If one person could be picked to have the biggest influence on Jeff Gordon’s career, it would inarguably be his stepfather, John Bickford. The man responsible for who Gordon became, how he did it all, and their split were among many things the NASCAR legend talked about in a tell-all with Joe Buck.
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After his mother and biological father separated when Gordon was six months old, she married Bickford, who would go on to define the trajectory of the Hall of Famer’s life.
Talking about how Bickfrod introduced him to racing really early in his career through quarter midgets, Gordon said that perhaps the most important aspect of their relationship had more to do with the life lessons he shared.
Describing an incident early in his career in a quarter midget race, Gordon says, “One time I was racing and I made a really gutsy move and I drove over the wheel of this kid and kind of drove up over the top of his car but I kept going and I won the race.”
To Gordon’s shock, his stepfather instructed him to hand over the trophy to the kid involved in the incident,
“That’s not how we race. He goes, ‘You race clean, you race hard but you don’t drive over the top of somebody. I thought he was joking but he really made me do it. It was the hardest thing I think I ever had to do, I handed that trophy to him, I had tears in my eyes afterwards,” expressed Gordon.
“But it was a great lesson for me not only about racing but about life and just you know, doing things right.”
Why did Jeff Gordon and John Bickford split?
Bickford handled his stepson’s affairs from his entry into the Cup Series till 1994-5 when he truly established himself as a superstar. In 1994, Gordon married Brooke Sealey, and here is when the close relationship suffered, and shortly after, Bickford and Gordon separated.
“We had a falling out. I got married in 94 and in 95 they were still a part of business in my life like they had been. So they were feeling kind of like on the outside even though they were there in 95 but it was shortly after that they weren’t. We went our separate ways for several years while I was married,” Gordon looks back.
The Gordon-Sealey marriage broke up in 2003, after which Bickford re-entered the Hendrick driver’s life, who was a bonafide American icon at this point. By his own past admission, Gordon admits that separating from Bickford was one of the biggest mistakes he made during his career, saying “Even though we were doing very well in my career, I had to do something different. But I was lost without him.”
In the end, the 4-time Cup champion says that while for a brief period in his life, he thought living separately was the best thing, he eventually realized that the only way their lives worked was when his parents were involved in his work.