma week. Old high school friends and reminders of his days tooling karts around the parking lots of the Solano County Fairgrounds abound during Sonoma week. So do race victories -- five entering Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350, three more than any other active NASCAR driver at Infineon.

At no other place do the personal and professional sides of Gordon's life mesh so easily, the driver moving from race practice to family get-togethers with the smoothness of a glass of his Napa Valley red. So it just seems right that Ella's first birthday should occur in Sonoma, near the racetrack her father is so good at, around the graceful curve of San Pablo Bay from the town in which he grew up. He may have gone to high school in Indiana, he may live in New York, he may be building a house in Charlotte, but no other place seems more like Gordon's home away from home.

"This is a place we just love to come to," he said at Infineon. "We just really enjoy it, whether it's me enjoying time with my family and friends, or as a couple, Ingrid and myself just enjoying this weekend. The racing still is intense. Once I get in the racecar, it's still intense and tough, but once I leave here, I get to go and relax and really get away from it. I'm not going to my bus and not just wracking my brain about racing the whole time. So it's always been that way for me ever since I've been coming here, that get-away and relaxation and enjoying the area and the wine country and the restaurants and all those things. And at the same time I have family and friends I used to go to school with. But now, with the engagement and especially with Ella's birth, it really does take it to another level."

He'd probably feel that even if he didn't have roots here, even if his stepfather wasn't from Napa, even if he didn't have friends in the area. "It's always kind of been a family reunion for me, coming here, and the friends," Gordon said. "But I do think we would really enjoy this location and this race no matter what my association was."

It's hard to blame him. With the rolling hills of wine country, the towering redwoods of the Pacific seashore, and the sun glinting off the spires of downtown San Francisco in the distance, few stops on the NASCAR circuit offer as much. But even with the diversions and the activities and the family members, Gordon never forgets that this first and foremost is a business trip. The job at hand is to win a race, something Gordon hasn't done since October of last year. At a precarious ninth in points and with only 11 races looming until the season-ending Chase begins, Gordon needs a win. There may be no better place for the breakthrough than at Sonoma, where the driver feels more comfortable than just about anywhere else.

But he doesn't want to go quite that far. "I don't want to put that kind of pressure on us to feel like we have to win here, and then if we don't, it's our last opportunity or a failed weekend," he said. "I really just want to come in here and do what we know we're capable of doing and try not to make mistakes -- put the best car out there and go about it like we would any other time, whether we came in here with four or five wins or with no wins."

By this time last season, Gordon had already recorded four race wins. He had finished outside of the top-10 only once, and firmly established himself as a threat for the championship. But he's quick to point out that a lot of that success came in the old car, on 1.5-mile intermediate tracks the vehicle didn't debut on until this year. "We had the old car dialed in," he said. It's been a struggle to adjust the new car on new tracks. The competition, particularly Joe Gibbs Racing, has improved. He understands why he is where he is. He's not frustrated that he hasn't won, he's frustrated that he hasn't been more competitive in a season where his average finish is an uncharacteristic 14.867.

"To me, you can be the fastest car out there and not get wins. So that's not really bothering me," he said. "What's bothering me is that we're hit or miss. We've put some top-fives together. Some of them we earned, some of them we earned by strategy of some sort. We didn't go out there and really perform well enough to get those, and that's where I feel like we really want to be is really getting the performance of our car. The team has been awesome in the pits with [crew chief] Steve [Letarte] calling the races. All of that's been great. It's just getting the car to do the things that I want it to do to go faster."

This weekend brings some positive signs -- consistent top-20 performances in practice, and a fifth-place starting position on a racetrack where 15 of 19 past NASCAR winners have started inside the top 10. And then there are those intangibles: the past success, the comfort level in Sonoma, the possibility of that perfect birthday present being delivered sometime late Sunday afternoon. But Gordon, ever the professional, never loses perspective.

"It's not about trying to do anything for her special," he said. "I would love to do that, but when you get to the racetrack, it's about focusing on what you need to do with your team to go fast. It would just be icing on the cake if we could pull it off and it be on her birthday weekend."