Jeff Gordon celebrates after winning the Pocono 500 at the Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pa., Sunday, June 10, 2007. (AP photo)

Oh, we Jeff Gordon fans are a spoiled bunch. Four months into the season Gordon is winless and we just can’t stop asking, “What the heck is wrong with the 24 team?”

Some of us – ahem, me – were ready to throw Steve Letarte to the wolves because he just didn’t seem to know how to set up the car properly and to Gordon’s linking.

For a while I was even worried that we were going to have to live through more humiliation and obnoxious glee from the haters if Gordon missed the Chase again.

But hold up, wait a minute…in just four races Gordon has moved from 14th to sixth in the standings. In those four races, he has scored three top-5s and four top-10s.

However, when interviewed after races, he still talks like a driver that isn’t even close to winning.

After Dover, he said they had a fifth-place car and that’s where they finished. After his third-place finish at Darlington, he said, “I wish I wasn’t so darn competitive because you have no idea how happy I am that we have a top-5 and that we’re third and how frustrated I am at how far off we are from winning races right now.”

And don’t even get me started on that lucky fourth-place at Lowe’s. I’ll take it but it wasn’t pretty and the team has to stop being so off on setup if they are to have a chance at doing well in the Chase.

Gordon won at Pocono last June after rain shortened the race. He has four wins at the track to go along with two poles, 15 top-fives and 21 top-10s in 30 career starts. Seems like a good place to snap that winless-streak.

This year is very different from last year’s whopping he put on everyone (until that daggum Jimmie Johnson caught fire in the Chase). Going into the Pocono race last June, Gordon had led the standings for nine weeks.

Well, I will gladly give up all that early-season success for some last-season Chase success. You hear me, Jeffy? YOU HEAR ME?!?

Update:

Hmmm, Jeff Gordon will start 38th at Pocono on Sunday so I’m guessing the answer to the “Will Jeff Gordon finally win this weekend?” question is NO.