Gordon sets record straight on F1 chance

Last week, Pollock told The Toronto Sun that he had offered the NASCAR star a drive alongside Jacques Villeneuve when he started the BAR team back in 1999, but Gordon says the offer was more complex than that.

"There were discussions about it," Gordon told The Toronto Sun. "I was flattered that they wanted to talk to me about F1. But it never got to the stage of 'Okay, you're going to come over here and you are going to test our car and be our driver.'"

Gordon, who drives for Hendrick Motorsports in NASCAR, said that the F1 deal was dependent on him driving for Team Green in the Champ Car World Series for two seasons. At the time, tobacco firm BAT sponsored both BAR and Team Green.

He said: "It was like them saying to me 'We would like to put you in a CART car with a team like Barry Green's and have you run two years of CART and then come and test for us in F1 and then maybe you could come and drive for us.'

"I had already won two Winston Cup championships at that time. I told the BAR people I was pretty much set here. I was on my way, I was with the best team with the best sponsors. I had everything I could ask for here. It would have been a major step backward for me to do it that way with no guarantees of where it would get me."

Gordon recently had his first run in an F1 car when he participated in a car swap with Williams ace Juan Pablo Montoya.