He’s NASCAR’s Redneck Rebel without a cause, the Californian who fits anything but the state’s laid-back stereotype as he bumps your car out of the way just because he can. As a driver, he knows no bounds, his first Cup win coming tainted with DuPont in the form of spinning his alter ego and four-time champ, Jeff Gordon, to win a season-ending race at New Hampshire in 2001. He’s thrown helmets at fellow driver/owner Michael Waltrip and staged post-race tantrums that pushed dozens of crew chiefs to walk out the door. Yet through it all, he’s kept his foot on the gas pedal and his name on the grid in forming a 14-year career, longer than some future Hall of Famers.

Yet these are trying times for one Robby Gordon, a man born to fight but whose quirky independence proves no match for the heavyweights in corporate suits drowning with money he’ll never have. Rick Hendrick, Roger Penske, even Chip Ganassi come to war with more than one opponent, pooling their money into a weight, height, and strength advantage that leaves them unsympathetic to their underdog competitor now wobbling in the ring. Now, the man who’s pulled the vaunted Indy 500/Coca-Cola 600 double, who’s come within a whisker of the Dakar off-road rally trophy, and who’s pulled into Cup Series Victory Lane finds his NASCAR dream crushed under the onslaught of engineering geeks he’ll never hire, armed with information he’ll never have on how to get more speed out of racecars that come with the ugly disclaimer that pure driver talent is no longer enough.

It wasn’t always this way for one of the sport’s independent thinkers, who boldly defied the odds in the multi-car era by establishing his own, small-time, single-car effort in 2005 while leaving current title contender Richard Childress in the process. Gordon slapped a No. 7 on the side of his car, the same number driver/owner Alan Kulwicki took to a championship in 1992, and boldly promised to summon the type of luck that gave the underdogs the most surprising championship in NASCAR history. Unlike fellow temperamental rival Tony Stewart, who “partnered” with Hendrick Motorsports upon establishing his own effort (and by “partnered,” we mean sold his soul) RGM was left to chart its own course, a small-time operation that, win or lose, would be defined by its leader — not the bigger fish that fed them everything they needed.

For the first few years, the Chase was never an option, but hope continued to spring eternal: Three consecutive top-5 finishes at Watkins Glen, then a handful of top 10s on ovals were enough to offset early DNQs and keep sponsors happy. This is, after all, a man who’s won three times on the Sprint Cup circuit, more than Clint Bowyer, Juan Pablo Montoya, or the Rick Hendrick version of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. It was enough to convince sponsors like Jim Beam, Menards Department Stores, Harrah’s, and even Fruit of the Loom to sign on to the impossible dream.

But as the gap between rich and poor widened, so did the writing on the boardroom wall. After a total of only three top-5s and seven top-10s the first three seasons, 2008 began with an unexpected sucker-punch to the mouth: A preseason off-road adventure, the Dakar Rally, was canceled due to terrorist concerns after RGM had spent $4.5 million preparing its entries. Within weeks, the team was pursuing the long-dreaded partnership with a multi-car behemoth in Cup simply to keep creditors at bay. Gillett Evernham Motorsports took pity, spurring a switch from Ford to Dodge but never truly injecting the effort with proper funding in a year that ended in an ugly divorce between a team that’s now busy writing its own death wish. Last year, RGM went rogue once again, switching to Toyota in a last-ditch effort for the Camrys to salvage an operation sinking under the weight of an economic crisis that eventually forced the last of his major sponsors, Jim Beam, to abandon ship in November.

It all adds up to a 2010 filled with desperation, a second forced partnership with BAM Racing filled with contracts never honored and a lawsuit that’ll likely end up in court. All too often, the team has run unsponsored, forcing a now-41-year-old out of the driver’s seat and into an uncomfortable ownership role far too early. An old school competitor, he watched in misery as start-and-parks out-qualified him, then forced him into “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” mentality as the money vultures creep closer, smelling blood and preparing to devour a lifetime career that NASCAR has left unprotected from the knockout punch.

Now six months into running out of pocket, the scene shifts from uncomfortable to downright desperate, the type athletes encounter all the time when an unfair ending beckons and they outright refuse to let go. This week, we were treated to a “landmark” signing of rookie Kevin Conway, whose lone rookie claim to fame is “lengthening” his career through a sexual enhancement pill that only serves to filter a small lifeline to ailing operations in need. Conway’s career is filled with the type of resume that leads to a pink slip — one top-25 finish in 22 career Cup starts — but desperate people do desperate things, the least of which is a press release trumpeting the No. 7 team as being one step away from a return to glory.

“We are excited to have ExtenZe Racing and Kevin Conway join Robby Gordon Motorsports,” Gordon says. “This is an excellent opportunity for everyone involved, and I am excited to have Kevin behind the wheel of the No. 7. I hope that we will be able help Kevin bring home the Rookie of the Year Award while expanding our team and his on-track experience.”

Of course, the release mentioned winning the rookie trophy is a foregone conclusion — it’s hard to lose a race in which you’re the only one competing. Still, Gordon needs to wear the hope hat to keep his team believing in a future that may never come alive again.

“He’s got to build his confidence,” Gordon said of Conway at Bristol. “The biggest thing is we need to build his confidence.

“We’ll focus once we get toward the end of the season on one car. We’ll get ready for next year and get our inventory built up for Daytona and Vegas. It’s just a fact of the economy (lack of sponsorship). I feel like I’m a pretty good sales guy. I’ve been able to sell sponsorship for a long time now. I’ve got a new, creative way of marketing that I think will be able to change my race team, for sure.”

Somewhere down in the depths of the Carolinas, Bud Moore, Junie Donlavey, Cale Yarborough, Dave Marcis and the other legendary independents who once dominated the ownership landscape shed a tear. They, too, uttered the same words as their worlds collapsed before their eyes, watching their fortunes burn to the ground as NASCAR picked up and moved on without them. It’s a part of the sport’s private contractor system, where even with the top-35 rule a team is left unprotected the second the rug gets pulled out from under it.

I shed a tear, too, for the changes of the sport designed to leave behind the blood, sweat and tears of the men who helped build it. Yet Gordon trudges on, nearly winning the road course race in an off-week start in Montreal before his Nationwide Series car — you can’t make this up — ran out of gas while leading. Making the call from the cockpit, Gordon chose to stay out for track position, rolling the dice his small-time team would defy the math and make it to the end in one piece.

He lost.

And so it goes for a man who’s one of the sport’s most colorful characters, sitting center stage as his career also sputters right before our eyes. I don’t have the answer, but I do know what millions of longtime observers are thinking: it wasn’t supposed to end this way.

http://www.athlonsports.com/racing/19739/gordon-fights-the-good-fight