This weekend Hendrick Motorsports' Jeff Gordon heads back to Lowe's Motor Speedway in a bit of a rut, but still optimistic. Four weeks into the Chase and Gordon finds himself eighth in the series standings, 232 points out of first place.

A wreck last week at Talladega dropped the driver of the No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet two spots in the Chase and earned him his sixth finish of 30th or worse this season.

"Talladega is behind us and there is nothing we can do about that now," Gordon said. "We'll focus on the race at Lowe's and go out there Saturday night and try to win. There's still a lot of racing left this year, and I'm not counting anybody out just yet. Everybody considered Talladega to be the 'wild card' race - and it was. But we're probably going to have restarts this weekend where guys are battling hard for position in a pack of cars. There could be a points shakeup at one or more of the remaining races."

Still winless this year, Gordon heads back to the site of his last victory and one his best race tracks. In thirty-one tries at the mile-and-a-half track, Gordon has five wins, fifteen top-5s, seventeen top-10s and seven poles.

While Gordon has room for improvement, it might not take much. Last season's Chase was a two man battle between himself and teammate Jimmie Johnson. Johnson has gone on to once again be a threat while Gordon has showed little to worry the competition. Heading back to Charlotte, the four-time champ hopes to put himself in place to challenge for the title before it's too late.

"We're certainly not quitters and we're going to go out and approach every race like we're going to win it and work hard," Gordon explained. "It's not the end of the world if we don't win a race. We're not in panic mode, we're just trying to be the best team that we can and try to get better each week."