{"id":15710,"date":"2014-11-19T13:48:32","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T18:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/?p=15710"},"modified":"2014-11-19T13:48:32","modified_gmt":"2014-11-19T18:48:32","slug":"alan-gustafson-takes-blame-for-jeff-gordons-late-pitstop-that-cost-him-homestead-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2014\/11\/19\/alan-gustafson-takes-blame-for-jeff-gordons-late-pitstop-that-cost-him-homestead-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan Gustafson takes blame for Jeff Gordon&#8217;s late pitstop that cost him Homestead win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2014\/08\/jeffgordonbristol.jpg\" alt=\"jeffgordonbristol\" width=\"594\" height=\"395\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14478\" srcset=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2014\/08\/jeffgordonbristol.jpg 594w, http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2014\/08\/jeffgordonbristol-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px\" \/><br \/>\nJeff Gordon&#8217;s crew chief Alan Gustafson took the blame for a late pit stop at Homestead which cost the driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet a chance to win the Ford EcoBoost 400.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cReally, the error was made, I stayed out when the majority of the field pitted and that put us in a bad situation,\u2019\u2019 Gustafson during an appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio\u2019s \u201cThe Morning Drive.\u2019\u2019. \u201cJeff felt like (on the following caution) we weren\u2019t in a very good position to succeed, so we made a decision to come pit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Gordon was leading the race when the a caution came out with 19 laps to go. He stayed out but would later pit in a move that left fans confused ultimately allowing Kevin Harvick to win the race while Gordon only worked his way up to 10th.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cReally the first stop, when us and Denny (Hamlin) and &#8230; a few other cars stayed out, that was the one that really hurt us. That\u2019s on me. It was a mistake I made. I tried to keep the track position. I felt like that was going to be the highest percentage decision and it ended up not being. That put us behind unfortunately. I think we had the best car. The team deserved to win the race. It was a bad decision from my part and I\u2019m going to learn from it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt would be really easy for me to make a lot of excuses and say, \u2018Hey there\u2019s a lot of circumstances that play into it &#8211; and there are and it is a very tough thing to do &#8211; but that\u2019s my job and in that situation I feel like I didn\u2019t do it to the best of my capabilities.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeff Gordon&#8217;s crew chief Alan Gustafson took the blame for a late pit stop at Homestead which cost the driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet a chance to win the Ford EcoBoost 400. \u201cReally, the error was made, I stayed out when the majority of the field pitted and that put us in a bad [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,788],"tags":[929,304,708],"coauthors":[674],"class_list":{"0":"post-15710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cup-series","8":"category-news","9":"tag-alan-gustafson","10":"tag-jeff-gordon","11":"tag-nascar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15710"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}