At about 18 years old, Jeff Gordon pretty much had his future figured out. He was going to be an IndyCar driver. Sure, at around 14 years old, the California native had relocated with his family to just outside of Indianapolis to, at the time, legally race sprint cars and midget cars (he wasn’t old enough in California). Gordon immediately thrived while racing in the Midwest, but he never gave up his IndyCar dream.
Advertisement
That was, until one day, when he was introduced to a foreign type of car: a NASCAR stock car. Gordon’s first reaction to seeing it? “After being around (sleek-looking) Indy cars, all my thoughts was stock cars are just big old heavy taxi cabs,” he laughed as he told host Kyle Petty on this week’s edition of “Dinner Drive.”
“That was my mindset, right?” Gordon continued. “Until I drove one. When I drove one, I thought, ‘Oh, I’ve got a whole different mindset. It’s a different car, this is high bank tracks, you’re going fast. You’re driving the wheels off this thing.. I realized that first time I drove a stock car, even though it was at the Buck Baker Driving School, I realized this is way closer to what I’ve been doing (in sprints and midgets) than what I’m trying to pursue in anything IndyCar.”
From there, Gordon’s career development moved “crazy fast,” as he put IndyCar in his rearview mirror and focused solely on his budding NASCAR career. Little did anyone — particularly Gordon — realize where his path would take him:
The winner of 93 NASCAR Cup races, third most in the sport’s history behind Richard Petty (200) and David Pearson (106); a NASCAR Hall of Famer; No. 2 (and likely eventual successor) to Rick Hendrick at Hendrick Motorsports; and one of the greatest race car drivers ever, regardless of the genre.
And IndyCar? Their loss was definitely NASCAR’s gain.
Gordon’s “crazy fast” path to NASCAR got even crazier and faster. While at the Baker Driving School, Gordon met then-Busch Series team owner Hugh Connerty, who had a relatively unknown crew chief named Ray Evernham. He then went on to drive two full-time seasons for another Busch Series team owner, Bill Davis (who recently passed away). Evernham rejoined Gordon in his second season with Davis, and the pair eventually moved to Hendrick Motorsports.
Early in his second season with Davis, Gordon went to race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Not only did he win, but he also caught Hendrick’s eye, and they talked briefly.
“Rick asked me to come down to his office in Charlotte,” Gordon recalled. “I went (and) I’ll never forget. I pull up to the building, come in this side door, like it’s all secretive and stuff. And here’s Rick sitting behind the desk, and we just sat down for an hour, 30 minutes, whatever it was. And I was like, ‘Holy crap, I’m sitting in front of Rick Hendrick. Like, is this really true? Is this really possible? Is this gonna happen?”
Indeed, it did happen.
Shortly after Gordon met with Hendrick, Davis offered him a new contract for the following season, with the intention of taking Gordon and Evernham to the Winston Cup Series.
Unfortunately for Davis, Gordon had to come clean and turn down the offer for one simple reason: he and Evernham had already signed new contracts to race for Team Hendrick starting in the 1993 Cup season.
And so, with that move, Gordon’s path to NASCAR history truly began.
