Gordon announces that 2015 will be his last in Sprint Cup

IT'S TIME for Jeff Gordon to move on from full-time racing. Although he is only 43 and enjoyed an outstanding 2014 season, Gordon announced yesterday that this will be his final full season in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series.

"Chances are pretty good Homestead [season finale] is the last race you'll see me in," Gordon said yesterday on a conference call. He said he doesn't plan on being a part-time Cup series driver and told the Associated Press he didn't rule out racing in other circuits.

"I always said I wanted to step away on my own terms, if possible, and I want to be competitive out there, and I hoped that I could do that all the way through my final year. I really was leaning towards this at the beginning of '14, but it didn't get serious until midway of '14.

"It was a combination of things. The back [ailment] played a role: I think that really more just confirmed things for me, rather than anything else. Even the great stretch and the run that we had and how good we were last year confirmed things even more for me. I was like, this is all I could ask for is to be at this point in my career, 20-plus years into my career and be that competitive week in and week out, I was almost ready to walk away right then. But I wanted to give one more year to my team, to Rick [Hendrick, team owner], to the sponsors, to the fans, my family and myself."

As an equity owner in Hendrick Motorsports, Gordon said he plans to stay involved in racing.

Gordon is considered one of the all-time great race-car drivers. His 92 Cup series wins are third all-time, behind only Richard Petty (200) and David Pearson (105). In his 22 full seasons in NASCAR, Gordon has won four Cup series titles (last one, 2001), a record five Brickyard 400s and three Daytona 500s.

He has the most wins at Pocono Raceway (six) and is a five-time winner at Dover International Speedway in Delaware.

Said Hendrick, the only team owner Gordon has driven for in NASCAR: "He's one of the biggest sports stars of a generation, and his contributions to the success and growth of NASCAR are unsurpassed. There's been no better ambassador for stock-car racing and no greater representation of what a champion should be."

Gordon was thisclose to making the final four in the Chase last year. He missed by one point after winning one Chase race and finishing second four times. Overall in 2014, he won four races, giving him 10 wins in the past four seasons.

Some other eye-catching stats:

* His nine road-course wins in the Cup series are a record.

* He has led 24,664 laps during his career and completed 218,360 laps. That's a lot of left turns (and a few right turns on road courses).

With Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kasey Kahne continuing at Hendrick Motorsports, there is speculation that Gordon's decision will make room for a younger racing talent, such as Chase Elliott, to join the Hendrick stable in 2016.

"I believe he is the greatest NASCAR driver there has ever been," said three-time Cup series champion Darrell Waltrip, now a Fox Sports analyst. "What he has done outside the sport has grown the sport's popularity immensely.

"I give Jeff a tremendous amount of credit for the youth movement in NASCAR. A lot of people think NASCAR started in 1992, because that's when he came on the scene and brought in a new, young audience, because he appealed to the 18- to 35-year-old demographic."