The road to F1 Gordon almost took

In 1997, a young Jeff Gordon was almost poached to go drive in Formula 1. AP

Jacques Villeneuve, the reigning Formula 1 World Champion, approached Jeff Gordon, the reigning Sprint Cup champion, in 1997 with a plan that could have taken Gordon to F1. Gordon was interested and agreed to listen.

Never heard of this story before? I hadn't either and I covered the CART Series full time from 1993 to 1999. I couldn't find it written anywhere, not even in a Google search. We owe this revelation to four-time Trans-Am champion Tom Kendall, a friend of Gordon's who had inside information, who asked Gordon on Speed TV's Wind Tunnel on Sunday: "How far down the road did you get with BAR toward Formula 1, and what happened?"

The short answer: Not far. But the fact Gordon was open to the idea is intriguing, even 11 years later.

"I just happened to get a call from Jacques Villeneuve one day," Gordon recalled on the one-hour show. "He said, 'Hey, we're putting together this team.' I'm guessing they wanted an American in the team, [it came] out of the blue. I was a huge fan of Jacques' and listened to him. He made a lot of sense. He had a lot of conversations with Barry [Green] and we decided to sit down and talk more about it."

Green had guided Villeneuve's career in North America, first through the development Atlantic Series and then in CART's IndyCar Series. Villeneuve won the Indianapolis 500 and the championship in 1995, then moved to F1 with Williams in 1996.

On the night Villeneuve won the 500, the group that had put together the winning effort was celebrating at car builder Adrian Reynard's home just north of Indianapolis. With champagne flowing, they hatched a plan to use the 500 victory as a springboard to building an F1 team.

Villeneuve's car at Indy had been sponsored by Player's cigarettes, a Canadian company owned by British American Tobacco. With Villeneuve gone, it moved to Forsythe Racing and Canadian driver Greg Moore in 1997. Green had kept his team alive with sponsorship from Brahma and driver Raul Boesel in 1996 and had signed a lucrative long-term deal with KOOL cigarettes starting in 1997. KOOL was also partially owned by BAT.

The sponsor had mandated Green hire an American driver. Parker Johnstone joined Green's team, bringing the championship-winning Honda engine with him, in 1997, but he finished 16th in the championship and was released.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Craig Pollock, Villeneuve's long-time manager, had convinced BAT to buy the venerable but struggling Tyrrell F1 team in December 1997. It would remain Tyrrell for the next season, then be renamed British American Racing.

Green was still under orders from KOOL to hire an American and decided to take a shot at Gordon. He was 26 years old, had an open-wheel background with USAC and had showed an aptitude for road racing in NASCAR with a Cup win at Watkins Glen in 1997. Green wanted to hire him for CART and, through Villeneuve and BAR, offered the hope of F1 in a couple of seasons.

"I sat with Barry Green at Lowe's Motor Speedway, also with Craig Pollock, and we had a long conversation about steps that it would take to get to BAR when they were forming it and whether I'd ever be able to become a [BAR] driver," Gordon said. "The problem was, I had to go to the CART Series first to prove myself, then go do testing in F1.

"It was a conversation that had at least enough merit to talk about for a while, but it never went anywhere. I had just won my second championship in the Cup series. So, after all that kind of went around, I decided no, this is just too many steps to get there. I decided not to do it and went on and won two more Cup championships."

If Gordon had decided to make the risky, career change, it could have had a profound effect on American racing. He would have brought great credibility and sponsor interest to CART, which was in the early years of its decade-long struggle with the Indy Racing League for control of the top level of open-wheel racing in America. Gordon could have made a difference in CART's viability, which slipped slowly in part from a lack of American drivers.

Gordon also would have become a role model for other NASCAR drivers and others aspiring to the top level of open-wheel racing in the U.S. Would Tony Stewart have made the move to NASCAR? Would Jimmie Johnson have decided to pursue open wheel rather than stock cars? Gordon, at the very least, could have leveled the playing field in determining the destination of top talent.

With Green, Gordon would have been with a team that won races and contended for the CART championship annually with Paul Tracy and Dario Franchitti. It was a well-funded, organized and run operation. Gordon could have made the transition successfully. He showed his talent in an open-wheel car in the famous Tradin' Paint promotion at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2003, when he drove Juan Pablo Montoya's Williams' F1.

Could Gordon have made the jump to F1 by passing the testing test? Probably. There were F1 teams, not frontrunners Ferrari or Williams, interested in him in 2003. Gordon likely would have arrived in F1 in 2000.

Then he would have flopped. BAR was a failure. Villeneuve joined the team in 1999 and was never competitive with it. Gordon wouldn't have been, either. He would have been, like Michael Andretti, another American who couldn't make it in F1.

Two championships and 52 wins later, it's clear Gordon made the right choice in staying in NASCAR.