2004 was a huge rebound for the team . Gordon won the Brickyard 400 in August 2004 , obtaining his fourth Indy win ( 1994 , 1998 , 2001 , 2004 ) . Gordon holds the title for the NASCAR driver with most Brickyard 400 victories at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with five , and one of only five drivers to have four victories at the historic track . Prior to this victory , Gordon won at Talladega ( ending the DEI dominance on restrictor plate tracks , as well as their winning streak at the track ) , and followed that up with a victory the following weekend at California , in which he won with no fuel remaining . He also won at Infineon Raceway , leading a track-record 92 of 110 laps to claim his NASCAR record eighth road course win . Gordon followed that up with a victory the following weekend in the Pepsi 400 at Daytona after receiving a push from teammate Jimmie Johnson for his second consecutive restrictor plate win . While the Hendrick Motorsports team celebrated success with Gordon and Johnson winning five and eight races , respectively , the team suffered a major off-track tragedy . On October 24 , during the Subway 500 race weekend at Martinsville , a Hendrick Motorsports plane carrying engine builder Randy Dorton , team President John Hendrick ( Rick Hendrick 's brother ) , Vice President Jeff Turner , Ricky Hendrick ( Rick Hendrick 's 24-year-old son and teammate of Gordon with JG Motorsports ) and more crashed on its way to the track , killing everyone on board . On race day , Gordon finished ninth , while Johnson won . Despite a 34th-place finish at Atlanta the following week , Gordon ended the season with three consecutive third-place finishes . Prior to the new Chase for the Cup , Gordon recorded 5 wins , and held a 60-point lead over Johnson , but despite the success , when the format came into play after Richmond ( the 26th race ) , the points were reset for the 10 race chase . As a result , after the tenth chase race , which was the season finale at Homestead , Gordon finished third under the new points format behind champion Kurt Busch by 16 points and Johnson by eight . Had the Chase not existed , and if the old points system was still the same , Jeff Gordon would have won the championship by 62 points over his teammate Jimmie Johnson
crashed
2004 Hendrick Motorsports aircraft crash
NASCAR Cup Series career of Jeff Gordon