Recently while speaking in a one-on-one conversation with Joe Buck, former NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon shared a few stories about his racing origins. He explained how his interest in the racing universe began because of his stepfather’s love for cars.
Advertisement
During the conversation, Gordon said, “My mom and my real father divorced. I probably was just a couple of months old. And so my mom met my stepfather, and he’s the one that loved cars. He’s the one that worked on cars.”
“He never drove cars himself, but he wanted to connect to you know, his stepkids and wanted to introduce us to things and be engaged and he was very, very involved right away with us, and that started with bikes.”
Gordon then revealed how when he was about three years old, he could ride a bike without the training wheels. Looking at that, his stepfather was flabbergasted, witnessing Gordon learning the bike so fast. Thereafter, he said, “I think it was not long after that. He’s going and buying a BMX bike and we’re going to the racetrack.”
Jeff Gordon says his mother was against racing bikes
Speaking further, Buck asked Gordon about how her mother was against the idea of racing bikes. Citing that it was too dangerous. But despite her not agreeing to it, Gordon’s father went ahead and bought him a motorized vehicle to get him into racing.
Gordon then elaborated, “He did a little bit of motorcycle riding and he broke about every bone in his body doing it. And so I know that he wasn’t real keen on motorcycles, or two wheels either.”
“But it just seemed like in my neighborhood kids were riding bikes and we had a BMX bike track. And so he saw where I was, I had the urge to compete, but I just wasn’t good at anything else except for things that moved.”
The former Hendrick Motorsports driver then explained how his stepfather observed some kids driving quarter midgets and that’s when he got the idea to get it for his stepchildren. Gordon recalled, “So he brought home two of those, one for me, one for my sister. I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget that day.”
“He comes home and my mom and my dad said, ‘Hey, kids, go look out the window.’ It was like Christmas and it wasn’t Christmas. But I looked out the window. And I instantly just ran for jumped straight in and just thought was the coolest thing ever.”
That was where it all began. Over the years Gordon would go on to win several races in the lower categories, slowly working his way up to the Cup Series where he ended up winning four championships before eventually retiring after the 2015 season.
