Jeff Gordon: His Dream, Drive & Destiny

by Joe Garner

  “I went out and led about half the laps and got my fifth Sonoma victory,” says Jeff. “I can’t even describe the emotions that day. First the engagement, and then my first win of the season. I got pretty choked up in the car after I got the checkered flag. I guess it suddenly hit me, everything that was going on. It all came together that weekend,” says Jeff.

  He followed his win in Sonoma with another at Chicago and three top-fives just before the Chase selection, he grabbed the ninth playoff spot. But a fuel pump problem, a crash, and an engine issue over the next three races effectively ended any chance he had of pulling off a surprise ending.

  He and Ingrid did, however, pull off a surprise wedding—and in costume, no less—in a secluded gazebo in New York’s Central Park on Halloween. With a judge dressed as a witch, Ingrid in a tutu and crown as the black swan from Swan Lake, and Jeff clad as a polo player next to their cowboy hat–wearing dog, Valentino, the happy couple took their vows. “Normally, a guy forgets his wedding date, but I was afraid I’d forget—I’m no good with dates,” Ingrid says. “So I said, ‘Let’s do it [Halloween] so we’ll never forget.” A week later, on November 7, they tied the knot again in front of their friends and family at a ceremony in Mexico.

  Jeff and Ingrid, dressed in Halloween costumes, wed in a secluded gazebo in New York’s Central Park, October 31, 2006.

  But the biggest surprise came a week and a half before their Halloween nuptials, when Jeff returned to Manhattan after his race in Martinsville. “He comes home with his luggage and he’s tired, and I made him dinner,” Ingrid remembers. “He was just taking his sweet time, and I’m like, ‘Can you hurry up?’ ”

  “ ‘What’s the rush?’ ” Jeff recalls saying. “She said, ‘I have something for you. It’s on the pillow on the bed.’ ” Resting there was an envelope with a ribbon. Jeff opened it. Inside was a sonogram. They were having a baby. “We were both so happy we started crying. It was just a very happy moment we shared that I’ll never forget,” Jeff says.

  The end of the 2006 season brought Hendrick Motorsports its sixth Cup series championship. It had taken a few years, but the young driver Jeff and Rick Hendrick brought on back in 2001 had come into his own. Jimmie Johnson had won twenty-three races since his 2002 rookie season, and in 2006, he, his crew chief Chad Knaus, and the rest of the No. 48 team captured the Cup series championship.

  As the car’s part owner, a member of the Hendrick team, and as a friend and mentor, Jeff was thrilled. “Shades of Gordon and Evernham” buzzed about the Johnson-Knaus pairing, and in many ways it was true. Like Jeff, Johnson had been a talented but unproven driver who had come into the league with the highest-quality equipment and the backing of a top-notch racing organization. And in Knaus, he found an Evernham-trained partner who even Jeff admits “was like Ray on steroids.” But there was one difference: Jimmie had Jeff. And that meant he had the experience of four championships and decade’s worth of top-level racing to draw on, not to mention a goldmine of track and set-up knowledge. Whatever Johnson needed, Jeff had been happy to oblige.

  “Chad and Jimmie, I mean, let’s face it, they came in and stepped into Jeff’s equipment,” says Hendrick. “And the chemistry there between Jimmie and Chad got to what he and Ray used to have.”

  Jeff and Ingrid wed in Mexico, November 7, 2006.

  Johnson, to his credit, always acknowledged Jeff’s role in his success, and Jeff, likewise, was quick to give Jimmie his due. “Jimmie doesn’t always get the credit. You’ll hear people say that if it hadn’t been for me, he wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity, which isn’t completely true,” he said. “You have to give Jimmie credit for knowing the right questions to ask. He’s very talented, and he was going to have success and prove himself eventually regardless of my involvement,” Jeff maintains.

  Just five weeks into the 2007 season, Jeff took over the top spot on the leader board, and for the next twenty-one races, no one could touch him. The numbers he put up were the most impressive he’d posted since the late 1990s, and not even his 2001 championship season or his brilliant 2004 effort could match them. Twenty-one times in twenty-six races he finished in the top ten, and fifteen times he was a top-five finisher. Among his four wins were back-to-back victories at Phoenix and Talladega in which he tied Dale Earnhardt’s record of seventy-six wins. He then broke that record, taking over the sixth spot on NASCAR’s all-time career victories list.

  Jeff and Ingrid after his win in the Dodge Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway, June 25, 2006.

  Following the twenty-sixth race, at Richmond, where he finished fourth, he was still the season leader, more than 300 points ahead of second-place Tony Stewart. But with a newly reformatted Chase, in which each of the twelve qualifiers had their points reset and were then awarded ten extra points for each victory up to that point, he found himself seeded second, twenty points behind the win leader: Jimmie Johnson. The 2007 Chase for the Nextel Cup would be a battle for the ages.

  Jeff got off to a good start in the Chase’s first contest, at Loudon, where his second-place finish put him in a tie with Johnson, who ran sixth. At Dover, Jeff logged an eleventh-place finish, still better than Johnson’s fourteenth, which allowed him to hold the lead. But by the third race, Johnson’s third-place finish was enough to put him back on top, with Jeff, who finished fifth, just behind him. From there on out, it was the Jeff and Jimmie show.

  At Talladega the following weekend, Jeff hung around the back of the pack most of the day before making a move with about seven laps to go. A lap later, he was running second, in an inside draft line, nose to tail behind Johnson. With two laps left, they remained that way, and it looked like Jeff wouldn’t be able to find his way around the No. 48. But with just half a lap to go, Jeff popped out from behind Johnson, received a good push, and took the lead, dropping down to block Johnson through the final turn and take the checkered flag. It was a thrilling, virtuoso performance, and it put Jeff back in the Chase lead.

  It was expected Johnson would dominate the following week at Charlotte. Jeff’s last trip to Victory Lane at that track was in 1999. Jimmie led ninety-five of the 337 laps, before spinning unexpectedly on lap 231. That’s when Jeff picked up the lead, trading it with teammate Kyle Busch and Clint Bowyer. After an oil spill by Jeff Green, Jeff and Kyle began experiencing fuel pickup problems. Fearing a wreck, owner Rick Hendrick told Kyle to “race Gordon clean.” Ryan Newman attempted a “bump and run” on Jeff, giving Newman the lead until he spun out with three laps to go, putting Jeff back in front to take the win. Jimmie finished fourteenth. “Man, I don’t know where to start,” Jeff told reporters after the race. “I’m so fired up about this.”

  “Looking back, Charlotte gave us a lot of confidence,” Jeff recalls. But it wouldn’t last long. Johnson roared back the next Sunday to take the checkered flag at Martinsville, and repeated the performance the following week in Atlanta, cutting deeply into Jeff’s lead. Considering that there were ten other Chase competitors—including Hendrick driver Kyle Busch—and

  Jeff’s No. 24 takes the lead over Jimmie Johnson’s No. 48 in the race at Talladega, October 7, 2007. forty-three total racers on the track, the fact that the two teammates had now claimed four victories in a row was a testament not only to the depth of the Hendrick Motorsports operation but to Jeff and Johnson’s individual skill.

  It was difficult not to flash back to 1996, when Jeff, who had put together a similar monster season, was edged out in the final few races of his drive for a second championship by then-teammate Terry Labonte. “Back then, we were outperforming Terry on the track, but we had some failures,” Jeff reminisced after the Atlanta race. “In this situation, it’s hard to say. Jimmie has won the last two races; we won the two before that. He might be outperforming us just a little bit, but we’ve got the consistency like Terry did.”

  With three races left, Jeff and Jimmie were separated by only nine points. It was still anybody’s title heading to Texas Motor Speedway. Throughout practice, Jeff st
ruggled and wasn’t completely happy with the car’s handling. In the end, he logged a seventh-place finish. Jimmie capped off a dogfight with Matt Kenseth in the final few laps for a third straight victory, catapulting him to the top of the standings—thirty points ahead of Jeff.

  Jeff knew that if he had any hopes of a fifth championship, he would have to summon a masterful performance at Phoenix International Raceway to hold off the surging No. 48. His victory there earlier in the year gave the team some confidence, and his third-position qualifying run, three spots ahead of Johnson, was reason for optimism. Still, he didn’t start off well. But by the eightieth lap of the 312-lap contest, he had found his composure and was running fourth, just behind Johnson; the two of them soon moved up to second and third. They continued dueling among the top five racers, and by the halfway mark, Jeff had worked his way into second, with Johnson sitting fourth. But a dozen laps later, Johnson caught and overtook him, then surged ahead of Matt Kenseth for the lead. After being kicked back following pit stops, they both grappled their way up again through slower traffic, but Jeff was becoming increasingly frustrated with the car’s handling. With forty-five laps to go, he was in tenth position, trailing the sixth-place Johnson. And then, after they both pitted a final time, Johnson turned it on. He blasted his way up from sixth place to take the lead with twenty-three laps left, as Jeff continued to fight with his car. When the checkered flag fell, it was Johnson who claimed his fourth consecutive victory, nine spots ahead of the limping No. 24, effectively slamming the door on Jeff’s best season in a decade.

  Jeff and Ingrid at the 2007 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Graydon Carter at Mortons in West Hollywood, California.

  “Whatever they’ve got, we’re missing,” the disheartened four-time champion said during the post-race interview. When asked about his chances of rebounding at the Homestead-Miami Speedway race, he was blunt. “It’s over,” he said.

  If there was any silver lining in Miami, where he finished fourth to the now-two-time champion Johnson’s seventh, it was that he posted his thirtieth top-ten of the season, setting a new modern-era NASCAR record. And for those scoring pre-Chase style, it was Jeff who again walked away with the “shadow” title, just as he had in 2004. In terms of overall points, he had crushed the competition that season, finishing 353 points ahead of Johnson, the largest margin between a first- and second-place driver in Cup racing since Jeff’s 364-point besting of Mark Martin in 1998.

  As for Jimmie Johnson’s impressive ten wins that year, you would have to go back to Jeff’s 1996, 1997, and 1998 seasons to find a Cup racer who’d logged double-digit victories. And four wins in a row? Nobody had accomplished that feat since Jeff did it in 1998.

  The No. 48 team was simply over the moon after rallying to pull it off, but for Jeff there was a feeling of emptiness. “We were so close,” he says. “You’ve got all that confidence and you’re feeling good, like nothing can bring us down, this is our year. And then all of a sudden somebody gives you a wakeup call . . . Jimmie and those guys, they just flat-out beat us. It was tough. That 2007 season, you know, it took the wind out of my sail.”

  Ingrid and Jeff with newborn Ella, 2007.

  Jeff and baby Ella at the track before the Dickies 500 race at Texas Motor Speedway, November 4, 2007.

  Jeff holds his daughter Ella with Ingrid in victory lane after his win at the Ford 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, October 7, 2007.

  At home, there was enough happening to keep him from ruminating too much in the off-season. On June 20, he and Ingrid welcomed their first child, Ella Sofia, and despite being in the midst of a championship hunt, Jeff was able to attend the birth in New York. “It was a great moment,” Ingrid recalls. “He cried really hard. He was so happy.”

  The new baby meant a new routine. And for someone whose schedule was as rigid as Jeff’s, it took some getting used to. There was no more late-to-bed, late-to-rise, as was his habit; he had to be on his daddy game when the sun rose.

  “When Ella came, people asked me, ‘Has it affected how you race?’ And when they ask those questions, they’re thinking that now that I’m a father, I have to be more cautious on the track, I have more at stake. And those things are true. But how it affected me is you have a child that’s up every couple of hours, you’re not getting good sleep. . . . So you get to the racetrack and you’re just exhausted and it’s harder to stay as focused doing your job without proper sleep.”

  However, if there was any question whether fatherhood might slow Jeff’s roll, all fans had to do was recall the second half of 2007. He had taken on the field just as aggressively as he always had. Jeff was simply too competitive, father or not, to ease off the throttle. And coming into 2008, he was being pegged as a championship favorite. But by the time the Chase rolled, he was sloughing through what, by Jeff Gordon standards, was a ho-hum season, and he entered the playoffs, now called the Chase for the Sprint Cup, way down at tenth. He saved his best for last, posting seven top-tens down the stretch, but it wasn’t nearly enough to catch the eventual champion, Jimmie Johnson, who won three times over the last eight races and walked away with his third straight title.

  But what stung most wasn’t finishing seventh or getting shown up again by his stablemate, though that certainly cast a pallor over the No. 24. It was the fact that over thirty-six races, he’d registered zero wins. “We just weren’t where we needed to be,” Jeff says. “Sure it stung a little more because the 48 team was so good, but it was more so because our team wasn’t where it could be.” By the beginning of 2009, he came close to winning several times. Through the first six races, he had two fourth places, including one at Martinsville, where he won the pole, and finished second twice, at Fontana and Atlanta. He was perched at the top of the point standings, but with the premium the Chase format put on wins—awarding extra points for victories—he and Steve Letarte knew they’d have to get back to form to stay competitive.

  On April 5, at Texas Motor Speedway, where Jeff hadn’t had a win in sixteen attempts, they finally reeled it in. The team had a fast car that day, and some vintage driving from Jeff—along with great midrace adjustments by the crew and a final lightning-quick pit stop—put them ahead of Jimmie Johnson in the final laps. Jeff took the checkered for the first time in seventeen months, snapping his forty-seven-race winless streak. Their good form continued; Jeff was the runner-up in eight races that season, but there were no more wins. When all was said and done, he had racked up twenty-five top-tens, matching the third-highest total of his career, and had finished second in overall points. He performed well in the Chase, but again, it wasn’t enough. Jimmie Johnson was crowned the champion for a record-setting fourth time in a row.

  Leah Wasson and Jeff pose at a Jeff Gordon Children’s Foundation bowling tournament fundraiser.

  12

  IT’S NOT WHERE YOU START, IT’S WHERE YOU FINISH THAT MATTERS

  “I’D LIKE TO TAKE YOU ON A SUNDAY DRIVE,” Jeff began as he stood at the podium in front of an audience of fellow superstar athletes and philanthropists as the evening’s recipient of the 2012 Heisman Humanitarian Award. Jeff was the first motorsports athlete to receive the prestigious honor, bestowed in recognition of those from the sporting world who have given significantly of themselves for the betterment of others. “For me,” he continued, “it’s being strapped very tightly by a six-point harness into an 850-horsepower racecar, traveling down a long straightaway, accelerating at speeds of 200 miles per hour plus. Imagine what that’s like with forty-two other cars, inches away from you. It might sound a little frightening to you. To me, that’s a normal Sunday drive. But what I do find frightening,” he said with a sudden slight quiver of emotion in his voice, “is the thought of a child being told that they have cancer. Or the thought of millions of older Americans not knowing where their next meal is coming from. That’s frightening to me.”

  Fear can either paralyze us or motivate us. For Jeff, it motivated him to take action. But the inspiration for his philanthro
pic activism came long before he rose to the ranks of iconic NASCAR superstar. “I remember my parents’ business as a child; I was around people in wheelchairs—paraplegics, quadriplegics,” Jeff recalls. He remembers one man in particular, a quadriplegic who was able to drive although he had very little control of his hands and arms. “He did it with the hand controls that my parents built,” Jeff says with pride. “So even though it was a business, it was to help people.”

  It was while driving for Bill Davis Racing in the Busch Grand National series that Jeff got his first glimpse of the positive impact his business as an emerging celebrity racecar driver could have on those in need. Bill Armour, Davis’s PR man, suggested the idea of visiting children in hospitals. “Initially I remember thinking, ‘Why do you want me to go?’ And they’re like, ‘Well you know, these kids are sick.’ ‘Okay, I’ll go, but why me?’ ” Armour took Jeff to Brenner Children’s Hospital, located in Winston-Salem.

  “That was eye-opening for me,” Jeff remembers, “realizing I could go in there, talk about what I do, sign an autograph . . . and give them pause from all the other stuff going on in their life that probably wasn’t too positive.”

  Jeff with Ray Evernham’s son, Ray J.

  Jeff continued making hospital visits, but in July 1992 the need for his help hit close to home. No sooner had he and his crew chief Ray Evernham begun work on the career opportunity of their lifetime, a chance to build a Cup team from scratch for Hendrick Motorsports, than Ray received the terrifying news that his one-year-old son, Ray J, had been diagnosed with leukemia. For the next several months, Jeff watched powerlessly as Ray’s little boy was subjected to chemotherapy, radiation, and long stays in the hospital.