Jeff Gordon has dazzled NASCAR, but such a rapid rise does not happen without strainby Ed Hinton
You are 25 years old, and you earn between $10 million and $15 million a year. You're married to a model, and you're shopping for a new private jet. You have been NASCAR's winningest driver two years running—seven victories and the Winston Cup championship in 1995, and 10 checkered flags in '96. You are the most successful young driver the Winston Cup has seen, with 19 wins in 124 starts. If you stay on your current pace, by your mid-40's you will have surpassed Richard Petty's seemingly insurmountable record of 200 career victories.
You are Jeff Gordon—polished, handsome, humble, impeccably polite, the ideal point man for the booming sport of stock car racing. "Nobody's perfect, but I'll tell you what," says Gordon's team owner, Rick Hendrick, "in the car, out of the car, in the media, with the public, here with the people in our organization and as an individual, Jeff Gordon is about as damn near perfect as you can get."
So your life is a slam dunk, right? One running, roaring, soaring dream. Every moment must be bliss.
Not quite. There is strain in Gordon's life. It is a by-product of his dizzying ascent to the top of his sport, and it has forced a change in his relationship with his mother, Carol, and stepfather, John Bickford. For nearly 20 years the two handled Jeff's career, devoting their lives and earnings to making him not just a racer but the very best. Yet as the Jeff Gordon phenomenon spun ever more rapidly and the business side of his racing life grew ever more complex, the young driver felt he needed a professional manager to oversee his affairs. In May 1995 he hired Bob Brannan, effectively removing the reins from his parents' hands.
"I guess we never thought that there was going to be a time when I had to grow up and be my own person, make my own decisions," says Jeff, who married Brooke Sealy, a former Miss Winston, in November 1994. "My parents had always made my decisions, and always made the right ones. But I was getting older. I got married, and I had to start being the man."
Bickford, who had led Gordon to the doorstep of Hendrick Motorsports and negotiated the contract that loosed the youth on Winston Cup racing, now finds himself on the outside looking in.
"What parents wouldn't want their child to be internationally recognized, to be at the top of a given sport?" Bickford says. "But not to be a part of it now? Traumatic is not nearly a good enough word to describe it."
The transformation from boy wonder to stock car idol has been intense.
photograph by
Gordon realizes the impact the move has had on his relations with his parents. "It's been tough," he says, his voice cracking. "I love them more than anything. They're the ones who got me here. I thank God for them, for what they did, for what they gave me. It's been tough on my mom because I'm her little boy."
Part of Gordon's intent in hiring Brannan may have been to distance himself from just such an image—"Wonder Boy," racing under the watchful eye of his parents. If so, the task of altering that image is all the more
difficult considering how intrinsic it is to Gordon's remarkable story.
Gordon began racing cars in Vallejo, Calif., at the age of five, when Bickford brought home two quarter-midget cars—little open-wheel racers, six feet long with single-cylinder engines, designed especially for children. Jeff took to the cars as if he were born to race; he was dominating other drivers before he could read or write.
Bickford, too, was a natural in his role. A mechanical wizard who is capable of crafting superb racing parts, he also had an exceptional knack for motivation, promotion and creative financing. "We had to do a lot with a little," Bickford says. "Most kids in quarter-midgets race maybe 20 times a year. We raced 52 weekends a year, somewhere in the U.S. We had eight or nine cars. We practiced two or three times a week. We were the Roger Penske of quarter-midgets."
Gordon married Brooke Sealy, a former Miss Winston, in 1994.
photograph by
By the time he was eight, Gordon was a national champion in the class. The team began to look elsewhere for competition. "When you're a kid, you need to be a learner," says Bickford. "If you're better than the people you're racing against, you're a teacher. We moved up, trying to be learners all the time."
The curve was steep, the climb quick. In the space of a year Gordon, age nine, ripped through three levels of racing, eventually facing—and beating—drivers 17 and older. "He kicked everybody's butt," says Bickford. "It was embarrassing."
By 12, Gordon had moved into sprint cars, notoriously dangerous open-wheel monsters that strike fear in even the most seasoned racers. Father and son built a car themselves—650 horsepower, at a cost to Bickford of $25,000—and proceeded to fight wars against minimum-age racing restrictions from California to Ohio. When they won those wars, they usually won the races.
Recognizing their son's remarkable talent, in 1986 John and Carol sold their house and auto parts business in California, moved to Pittsboro, Ind., near the center of sprint car activity, and poured their all into Jeff's racing career. The investment paid off. Gordon won three sprint car track championships before he was old enough to get an Indiana driver's license, and by 18 he was a regular on the USAC tour, piloting thousand-horsepower sprinters. As a sideline, he won the season championship in full-sized USAC midgets in 1990.
For a young driver based in the heart of Indy Car country, the next step might not have been the most obvious: stock car racing. But Bickford felt it was the right direction for Jeff, and he engineered a deal with Buck Baker's driving school at North Carolina Motor Speedway at Rockingham: ESPN would tape a story about the open-wheel prodigy's learning to drive a stock car, and in exchange for the publicity, Baker would teach Gordon free of charge.
It was love at first lap. "The car was different from anything I was used to," Gordon recalls. "It was so big and heavy. Very fast, but very smooth. I said, 'This is it. This is what I want to do.'"
Gordon's success was fueled by his parents, Carol and John Bickford.
photograph by
In 1991, at age 19, Gordon got a NASCAR Busch Series ride and, in a frenzied schedule of shuttle racing, won both the USAC Silver Crown title for open-wheel cars and Busch rookie of the year honors. Then, at a Saturday Busch race at Atlanta in March 1992, Rick Hendrick was walking to a skybox when he noticed something. "I caught this white car out of the corner of my eye," he recalls. "As it went into the corner, I could see that it was extremely loose. I said, 'Man, that guy's gonna wreck! You just can't drive a car that loose.' But the car went on to win the race." It was, of course, Gordon. Hendrick told his general manager, Jimmy Johnson, to sign the kid to a Winston Cup contract, whatever it took.
Gordon got his first Winston Cup start in the 1992 season finale at Atlanta (he finished 31st), then bolted out of the gate in 1993, becoming the youngest driver to win one of the twin 125-mile qualifying races for the Daytona 500. He placed 14th in the Winston Cup standings in '93 and was named rookie of the year.
His first Winston Cup points win came the next season on a grand stage, the 1994 Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte on Memorial Day. His second victory, two months later, was even grander: the inaugural Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Then came the 1995 series title. The prodigy had arrived.
His mentor, however, wasn't along for the ride. Though Bickford has a hand in some efforts, it is Brannan who runs the business, Hendrick and Johnson who run the team, and crew chief Ray Evernham who prepares the cars and coaches the driver.
Gordon feels this staff is the right one for him and his future. He is, after all, no longer Wonder Boy, but the head of a burgeoning racing empire. "I'm really glad I have somebody outside my family doing my business," he says. "There are just some days when I have to get away from it all, away from work and business and cars. It's easier to do this when it's Bob. I can say, 'Listen, this is the way it is. I can't do this today. I'll call you tomorrow.' Bang. We're 100 percent business, business, business."
|
|
|
