by Joe Garner
Jeff wanted John to come back and run his business. He ran the idea by Carol first. “I thought about it,” she says, “and I told him there probably would be nothing better in my mind than for that to happen. ‘But you need to talk to him. I’m not sure how he’s going to feel.’ ”
Getting him to agree, Jeff soon realized, was going to be like getting a mule to dance. John declined. Jeff asked again. No deal. John no longer felt his personality would be the right fit for Jeff. He was too direct, and he wasn’t willing to schmooze people the way he thought Jeff wanted. Jeff asked again. Negative, he replied. It wasn’t until after the March 21 race at Darlington, in which Jeff wrecked and finished forty-first, that John’s stubbornness gave way and he finally made the decision to come back on board.
“Everybody has that point they get to, and I just said, ‘You know what? It probably makes sense. I should do that,’ ” John says. “I was really tired of where I was at.”
It wasn’t easy news for Brannan to swallow, but he bowed out gracefully. “Following the divorce, I sensed that Jeff wanted to have more of his family involved with him in a more positive role,” he says. “And for whatever reason, me being there and John being there at the same time wasn’t going to work out from their standpoint. So I had a nice nine-year run with him, and hopefully I helped Jeff build what he wanted around him from a business standpoint.”
Four days after Darlington, Jeff Gordon, Inc. issued a press release announcing that John would replace Brannan as the company’s vice president and general manager. His first order of business? Selling the Highland Beach mansion to help pay off Brooke.
Perhaps it was that together-again feeling, or the high he was riding from the end of 2003, but after his crash at Darlington, Jeff had six straight top-ten performances, with a couple more wins back-to-back. After a relatively poor showing over the next four weeks, he strung together his best streak of the season: six straight top-five finishes, with three wins and three poles. It was in the midst of that run that Jeff reconnected with New York–based, Belgian model Ingrid Vandebosch.
Camilla Olsson, Ingrid, Jeff, a friend of the group, and Chandra Janway (now Chandra Johnson, Jimmie’s wife) at the New Hampshire race, 2002.
The two had dated briefly in 2002, and while they quickly developed a special bond, Jeff felt he wasn’t quite ready at the time for a committed relationship. “I was separated and going through my divorce, and I was carrying too much baggage,” he says. “Ingrid was a quality person and somebody I could see myself dating seriously, but I knew I was going to ruin it if we started then.”
“After a couple months, I knew I couldn’t do it anymore,” Ingrid recalls. “It hurt. So I told him, ‘You go have fun, and I’ll go my way.’ ”
They had parted on good terms. “I was just hoping that at the right time, she and I would reconnect,” Jeff says. “And it just so happens that it worked out perfectly.” In the spring of 2004, after bumping into each other at a Manhattan restaurant, they arranged to have Ingrid—along with her sister, brother-in-law, and nephew from Belgium—come to the Fourth of July weekend race at Daytona. Jeff won the pole and the race that weekend.
“She came to that race,” Jeff recalls, “and I was like, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ What I wanted was right there in front of me. We sat in the bus and just started talking. I remember that at that moment, I knew we needed to reconnect.” Before long, the romance rekindled, and their relationship would fast become one of the most important in his life.
In the meantime, he qualified for the first-ever Chase, leading all drivers in the standings, a slim five points ahead of his teammate Jimmie Johnson. Adding to his ever-growing list of accomplishments were a fourth career victory in the Brickyard 400 and a win at Sonoma that solidified his position as NASCAR’s greatest road racer of all time. A fifth championship was beginning to look like a real possibility and a fitting way to cap Hendrick Motorsports’ 20th anniversary in the sport.
Jeff started the ten-race playoff decently enough, finishing seventh at Loudon’s New Hampshire Motor Speedway and third at Dover International Speedway, which was enough to maintain his first-place standing in the Chase. But the team struggled in the following two races, at Talladega and Kansas, before picking up a second-place finish at Charlotte. By that point, though, both Kurt Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr. had overtaken him in the Chase standings.
Jeff holds up four fingers to signify his fourth career Brickyard 400 victory, August 8, 2004.
With five races left, he was hoping to make up some ground the following Sunday in the Subway 500 at Martinsville Speedway. And he did. Even with a ninth-place finish, he managed to move up a position, overtaking Earnhardt, who crashed and finished thirty-third. Jimmie Johnson got the win, his series-leading sixth victory. But there were no celebrations. “Instead of heading to Victory Lane, we were all told to stop on pit road,” Jeff remembers. “I could tell something was wrong.” Then came the tragic news. A Hendrick Motorsports’ plane that had left North Carolina earlier that day for Martinsville had crashed into a foggy hillside in southern Virginia.
The commemorative decal created to honor those who died in the Hendrick Motorsports plane crash, October 24, 2004.
“The first thing I thought of was whether John was on board,” Jeff says. “Thank God he wasn’t. At the same time, there were a lot of people who were close to me and, more importantly, close to Rick on that plane. You’re just in shock and disbelief and devastated, but there’s also this little glimmer of hope that maybe they’ll find someone alive. Then reality started setting in, and that wasn’t the case.”
The tragedy took the lives of ten Hendrick family members, friends, and associates, including Rick Hendrick’s son, Ricky, his brother and team president, John, John’s daughters Kimberly and Jennifer, the team vice president and general manager, Jeff Turner, chief engine builder Randy Dorton, DuPont executive Joe Jackson, racer Tony Stewart’s helicopter pilot, and the plane’s two pilots.
Jeff and Jimmie Johnson wearing their hats backwards in honor of Ricky Hendrick at Atlanta Motor Speedway, October 31, 2004.
Even with the countless woes and misfortunes that had befallen the NASCAR community since its beginnings, no race team and no team owner had ever suffered a tragedy of that magnitude. Jeff could hardly comprehend what Hendrick was going through, but he did his best to be there for him.
“I didn’t know what to do, but I knew that he was hurting, and I went over to his house that night,” Jeff recalls. “You just want to be there supporting someone you care so much about who is going through so much, even if you can’t really understand how big that loss is to him. That night, it was just devastation and loss and trying to understand and accept and mourn. It was very difficult.”
In the face of the tragedy, the grieving Hendrick operation stepped up and swiftly got the team’s cars ready for the following weekend. That next Sunday, in an emotional tribute at Atlanta Motor Speedway, where the flags were lowered to half-staff, Hendrick’s four drivers—Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Terry Labonte, and Brian Vickers—rolled up to the starting line in cars bearing the names and images of the crash victims. When Johnson took the checkered flag, his third straight, all the Hendrick drivers and crews gathered in Victory Lane, hats worn backward in memory of Ricky Hendrick, for a tearful celebration.
In the long run, bouncing back was much harder. The crash had decimated the organization’s upper management and gutted its prized engine program, which outfitted not only the Hendrick teams but many of their competitors. On a personal level, the question was whether to go on at all. Rick Hendrick, after burying four members of his family, wavered over hanging it all up and shuttering the organization after two decades and six championships.
Jeff’s No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet car with the “Always In Our Hearts” decal on the hood at Atlanta Motor Speedway, October 31, 2004.
“It was two weeks after the crash,” he remembers, “and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to come ov
er [to the Hendrick Motorsports complex] anymore because we lost so many people—all of my family. And so I walked into the team center and Jeff was the first person I saw. He was crying, and we cried together. And when I saw him, it connected me to this place and this family. My relationship with these people here and with Jeff—I knew that for the honor of the family, I had to go on. I’ve always called it a family. All of our employees are like our extended family, but Jeff is special in that deal.
“You know, he’s very caring and he’s got a big heart,” Hendrick says. “I’ll always remember the embrace we had after the crash.”
Ultimately, the organization rebounded and became just as strong. But in 2004, there were still three races to be run, and Jeff, after finishing thirty-fourth in Atlanta, was now sitting in third place in the Chase. He raced his heart out, claiming third place in each of those final races, but it wasn’t enough. The standings stayed as they were, with Jeff in third, just eight points behind the runner-up, Johnson, and a mere sixteen behind the champion, Kurt Busch.
In any other year, Jeff Gordon would have been crowned NASCAR’s Cup champion. In terms of sheer points for the season, Jeff was at the top of the board; Busch finished fourth. But because of the new Chase format, the driver who performed best over the final ten events won. There would be no fifth championship. It was a bitter pill to swallow.
Jeff driving under the checkered flag to join an elite group of repeat winners at the Daytona 500, February 20, 2005.
11
TEAM OF RIVALS
“WHEN I STARTED OUT, I DON’T THINK I fully appreciated the magnitude and significance of the Daytona 500, because I didn’t grow up with it as a kid,” Jeff admits. “For the guys who grew up in the stock-car world, the Daytona 500 was the ultimate race. Where I grew up, the Indy 500 was the ultimate race.”
But by 2005, after twelve years in the Cup series, Jeff no longer harbored any dreams of trying his hand in Indy or Formula 1 racing. “I still loved the Indy 500, but once I went down the stock-car path, I stuck with it and gave it everything I had,” he says. “I really thought stock cars were far more for me than Indy cars because of the way the cars drove and the oval tracks. I could draw from my experience racing sprint cars. For the most part, Indy cars were rear-engine road-racing cars.
“So I had wanted to learn more of the history of the Daytona 500 and give the race the respect it deserved. I can’t say I fully grasped it the first time I won it, and maybe not even the second. But by the third time I won it, I did.”
On February 20, in a race that saw four lead changes in the final nine laps, Jeff, at thirty-three years old, became only the fifth driver in NASCAR history to win the Daytona 500 three or more times, edging out Kurt Busch, for his seventieth career victory. On the radio, during the cool-down lap, Rick Hendrick chimed in: “Dedicate this one to the families . . . buddy, okay?”
During the Victory Lane festivities, after his tribute to the victims of the Hendrick plane crash, Jeff made it clear that the kid who had dreamed of the Indianapolis 500 had truly been converted. “This is the Daytona 500,” he said, “and it just doesn’t get any sweeter than this.”
Unfortunately, it was an accurate assessment of the season to come, one in which his cars just didn’t seem as fast, his qualifying average dropped, his average finish fell six spots behind the previous year, and he wrecked eight times. He ended up with fewer top-fives and top-tens than at any point since 1994. The only thing gaining momentum that year was frustration.
After a wreck in Chicago, one that Jeff felt was caused by a careless move made by driver Mike Bliss, he boiled over. “To me, it was just ridiculous,” Jeff remembers. “I was really angry, and I said that if I get to the airport and see him, I’m going to knock the shit out of him. Sure enough, he was there. And I’m a man of my word.”
Communication began to break down between Robbie Loomis (left) and Jeff (right), 2005.
Jeff approached Bliss on the tarmac, “and I clocked him. And it felt great. Later, I felt bad about it, because I like Mike. But it was stupid what he did, and based on the fact that he didn’t retaliate, I think he knew it. I don’t think he disagreed with me.”
At the same time, the disappointments on the track only compounded the personal turmoil in crew chief Robbie Loomis’s life. He and Jeff had put together some fantastic seasons in 2001 and 2004 and had shared some good times, but they never really found that spot where instinct took over and they were at their competitive best. When Loomis’s mother fell ill toward the end of 2004 and didn’t seem to get better, he started to lose focus and to question his own dedication to the sport.
Jeff had seen what was happening, and Hendrick saw it, too. And while they had planned to shake things up at season’s end, the No. 24 team’s failure to qualify for the 2005 Chase convinced them and Loomis that it was best to part ways then and there.
With ten races still remaining, they brought up twenty-six-year-old Steve Letarte, who as a teenager had been hired by Ray Evernham to sweep floors and run errands, and had worked his way from tire specialist, to mechanic, and finally, to car chief for the No. 24. It was a position they had been grooming him for. The season was no longer salvageable, but the final races under Letarte—including a win for Jeff at Martinsville—gave the team a chance to get up and running in preparation for 2006.
By May the following season, Jeff was sixth in the standings, but in his personal life he was closer to the top of the world. He and Ingrid Vandebosch had been in a serious relationship for more than a year. “He was so wheels-off over her,” recalls Jimmie Johnson, who in 2004, had married Chandra Janway, someone Jeff had known from his time in New York. “There was some definite magic in the air with those two.”
But while Ingrid was keen on marriage, the word itself had become loathsome to Jeff. He felt he had been so badly burned by the divorce that he’d never again step to the altar. “I had a chip on my shoulder,” he admits. “I wanted to be in a committed relationship, and I knew we both wanted to have children. My only hang-up was the whole marriage thing.”
Yet on Mother’s Day, after his race at Darlington, he finally popped the question. “I thought it was really cute,” says Ingrid. “I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something like, ‘Well, I think we should get married. What do you think?’ And I said, ‘Yeah okay,’ ” she recalls with a laugh. “It wasn’t the most romantic proposal. But when you’ve gone through what I went through, it takes all the romance out of it. But I knew being married to each other was ultimately what we both wanted. So I guess my focus was on a lasting relationship, and not so much on a big over-the-top proposal or event.”
He and Ingrid decided to keep their engagement under wraps.
Less than a month later, Ingrid got a pretty good primer on the life of a NASCAR spouse when Jeff suffered one of the most violent wrecks of his career. Heading into Turn 1 with eleven laps to go at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania, his right-front brake rotor went, and he lost control. The car skidded through the infield, then back onto the track and slammed driver’s-side into the retaining barrier at nearly 150 mph. “That is a bad crash,” Darrell Waltrip said from the broadcast booth as the crowd waited for signs of life. “I don’t like the looks of that at all.” Memories of Dale Earnhardt no doubt flashed through many people’s minds. So there was a general sigh of relief when Jeff climbed out of the badly mangled vehicle some forty-five seconds later.
“It was significant, probably the scariest crash I’ve ever been in,” Jeff says. “They suspected I had a head injury. Did I have a minor concussion? Maybe. I was a little loopy when I got out of the car.”
What he did have was an order from NASCAR to undergo an MRI before he could be cleared to race again. When he and his worried fiancée flew home to New York after the race, they immediately went to the hospital for an examination. In Charlotte, it would have been a 1-2-3 deal in an MRI unit, in and out, very efficient and very clinical. But this was New York City, and it w
as a mess.
“You take an elevator to an intensive-care floor where there’s a lot of people that have had accidents and significant brain trauma. And then I walk up to the desk and tell them I’m there to get an MRI. They don’t know who I am at all. They’re looking for the file.”
Jeff recounts the conversation:
“What’s your name?”
“Jeff Gordon.” They look.
“All right, well, where’s the patient?”
One of the most violent wrecks of Jeff’s career at Pocono Raceway, June 11, 2006.
“I am the patient.”
“It says here the patient was in a high-speed crash, with a head injury.”
“Yes, that’s me. I was in a high-speed crash in a racecar.”
“How fast were you going?”
“I don’t know, one hundred forty, one hundred fifty miles per hour.”
“Well, that’s not possible.”
“That’s what they told me. ‘That’s not possible.’ ”
It took a bit of explanation from Jeff about helmets and safety gear before they fully grasped the situation. Then he had to wait. And wait. He and Ingrid had food delivered to the ICU. And then, finally, he got his MRI.
Friends and family pose after their croquet game at Meadowood Napa Valley resort where Jeff and Ingrid announced their engagement.
“It was very funny and really sad at the same time,” says Ingrid, “because we were in intensive care, and all these people went through really bad accidents, way slower than Jeff, but they’re hooked up to machines and probably will never walk again.”
A week later, he was back behind the wheel at Sonoma. On Saturday before the race, Ingrid and Jeff gathered family and close friends at Meadowood Napa Valley resort. After several games of croquet, the couple announced their engagement. “I was just so happy and feeling great about life,” Jeff says. The next morning he called his PR man, Jon Edwards, and his crew chief, Steve Letarte, to tell them both about the engagement, and then he told them something he had never said before a race: “By the way, we’re going to win today.”