Reflections of a NASCAR rockstar

Barnaby’s Lounge & Bar, on the first floor of a West London hotel, isn’t especially high on the list of venues where you’d expect to sit down with Jeff Gordon.

But it says much about the four-time NASCAR Cup champion’s role as vice-president of Hendrick Motorsports, the team he drove for throughout an illustrious career spanning more than two decades, that Gordon is attending the BlackBook Motorsport Forum located downstairs, and has earlier spoken on a panel discussing how to unlock motorsport’s revenue potential. Attracting new partners and keeping current ones engaged is his main brief.

“Of course I’m a driver, or a past driver,” he smiles when asked about what he brings to a role he assumed in 2022, “so I’m always interested in the competition, the technology and the people mainly. I go to debriefs just to stay knowledgeable about what’s going on. If I see something, I’ll raise my hand and step in.

“But for the most part, I feel like we have the best people; drivers, crew chiefs, engineering, to do that. I just want to make sure I give them the resources, so that our team has everything they need. Usually, that’s going to come back to the financial partnerships that we build.”

Three decades have passed since Gordon’s maiden championship in 1995, which had a transformative impact on NASCAR. While his vanquished rival, Dale Earnhardt, never won another title after claiming six in the previous nine seasons, it also heralded Hendrick’s emergence as a powerhouse.

Before that point, it had never delivered a championship, but it wouldn’t be beaten again across a Cup season until 1999 and has to date collected 14 titles. Perhaps more significantly, Gordon transformed perceptions of what a NASCAR champion should be.

Chevy’s colourful livery and Gordon’s California roots stood apart in NASCAR

Nicknamed ‘Wonder Boy’ by Earnhardt, Gordon was just 24 when he beat ‘The Intimidator’ by 34 points in 1995. That made him NASCAR’s second-youngest champion, still only surpassed by Bill Rexford’s triumph aged 23 in 1950.

A fresh-faced Californian, that Gordon wasn’t cut from the same cloth as NASCAR’s good ol’ boys was exemplified by racing a distinctive colour scheme that earned his pitcrew the ‘Rainbow Warriors’ label. “There was a lot of uniqueness there that just drew in a different fanbase, which was nice,” relates Gordon.

Unique could also describe his in-car prowess. He remained competitive throughout a record-breaking run of 797 consecutive Cup starts in Hendrick’s DuPont-backed #24 Chevrolet, so could step away on his own terms, aged 44, after finishing third in the 2015 playoffs.

“To be able to win all the way to the end of my career is something I’m very proud of. But also to find a way to win whether you have the best car, the best team or not” Jeff Gordon

Gordon’s remarkable journey began in 1992’s season-ending Hooters 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, also seven-time champion Richard Petty’s farewell race, and finally culminated in 2016 when he returned for eight events at Hendrick, subbing for Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Gordon is the most successful driver ever on road courses, winning nine times on circuits with right-handers (including an unbeaten run of six races spanning four seasons), nobody has more Brickyard 400 victories than his five, and he was equally adept at restrictor-plate racing, taking three Daytona 500 wins.

He amassed a final tally of 93 victories (third on the all-time list behind only Petty and David Pearson), his last at Martinsville just three races before hanging up his helmet.

Gordon embraces change and innovation in the pursuit of recapturing NASCAR’s mojo

Photo by: James Gilbert / Getty Images

“To be able to win all the way to the end of my career is something I’m very proud of,” states Gordon. “But also to win against different competitors in different ways; that’s what you’re supposed to do, is find a way to win whether you have the best car, the best team or not.”

History would look very different had Rick Hendrick not astutely signed the 21-year-old sprint cars and midgets prodigy to a long-term deal in 1992, after his impressive showings in the second-tier Busch Series.

Once Gordon got his feet under the table in Cup, scooping rookie of the year honours in 1993, there was no looking back. The 53-year-old notes that 1994 was “really that year where I started feeling confident and I think the same for the team”.

Gordon broke his duck in the 1994 Coke 600 at Charlotte. He never relinquished the lead after taking two tyres at his lap 381 pitstop (his rivals took four) and started a stretch of 14 consecutive race-winning seasons.

It was an early example of the symbiotic relationship between Gordon and crew chief Ray Evernham that served both well in the years ahead. Evernham was prepared to make the big calls, trusting that his driver could deliver.

“I came into it and I knew nothing about stock cars,” remarks Gordon. “Ray knew a lot about setting up cars, he built fast cars for me and we had success immediately, so I put all my faith and trust in him. He felt like he had the best race car driver and I felt like I had the best crew chief.”

The 1997 Cup season opened with victory in the Daytona 500

Photo by: ISC Archives / Getty Images for NASCAR

A second victory in 1994, at the inaugural Brickyard 400, showed that his breakthrough was no fluke. But Gordon admits he didn’t anticipate his 1995 success – even as the arrival of a new Chevrolet Monte Carlo, replacing the Lumina, meant “we were presented a real opportunity. You basically had to be a Chevrolet team to win the championship that year.”

For one, he would have to topple experienced Hendrick team-mates Terry Labonte (the 1984 champion) and Ken Schrader, while Joe Gibbs Racing’s Bobby Labonte also posed a threat and won three times. Then there was reigning champion Earnhardt…

“We weren’t really sure just how good of a season we were going to have,” Gordon relates. “But we were able to gain confidence early and often in the season to where it was like, ‘We cannot just win races this year, we can win a championship.’”

“It took me back to when I was a fan. You might have one opportunity to interact with your hero; how do you want to leave that experience for them?” Jeff Gordon

That inevitably put Gordon into Earnhardt’s orbit. Overcoming him, winning seven times along the way in 1995, made the success even more special. “I had so much respect for him because of what he had accomplished, who he was and the way he raced,” Gordon reflects.

“I was certainly intimidated by him, like most were. But to go head to head with him so many different times and outduel him in the [1995] championship launched my career.

“It took the whole #24 team to another level too. Once you can accomplish that, it wasn’t about preventing Earnhardt from winning any more championships. It was just, ‘We’ve arrived and now we want to set the new mark.’”

‘Wonderboy’ Gordon had “so much respect” for ‘Intimidator’ Earnhardt

Photo by: Getty Images

Gordon did a lot of growing up in the public eye, and admits to going through “some growing pains with that” along the way. “I was trying to find out who I was, I was still so young,” he offers. But he regards mistakes he made, with the media and in fan interactions, as “some of the best lessons I ever learned”.

“It just made me want to be better with the fans, more accessible, and it took me back to when I was a fan,” he explains. “You might have one opportunity to interact with your hero; how do you want to leave that experience for them?”

First-hand experience of NASCAR fan tribalism also had a hand in shaping Gordon. Facing off against Earnhardt for the 1995 championship, he noticed “the boos from his fans drowned out some of the cheers” at driver introductions.

“At that early part of it, I was a little bit confused at the boos,” he ponders. But advice from Earnhardt about his own experiences proved helpful: “He goes, ‘Listen, the more noise they make, whatever it is, then that’s when I know I’m doing something right, I’m relevant.’ I always took that with me.”

Gordon had no choice but to drown out the heckling, which he now recognises was nothing personal and “out of respect in some ways”, as the success kept rolling in. Over the next three seasons, he won 33 races and netted titles in 1997 and 1998.

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. In 1996, Terry Labonte won just twice to Gordon’s 10, but it was the veteran who prevailed. Gordon isn’t one to dwell on the prospect that he would likely have been champion if the current playoff system had been in place, but did he learn much from the galling near-miss?

Early missteps taught Gordon the value of cherishing fan interaction

Photo by: Getty Images

“Well, you know what we did the next two years!” he grins. “Terry was incredibly consistent, so I give him credit for that. We had more failures, we probably were more aggressive and put ourselves in situations that cost us the championship. Of course we learned from that, about how to put a complete season together.”

After opening his 1997 season with Daytona 500 spoils, Gordon remained in the mix all year on his way to a second title. He edged Dale Jarrett by 14 points, but 1998 was an altogether different story when he crushed the opposition. Gordon calls it the season he’s most proud of, ending up 364 points clear of Mark Martin after amassing an astounding 13 wins.

“We’ve talked about doing a documentary on just that season,” he reveals. “I don’t know that we were doing a whole lot different from 1997 in 1998, but we were winning the races that we should have won and races we shouldn’t have won!”

“We never took it for granted and never showed up at the track saying, ‘It’s ours to lose’” Jeff Gordon

Avoiding complacency was crucial. “We never took it for granted and never showed up at the track saying, ‘It’s ours to lose’,” he says, citing Evernham’s “relentless” input as a plus point. But his fourth title in 2001, the year Earnhardt was killed at Daytona, followed several staffing tweaks on Hendrick’s #24 team that included a new-for-2000 crew chief in the form of Robbie Loomis.

It proved that Gordon didn’t need to rely on Evernham, who left to form his own team in 1999, in order to win convincingly. His margin over Tony Stewart was just 15 points shy of that 1998 campaign.

He latterly won races with Steve Letarte and Alan Gustafson, although no more titles followed. That doesn’t tell the full story, however. Gordon would have triumphed in 2004, had it not been for the new playoff format, and won more races than eventual champion Kurt Busch.

One regret is not bagging a title in the playoff era; under the old system Gordon would also have won in 2004, 2007 and (here) 2014

Photo by: Team Chevy

Further titles that would have been his under the old system went begging in 2007 and 2014, with Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick the beneficiaries. Gordon admits to feeling disappointment at not adding another championship during the playoff era.

“I don’t have many regrets, but that’s one of them,” he remarks. “We had a couple of missed opportunities and I wish we’d done it that way. But it all worked out, I got my championships.”

And plenty more besides. He demonstrated his versatility by impressing aboard a year-old Williams-BMW FW24 Formula 1 car in 2003 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and was part of Wayne Taylor Racing’s winning line-up at the 2017 Daytona 24 Hours.

He cherished the Cadillac DPi-V.R, the first time he had ever raced such a technologically advanced car with “paddleshifting, downforce, efficiencies, incredible braking, cornering, all those things”, but nothing could compare to the Williams.

“The most amazing experience as a driver, to be able to feel a car that capable, beyond what I could imagine,” he enthuses. “I don’t know that I realistically thought I could go race it and compete, just because of the learning curve of tracks and [racing in] the wet, and physically what I would have to do to my body.

“But I’m happy I got to drive an F1 car, especially that particular one; V10, the Williams-BMW at that time was crazy fast.”

Gordon relished role in 2017 Daytona 24 Hours win sharing Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac DPi

Photo by: Getty Images

Perhaps unsurprisingly given his history at the Brickyard, Gordon puts the Indianapolis 500 atop the list of events he wishes he’d tried: “I might not have even looked at it that way until last year with Kyle Larson [who contested the 500 and Coke 600 on the same day], and I realised how much fun I was having vicariously through him and seeing it through his eyes.”

But for Gordon today the focus is firmly on the future, both of NASCAR itself and Hendrick’s place in it. Asked to reflect on the state of modern NASCAR, he welcomes the calendar’s greater diversity – exemplified by the Chicago street race and expansion beyond the US to visit Mexico in June – and praises the technology incorporated by the NextGen machinery, including independent rear suspension and sequential gearboxes.

As a six-year veteran of the Fox Sports telecast team, broadcasting is also high on his agenda and Gordon cites NASCAR’s move into streaming – Amazon Prime will show five events live in 2025 – as another positive step. He hopes this will help to recapture a certain spark.

“I just wish we were filling the grandstands as much as we once were and our drivers were going everywhere feeling like they’re rockstars, because I got to experience that” Jeff Gordon

“The popularity of the sport when I was in it, just the engaged fanbase,” Gordon replies when asked if he misses anything. “I just wish we were filling the grandstands as much as we once were and our drivers were going everywhere feeling like they’re rockstars, because I got to experience that. It was an amazing time.

“I think we lost sight of a few things. But what I’m excited about is NASCAR, and the teams and our partners, tracks, our television partners, are bringing it back. We’re seeing possibly the best time in F1 right now, so it tells me it’s possible. We’ve just got to do all the right things.”

The same applies for Hendrick Motorsports, as it seeks to prevent a fourth successive Team Penske Ford championship in 2025. But Gordon’s fixation with success, which has carried him so well throughout his career to date, suggests that Hendrick can never be discounted.

This article is one of many in the new monthly issue of Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the June 2025 issue and subscribe today.

Gordon was blown away by 2003 Williams Formula 1 test – “The most amazing experience as a driver”

Photo by: Sutton Images