Jeff Gordon: His Dream, Drive & Destiny

by Joe Garner

  Steve Letarte and Jeff decided to part ways in 2010.

  There was no bitterness or recrimination among the team. Everyone had put their back into it, particularly Letarte, who felt he’d tried every trick in the book to get the No. 24 out of its straitjacket. There was simply something intangible missing.

  “If I really look back on it,” Letarte explains, “Jeff and I never really recovered from not winning the championship in 2007. We put together a record year, just phenomenal. We did everything we could do, and we got beat. Truly giving everything you have in sports is kind of like being in love. When you’re really in love, you let your guard down and you let it all happen. . . . And when it doesn’t work out, you become heartbroken. Sports are the same way. I call it the ‘sports hangover.’ And that was a sports hangover that I don’t know if we were ever going to get over together.”

  Jeff wouldn’t argue that the disappointment of 2007 had played a crucial role. But his issues now ran deeper. Taking stock of his life and his career, he came face-to-face with the reality of the situation and for the first time seriously considered hanging it up.

  “I always said that if I’m not enjoying it, I’m not healthy, and I’m not competitive—I don’t want to be doing this,” he recalls. “And 2010 was that kind of year—all three were lining up. I just thought, ‘Okay, maybe it’s me. Why am I doing this? How much longer do I want to be doing this? My back hurts. I’m not having fun.’ How do you climb out of that?”

  He called Rick Hendrick. “I’m not feeling it anymore,” Jeff remembers telling the boss. “And I’m not doing the team justice because we’re not getting the results.” Hendrick wasn’t quite ready to have his four-time champion, a racer who had brought Hendrick Motorsports its first championship and helped make them the premier organization, bail on his storied career with less than two months before the next season, especially with a new primary sponsor coming on board in AARP–Drive to End Hunger and no replacement driver.

  If they were going to do it, they needed to do it right. They needed time to notify the media and the fans; they needed to organize a send-off season. But not this. This was not the way to go out. “I talked him into one more year because I just hated to see him stop,” Hendrick says.

  But what really woke Jeff up was Ingrid. She didn’t want him moping, and she didn’t want to hear any talk about retirement. “We had a lot of conversations about it,” Jeff says. “She was as frustrated as I was that the results weren’t coming. But seeing her want more for me, more for the team, and our family, motivated me. She knew I could still do it.”

  As he began pulling himself out of the pit of self-doubt, he realized there was perhaps an even more important reason to continue: Ella, who was now three years old, and her brother, Leo Benjamin, who had been born in August. “I wanted them to experience seeing their dad racing,” Jeff says. “It was important to me that they get old enough to have some sort of understanding of what I did.”

  Jeff holding his newborn son, Leo, 2010.

  So just before Christmas, Marshall Carlson, Hendrick Motorsports’s general manager at the time, came to Jeff and said they were thinking about doing some reshuffling, and, since he had once shown interest in Alan Gustafson, would he be interested in having Gustafson crew chief for the 24 team? “Absolutely, one hundred percent I’m interested,” Jeff told him. “Alan was Kyle Busch’s crew chief when Kyle was a rookie, and there were a lot of times when Alan came to me, and we would talk about setups and things they were doing with the cars. I was really impressed with him then as well as when he was Mark Martin’s crew chief almost winning the championship together in 2009,” Jeff says. “I wasn’t unhappy with Steve. I liked him as a person and as a crew chief, but I didn’t see us getting to the level I was hoping for. I also thought that Dale Jr. and Steve would be a good fit. Steve has a big personality and is good at bringing that out in others. It ended up being a great fit.” So Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Steve Letarte were now in the 48/88 shop, and Jeff was paired with Alan Gustafson in the 5/24 shop. Back pain be damned, Jeff would give it one more shot.

  Ella and Leo.

  But if they were going to approach the season the way Jeff and Ingrid had discussed it—putting everything he had into a run for a championship—there were a few things he needed to make clear. He was going to eat, sleep, and dream racing. He wasn’t going to have time to be the super-indulgent daddy or the attentive husband. His biggest priority was going to be the race car, the track, and the team. He wanted to make sure they all knew what they were getting into. “I’m on board,” Ingrid assured him. “Let’s do it.”

  “So 2011 was an opportunity not only to make the change with Alan and the team but also to recommit myself to racing,” Jeff says.

  It wasn’t the only relationship that changed. For five years, Jeff had watched Jimmie Johnson—the closest friend he’d ever had in racing—completely take over the sport, capturing title after title. In 2010, Johnson had won his fifth straight title, surpassing Jeff’s championship record, and their friendship was challenged. “I think it’s natural when friends are also competitors. When you see someone else accomplishing what you want to accomplish, it’s difficult,” Jeff admits. Now Jeff was leaving the building they’d shared since 2002 to join a new crew.

  “We’d spoken about how competition was putting a strain on our relationship,” Johnson says. “Being so close to someone off the track, and having my hero be my mentor, and then watching the emotional side, the friendship side, kind of fracture, and him not be there to have cool experiences with in life, and to not be with him as a friend to share it—there’s a pain and a sting that goes with that.

  “He has said a few times that when the competition is gone, we’ll hash this out and it’ll all make sense. At some point, I have a feeling we’ll be on rocking chairs having a beer and sorting it out.”

  But in the meantime, Johnson was just another guy in another car trying to keep Jeff from winning. As the old-timers might say: that’s racing.

  Jeff smoking up the finish line by doing a few celebratory doughnuts in front of the pagoda at the finish line following his historic Brickyard 400 win, July 27, 2014.

  Jeff celebrating his record setting fifth win at the Brickyard 400, 2014.

  Jeff proudly watches as Leo and Ella kiss the bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 2014.

  Jeff and his family kiss the bricks in honor of his historic win, 2014.

  The following few years with Gustafson were a period of personal rejuvenation for Jeff. In the second race of 2011, he snapped his sixty-six-race winless drought and then went on to win twice more, claiming third place on the career victories list. He would win three more times over the next two seasons and make the Chase each time. He showed some spark in 2013 but ultimately finished sixth behind Jimmie Johnson in his sixth championship season. It wasn’t spectacular, but Jeff was pouring every ounce of sweat and passion he could into it, and the team was learning, building, and progressing. Ultimately, the pieces came together, and 2014 would rival anything he had accomplished in six years.

  Ella and Leo give their Papa a high-five after his Brickyard 400 win, 2014.

  The first ten races of that season saw Jeff reel off seven top-tens and four top-fives. He was already leading in points when he grabbed his first win of the season at Kansas and was still holding the top spot when they rolled into Indianapolis for the twentieth race of the season. By then, he already knew that the following season, 2015, would be his last. In the spring, he had made his decision and secretly informed Rick Hendrick, who understood it was pointless to try to squeeze any more out of his golden boy.

  The Brickyard had always been a special place for Jeff, ever since his first monumental victory there in 1994. He’d won the iconic race a total of four times. There was no telling what his 2015 season would look like; he realized this might be his last shot. Rick Hendrick felt the same. “This is your day,” he told Jeff that morning. At a ceremony preceding the race,
the mayor of Indianapolis proclaimed July 27, 2014 to be Jeff Gordon Day. In receiving his plaque, Jeff joked, “I just hope my competitors are respectful of this.”

  They didn’t have to be. The No. 24 team came with one of the strongest cars that afternoon, and Jeff helped them prove it, running up front most of the day before pulling away from his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kasey Kahne on a restart with seventeen laps to go. “A great restart on my part, which I can’t say I’m known for, was crucial,” Jeff recalls. “He really had the preferred line, and I had to be super aggressive. So it was intense. It was everything,” he says. When he crossed the finish line to roars from the appreciative hometown crowd, he crossed the threshold into history, becoming the only NASCAR driver to capture five Brickyard 400s and tying Forumla 1 racer Michael Schumacher for the most career wins at the track.

  The kissing-the-bricks ceremony after the race provided a clear picture of how much Jeff’s life had changed, when Ingrid, Ella, and Leo joined him for the photo op. “That moment right there, where you’re able to achieve something so great and you’re able to see the look in their eyes—you know, they’re there, they’re experiencing it. Certainly for Ella, she’ll never forget those moments. And I know I won’t. It can be hard to make your kids proud of what you do as a parent, and that was one of those moments.”

  On the track, he continued to delight everyone, going on to win at Michigan three races after the Brickyard and finishing second at Richmond to enter the Chase in second position, just three points behind Brad Keselowski.

  The Chase had been restructured again that season, with sixteen racers qualifying and the four lowest-performing drivers being dropped after each three-race period. At the tenth and final race in Miami, the final four teams would compete against each other for the championship.

  Jeff came out swinging in the first three-race series, notching a dominating win at Dover over Keselowski and a runner-up finish at Chicago. That was more than enough to overcome a disappointing twenty-sixth-place showing at Loudon, and he easily advanced to the Chase’s next round. Another runner-up finish at Charlotte helped him move on again, and heading into Martinsville, he was one of eight drivers left. The team’s performance over the next three races would decide whether Jeff would race for a championship at Homestead.

  The No. 24 clearly had a strong car at Martinsville, and Jeff ran well all day. But a penalty for speeding on pit road cost him the lead, and he finished second behind teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. Still, it was enough to push him to the top, and he went to Texas the following week leading the field. A good show there would likely punch his ticket to the finale at Homestead. A win there would seal it.

  Jeff signing autographs at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, May 9, 2014.

  Jeff celebrates winning the 5 Hour Energy 400 at Kansas Speedway, May 10, 2014.

  And it looked like that was where things were headed in Fort Worth. After a restart with seventeen laps to go, Jeff moved up from third to second, behind Jimmie Johnson. Four laps later, Kasey Kahne crashed on the backstretch, so the yellow came out one more time. On that restart, with eight laps left, Jeff got the jump on Johnson in Turn 2, took the lead, and began pulling away. With four laps to go, it was clear no one could catch him. He was going to Homestead to race for a championship. And then, the unthinkable. Far back in the pack, Clint Bowyer got loose and slid into the wall. The caution came out. It was the only thing that could have reeled Jeff in. Now he’d have to line up again for a last-lap shootout.

  “We had it won so many times, and the caution kept coming out,” he says. “Then you have to rerack, do another restart. I knew 2015 was going to be my final year at the time, and so I knew how crucial and important that race was.”

  He chose to line up on the outside of the front row, with second-running Jimmie Johnson beside him on the inside. Just behind them were Kevin Harvick on the outside and Brad Keselowski on the inside. And then the flag dropped. Jeff spun his tires slightly but still had a decent start. Shooting into the first turn, Jeff came down from the outside to get side-by-side with Johnson, leaving just enough of a gap for the hard-driving Keselowski to try and squeeze into the opening between Jeff and Jimmie. Keselowski and Jeff made contact. As Keselowski and Johnson took off, the No. 24 dropped like a dead bird, finally spinning out, a casualty of a flat tire from the contact. Jeff would finish the day twenty-ninth. It had taken just a split second for his dream of a fifth championship to receive a serious stomping.

  As the race winner, Jimmie Johnson, turned celebratory donuts on the front straightaway, Jeff pulled up next to Keselowski’s car on pit road. By the time he climbed out, there was already some pushing and shoving among the crews of the No. 24 and Keselowski’s No. 2. Jeff made his way around Keselowski’s car, where he had some strong words for the young 2012 champion. Keselowski answered back, then turned away.

  “What he did on the track was not that terrible,” Jeff admits. “It was a risky move. But it was the way he handled it afterwards that was unacceptable in my opinion—to just sit there and brush it off, kind of smug. And for his team to stand there and try to protect him. I thought that was ridiculous. And that’s why it escalated.”

  When Kevin Harvick came around the other side and nudged Keselowski toward Jeff, Jeff lunged and grabbed the driver’s collar. And then all hell broke loose. Fists started flying, with a good dozen folks shoving each other, wrestling, punching, and kicking. By the time NASCAR officials broke it up, Keselowski had abrasions on his face and mouth, and Jeff was bleeding from the lip.

  “Looking back on it, I probably overreacted a little bit,” Jeff says. “But at the moment, I didn’t care about that. I cared that my race was done, and potentially our championship hopes. . . . It was not only a huge emotional letdown but a huge hit in the points. There was a lot going on, a lot of pressure, emotion, adrenaline, a lot of things had built up. And when it goes bad, it just sends you over the top.

  “So I was mad at him, but I was just as mad at myself for allowing somebody to put me in that position and kind of give me a cheap shot. It’s my job to prevent that from happening. And in the clutch, I didn’t get it done. I allowed Brad to get in that position.”

  The fracas at Texas was all over the news, but it certainly wasn’t the first time Jeff had gotten physical at the track. Since 2006, there had been wrecks and retribution, arguments and hands-on confrontations with Matt Kenseth, Jeff Burton, and Clint Bowyer. It was a noticeable change from the quieter, more controlled Jeff Gordon the public had come to know earlier in his career.

  While Texas may have been a huge setback, Jeff still had a chance of moving on to the final round at Homestead. It would all depend on how he performed—and how the seven other remaining Chase hopefuls performed—at Phoenix. In the end, the only way he could have done better was to win. He finished second after running in that spot nearly the entire day behind the eventual victor, Kevin Harvick. And when he crossed the finish line, he was going to the finals. But just behind him, Ryan Newman bumped Kyle Larson into the wall and passed him in the final turn to secure an eleventh-place finish. That put Newman through and dropped Jeff just a single point below the cutoff.

  Jeff focusing on the race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, March 8, 2014.

  With an understandably frustrated tone in his voice, Jeff addressed his team on the radio. “Let’s just go win at Homestead, that’s all we can do. You guys did everything great this year.” In the post-race interview, he was composed but still smarting about what had gone down in Texas. “This makes last week hurt that much more,” he said. “I’m not happy about it, but at the same time, I’m really proud of what we’ve done this year.”

  The boss wasn’t happy either. No Hendrick driver made the final four, dashing their chances for a twelfth team championship. “He should have won the championship,” Hendrick says. “He got screwed by Brad taking him out in Texas. I think we would have beaten Harvick at Homestead.”

  Leo raises his arms in celebration o
f Jeff’s win at Dover International Speedway, September 28, 2014.

  “It was an amazing, very competitive year, winning races and all that,” Jeff remembers. “And even though we didn’t go to Homestead as one of the final four, I felt like we were a championship-caliber team.” In that final race, Jeff dominated the competition and finished in the top ten. He may not have been racing as a contender, but that finish did help him secure at least one point of pride—for the third time since NASCAR had introduced the Chase format, Jeff led all other racers in the overall point standings for the season.

  It had been a spectacular climb, both for the team and for Jeff personally, since that moment four years earlier when he had teetered on the edge of putting his helmet away for good. He had wanted to contend for a title, and all that could really be said was that fate had intervened.

  Jeff announces to the No. 24 team at Hendrick Motorsports that the 2015 season will be his last, January 22, 2015.

  Rick Hendrick knew. Alan Gustafson knew. Ingrid and Carol and John knew. And that was really it. Jeff had kept a tight lid on his decision to retire after the 2015 season while Hendrick set the wheels in motion, notifying the current sponsors and courting new ones, Hendrick signed nineteen-year-old Chase Elliott, the 2014 Xfinity Series champion, to take over the No. 24 in 2016, and handled the myriad of other issues related to winding down Jeff’s driving career at Hendrick Motorsports.

  Now, as they came upon the new year, the only thing left to do was tell the rest of the world. The only question was when. Jeff, hoping to make an announcement just before the new season began in Daytona in mid-February, had assured Ingrid there was no need to cancel her scheduled January trip to Belgium. And while she had hesitated, she ultimately packed her bags and boarded the plane.