NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin has called out reporter Jordan Bianchi for his views about Shane van Gisbergen (SVG) not being on par with Jeff Gordon when it came to dominating road courses. Hamlin believes SVG is the best road course driver the sport has witnessed, and revealed reasons why Gordon falls short.
Chairman of Hendrick Motorsports, Gordon won four Cup Series championships and is considered one of NASCAR’s greatest drivers. SVG, who made his Cup Series debut this year, has already secured five consecutive road course victories, his most recent win coming from the Charlotte Roval last weekend, making him a highly versatile driver.
A lot has changed in NASCAR since Gordon’s peak racing era in the late nineties and early 2000s, especially with the addition of more road courses and new cars that are nearly equal in terms of performance. However, Bianchi thinks Gordon was the greatest of all and ranked him above SVG in a debate with Jeff Gluck on The Teardown podcast. He said:
“Gordon was all-time, and he was so good that at that era, there were people thinking that he could have moved to Formula One and been competitive. No offense to SVG, that conversation has been had. I’m not saying that SVG isn’t the greatest, but look at Gordon’s body of work, look at what he did, the number of wins. And it would have been interesting to see if there had been more road courses at the time, what his stats would have looked like even more.”
Now though, Hamlin has ridiculed Bianchi for his comments, emphasizing that Gordon wasn’t dominating road courses like SVG. He said on his Actions Detrimental podcast:
“Jordan Bianchi is absolutely out of his mind. Yeah, he’s [SVG] on the short-list for the best NASCAR road racer ever. What is he talking about? Does he really think that Jeff Gordon, in his prime, would beat SVG today in a Next Gen car? Not a chance. Not a remote chance.