Jeff Gordon is undoubtedly a legend in NASCAR betting, but it’s been a long time since he’s delivered a Sprint Cup Championship. Still, he has 11/1 odds to break the slump this season. This is your 2011 Jeff Gordon preview.

Gordon has four career championships to his credit, though he’s failed to win a title since 2001. Despite the lack of championships, Gordon has hardly fallen off the map. He’s finished in the Top-10 of Sprint Cup standings eight times in the last nine years (his worst finish was 11th in 2005), and five of those were Top-5 finishes.

Last season was a bit of a downer, though, as Gordon fell to ninth in the standings. His numbers were down generally across the board. For the second time in three years, Gordon failed to win a race. He enjoyed his fewest Top-5 finishes (11) and fewest Top-10 finishes (17) since 2005. In fact, you could make a very good case that 2010 was Gordon’s second-worst season in 16 years.

The lack of victories is alarming. Even though Gordon hasn’t won a championship in nine years, he was still consistently finding his way into Victory Lane. In the six seasons following his last championship, Gordon won 23 races — nearly four races per season. He has only a 2009 win at the Samsung 500 to his credit in the last three years.

Certainly bad luck and poor pit strategy played a role in Gordon’s struggles last year. With a few better bounces or decisions, Gordon would have finished much higher up the standings. That said, he still wouldn’t have won a title, and it’s hard to blame bad luck on the past three years. Gordon is skating by on reputation, and it’s very hard to justify 11/1 odds on a driver with just a single victory in the past three years.

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