“They Kill Race Car Drivers”: Jeff Gordon Rules Out Putting His Kids on the Same Path as Himself

There has been a lot of conversation recently about drivers being pushed into competitive racing at an extremely early age, a case in point being Joey Logano, who started racing at the tender age of 7. While some believe it is best to start early, others, including NASCAR legend and four-time Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon believe that putting a child in a race car at that age is never the right option.

Gordon, who was a child prodigy himself and won dozens of races even before he turned 15, admitted to Joe Buck, “I would never ever put my kid in a Sprint car at age 13,” after the host pointed to Gordon being an extremely early starter.

Gordon elaborated on the dangers of putting a child in a Sprint car, expressing, “I mean, they kill race car drivers every year in these types of cars, you know, especially back then it was very dangerous. Most guys that I was racing against were like 35 and 40 years old, but I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, I’ll be honest, I really didn’t.”

This was followed by the Hendrick Motorsports legend admitting to being furious with his step-dad during the interval of his first Sprint car race, accusing him of lying and downplaying the difficulty of that form of racing, notorious for being one of the more dangerous aspects of motorsports.

Tony Stewart and Brad Keselowski also spoke on the same lines as Gordon

Just this year, former Cup champions and current team owners Tony Stewart and Brad Keselowski also pointed to the worrying trend of parents pushing their kids into race cars at an extremely young age.

“I don’t like the direction motorsports is going as a whole. I’m not just picking on NASCAR. There are series putting kids in late models at 12 and 14 (years old). It makes zero sense to me,” Stewart said.

Keselowski was more direct and critical, stating that doing this hurts the children by shunting their development in their own lives. While he said that it may benefit the racing industry as a whole, “It’s unfair to them. It ends up limiting their ability to grow as a person. I think that hurts them later in their lives,” he added.

With legends and team owners raising the issue, maybe NASCAR will do something about the age limit in their feeder series, even if they can’t regulate racing at the grassroots level.