$200M-worth Jeff Gordon reacts to his HMS successor’s history-making effort that ended in disappointment

Despite putting up a solid show at Darlington Raceway, Hendrick Motorsports icon William Byron fell short of bagging his second win of the season. During a post-race interview, team vice chairman Jeff Gordon shared his views on the same.

Byron started the race from the pole and led the first 243 laps, shattering the legendary Bill Elliott’s previous record of leading 107 laps from the green flag at Darlington Raceway. That was also the most laps Byron had led in his entire Cup career.

However, Byron got dethroned by race winner Denny Hamlin with 50 laps to go. He lost to Hamlin again on that last two-lap dash and, as a result, had to walk away with a runner-up finish and 56 points to his name, the highest among the Cup Series regulars. It was a good points day for sure, but not the ending that the No. 24 team was hoping for.

During a post-race interview with Frontstretch’s Dalton Hopkins, Gordon, who is currently worth $200 million (as per Celebrity Net Worth), said,

“Obviously, winning the pole and leading all those laps was a dominating performance from the 24 team and William, so that was great. You gotta finish it off, and these things are hard to get everything to go exactly right for you, but I thought they executed flawlessly.”

“The green-flag pit stops really switched things up, and that seemed to be the game changer,” he added.

Gordon then lauded Denny Hamlin for his back-to-back sweep. The JGR ace won last week’s race at Martinsville as well. He is now set for a classic three-peat, similar to the one his teammate Christopher Bell, pulled off a few weeks ago.

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Jeff Gordon on speaking with Tom Cruise about a Days of Thunder sequel

Soon after William Byron bagged his second consecutive Daytona 500 win earlier this year, Jeff Gordon spoke with his friend and Golden Globe Award-winning action star Tom Cruise about a potential sequel to the latter’s 1990 film, Days of Thunder.

Gordon wants to see Cruise return as a star in the sequel, if there were to be one. He also wants Hendrick Motorsports to be a part of it. Detailing the same, the four-time Cup Series champion said (via NASCAR),

“There's this kind of resurgence, which is awesome, and there's also a whole new landscape of opportunities with streaming services and docuseries and also the big screen, which I think it would be amazing to do.”

In the movie, Tom Cruise plays the role of Cole Trickle, a professional race car driver who gets tapped to drive in the Winston Cup Series following a career in open-wheel racing. The story unravels, showing how veteran racer Rowdy Burns, Trickle’s former rival, forms a bond with him after being injured in a crash.

“I've absolutely talked to Tom about it because I want him to do the project, and we want to be a part of it if it were to happen,” he added.

Meanwhile, NASCAR will prepare for next week's race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Scheduled for Sunday, April 13, the 500-lap event will be televised on Fox Sports 1 from 3 pm ET onwards with live radio updates on MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.