Jeff Gordon's Unparalleled NASCAR Legacy Has Been Forged on and off the Track
Jeff Gordon will no doubt be remembered for his four NASCAR Sprint Cup championships and his 92 career wins, including three in the Daytona 500 and a record five in the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
But peel away the obvious, and there is so much more to Gordon's NASCAR legacy than the staggering, impressive numbers.
Gordon, 43, announced Thursday that 2015 will be his final Sprint Cup season as a full-time driver. It came as no great surprise, as Gordon had hinted at the possibility of retirement more than once last season when a chronic back injury kept flaring up.
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Still, Gordon's pending retirement mandates a complete examination of his remarkable, wide-ranging legacy.
No one will forget the career victories and 77 poles, both of which rank third all time. Only NASCAR Hall of Famers Richard Petty (200) and David Pearson (105) have won more races. Only Petty, the late Dale Earnhardt (with seven each) and Jimmie Johnson (with six) have won more championships.
But where Gordon arguably had even more of an impact was in helping lift NASCAR from mostly a regional sport, popular in the Southeast, into a national phenomenon that stretched from coast to coast.
Gordon didn't hail from North Carolina, Georgia, Florida or any other Southeastern state. He was born in California, began honing his driving skills at the age of five and moved to Indiana when he was 14 to further his career—which he thought would be in open-wheel racing, not stock cars.
Asked what he wanted to be most remembered for during a teleconference call with the media Thursday afternoon, Gordon's response was modest.
“I definitely am proud of everything I’ve done on and off the track,” Gordon said. “But I guess I like to keep it simple when I think of things like this. I think of my heroes on the track when I was growing up—A.J. Foyt, Rick Mears, Al Unser. … I loved the fact that those guys won Indianapolis 500s and championships. They were great race car drivers. And quite simply, I will be happy if people recognize me as a great race car driver, because that’s all I ever wanted to be.”
Yet he has been so much more.
When he won his first Cup championship at only 24, he was the driver Dale Earnhardt fans most loved to hate. This was partly because he wasn't Earnhardt and partly because he didn't hail from the South, but it was mostly because he was so darn good already.
Earnhardt, for comparison's sake, did not even get to race in his first Daytona 500 until he was 27 years old after a hard-and-scrabble path to his career as a Cup driver.
As such, new fans who loved the newcomer Gordon flocked to the sport. Old, more established fans who hated him for not being old-school enough seemed to ramp up their passion about it. Television executives began to take note that the grandstands were full at nearly every race and that the ratings for the telecasts of those races were soaring.
Gordon's rivalry with Earnhardt in particular blossomed. They eventually became friends and even business partners off the track, but most fans didn't know that or at least did not want to acknowledge it. And besides, none of that mattered when they were going at it on the track.
Meanwhile, Gordon married and divorced and eventually married again. He started a family with current wife Ingrid Vandebosch, with whom he has two young children, daughter Ella and son Leo. He founded the Jeff Gordon Children's Foundation, igniting what he insisted Thursday will remain a lifelong passion for pediatric cancer research.
As the sport exploded through the 1990s and on into a new decade, Gordon emerged as a fan favorite who blurred the lines of what everyone thought NASCAR was all about. He won races and championships on the track and served as a guest host on Saturday Night Live and Regis and Kelly off it.
He became more than a driver. He became a true ambassador of the sport and a champion of multiple great causes that transcended it. He not only supported pediatric cancer research, but also the Make-A-Wish Foundation. And he helped educate the nation about such issues as chronic hunger among many of the nation's elderly.
“I think the fans will remember Jeff as a young guy who came into the sport and changed the sport,” said Rick Hendrick, owner of Hendrick Motorsports.
Hendrick then cited many of Gordon’s on-track accomplishments before adding: “I think more than all of that they will remember how Jeff has given back through his foundation for kids, or Make-A-Wish, or the professionalism he’s shown, whether it’s been on Regis and Kelly or Saturday Night Live or any of the other things he did to help bring NASCAR to the forefront. I think all of those things are going to go along with the fact that he was one of the greatest drivers ever in the sport.
“I mean, how many young drivers would not be here today if Jeff Gordon, at a young age, had not blazed the trail from an entirely different kind of series? The wins, the championships, the philanthropy, the role model, the spokesman for the sport...all of it adds up to him being the whole package. And I bet he will continue to leave his mark beyond his driving years.
Hendrick said that the company will address the subject of Gordon’s replacement at a later date, although it appears that defending Xfinity Series champion Chase Elliott is in line for the ride beginning in 2016, per Brant James of USA Today. But Thursday, it was all about Gordon and sizing up the driver's legacy.
“There’s simply no way to quantify Jeff’s impact,” Hendrick said. “He’s one of the biggest sports stars of a generation, and his contributions to the success and growth of NASCAR are unsurpassed. There’s been no better ambassador for stock car racing and no greater representation of what a champion should be."
Gordon said he will remain focused on trying to win a fifth championship in 2015 for Hendrick Motorsports in his iconic No. 24 Chevrolet. Regardless of whether he earns the title or not, his ongoing legacy will not end when the season does.
He will continue to team with Hendrick as a business partner (Gordon is the official owner of the No. 48 Chevrolet Johnson drives); he no doubt can and will serve as a mentor to Elliott or whoever replaces him as driver of the No. 24; and he will continue to be an active philanthropist who doubles as one of the greatest ambassadors that his sport has ever known or will ever know—through ways even he may not yet realize but no doubt will be willing to explore.
In other words, Gordon will continue to play the role of champion whether he's officially crowned as one again or not.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand.
Joe Menzer has written six books, including two about NASCAR, and now writes about it and other sports for Bleacher Report as well as serving as a writer and editor for FoxSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @OneMenz.
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