It’s a bit difficult for me to comprehend that a once somewhat shy, baby-faced kid with a wispy mustache is now a major executive at Hendrick Motorsports and a member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
As a very young stock car driver so many years ago, Jeff Gordon was talented. He proved that. But few of us, myself included, ever imagined that over the years he would become a NASCAR icon, often mentioned with Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt, Bobby Allison, David Pearson and a scant few others as one of the best of all time.
When the NASCAR faithful first encountered Gordon, many viewed him as an upstart punk trying to fashion a career among the rugged “good ol’ boys” of NASCAR.
The only experience he had driving a big, rumbling stock car came at the Buck Baker Driving School. Otherwise, he had spent most of his time in “kiddie” cars, like go-karts.
The truth is that Gordon’s turn at the Baker school only convinced him that NASCAR was his destiny. He felt it so strongly that he came back from his experience and immediately told his mother he knew what he wanted to do with his life.
He had already been trained for a driving career. From his home in Indiana to California and just about everywhere in between, Gordon grew up racing nearly everything on four wheels — Karts, Midgets, Sprints, Late Models — on asphalt and dirt.
And he was good. Darn good. And he got noticed.
The NASCAR arm of Ford Motor Co., made the first move, taking Gordon under its arm and escorting him to the NASCAR Busch Series (now the Xfinity Series).
He became the driver for Bill Davis Racing, a quality team that provided the means necessary to support a young competitor and, in return, benefit from his skills. Gordon and Davis became one of the Busch Series’ most competitive teams. From 1991-92, the team won three races and racked up 15 finishes among the top five and 20 among the top 10.
The 1992 season was a particularly good one. Gordon won three races to go along with 10 finishes among the top five and 15 among the top 10. Remarkably, he won 11 pole positions.
Ford and Davis looked forward to ushering their protégé into NASCAR Cup Series competition. It wasn’t to be though.
The story goes that Rick Hendrick was so impressed with Gordon while watching his performance during an Atlanta Motor Speedway race — “I couldn’t help but notice how hard he drove his car” — that, in time, he convinced the driver to sign a Cup contract.
Stunned, Ford reacted with downright animosity. Reports circulated that the company was “angered, disappointed and felt betrayed” that Gordon chose to drive Chevrolets for Hendrick.
“He’s an ungrateful punk,” one official said.
Davis, too, was angered. At least one media report declared the owner “felt like I have been kicked in the teeth.”
Gordon was by no means used to being a media punching bag. But he kept silent. He took the high road and didn’t fight back. To be honest, he didn’t know how to do anything else.
But he felt the harsh impact. It was particularly rough on him living well away from home in North Carolina, alone and apart from family.
Eventually, level heads prevailed. Logic dictated that Ford and Davis didn’t have as much to offer Gordon as Chevrolet and Hendrick. Which was obvious, given that the former was a high-quality Xfinity team and the latter was, arguably, the most well-manned, well-financed multicar team on the Cup circuit.
Gordon and Davis ended their association after the event at Hickory Motor Speedway on Nov. 8, 1992.
Hendrick decided to get Gordon’s feet wet on the Cup circuit and entered the Nov. 15, 1992, Hooters 500 at Atlanta.
That is the race many historians consider the best in NASCAR history.
It was to be the last race for Petty, the undisputed King of stock car racing and unquestionably its all-time most popular driver.
It was to be the race that decided the 1992 Cup championship, which was contested primarily among Bill Elliott, Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison, with three others in contention.
At the time, no one knew how tense and wildly unpredictable the historic outcome would be.
And the race would be the first Cup start for the much-ballyhooed Gordon, the 20-year-old upstart.
His debut was inauspicious, to say the least. First came a rather sloppy pit stop, followed by Gordon’s crash on lap 164, which relegated him to a 31st-place finish.
Despite the errant pit stop, Gordon’s team was under the direction of the man who, in the opinion of many, proved to be the young driver’s biggest asset.
Ray Evernham left Davis for Hendrick at the same time Gordon did, but, obviously, without nearly the attention.
He was the ideal crew chief. He had experience and knowledge, but more importantly, he had maturity.
Evernham was the perfect mentor for a talented young driver sorely in need of direction, both on and off the track. That would be proven over time and help create Evernham’s path to the Hall of Fame.
In their first season together, 1993, Gordon and Evernham didn’t win. However, their campaign, which included 11 top-10 finishes, earned Gordon the Rookie of the Year Award.
That didn’t satisfy the critics, who maintained that despite having the best equipment and personnel, Gordon still didn’t win.
That changed in 1994. Gordon won the first race of his career on May 29 when, after winning the pole, he rather easily trounced the field in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
If anyone was surprised that Gordon won, they shouldn’t have been. He provided evidence that he was a master of NASCAR’s longest race.
After all, he won the pole and the race in both Charlotte Busch races with Davis in 1992 and finished second in the 600 in his rookie Cup season.
Gordon’s emotions spilled over in victory lane. Of course, to earn his first Cup victory meant much to him because it was the realization of a dream, one accomplished by hard work and lessons learned.
But it was also due to a sense of retribution, a ringing response to the critics who said he was just a punk, a kid who didn’t earn his way into the man’s world of stock car racing.
Eight races later, Gordon, an Indiana native, won the Brickyard 400, the inaugural NASCAR race at the venerated Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Those critics shut up. And you know the rest of the story. …
Steve Waid has been in journalism since 1972, when he began his newspaper career at the Martinsville (Va.) Bulletin. He has spent over 40 years in motorsports journalism, first with the Roanoke Times-World News and later as publisher and vice president for NASCAR Scene and NASCAR Illustrated.
Steve has won numerous state sports writing awards and several more from the National Motorsports Press Association for his motorsports coverage, feature and column writing. For several years, Steve was a regular on “NASCAR This Morning” on FOX Sports Net and he is the co-author, with Tom Higgins, of the biography “Junior Johnson: Brave In Life.”
In January 2014, Steve was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame. And in 2019 he was presented the Squier-Hall Award by the NASCAR Hall of Fame for lifetime excellence in motorsports journalism. In addition to writing for Frontstretch, Steve is also the co-host of The Scene Vault Podcast.