California Kid: The Unmatched Open-Wheel Career of Jeff Gordon, a racing TL

Though the Indianapolis 500 grandstands have been packed to capacity every year in recent memory, this year was the earliest sellout date in the history of the Speedway, and Jeff Gordon is the reason why. With the open-wheel legend announcing plans to retire from the cockpit after the 2015 season, the world has known since January that this year’s Indy 500 will be his last as a driver.

“Jeff Gordon came up from USAC at a time in which all the rest of the rising Indycar talent was coming from road racing series. Jeff’s rookie year, in 1993, was also the year that Nigel Mansell came over to race in America. Before him we had Emerson (Fittipaldi), and a boatload of other drivers coming over from Europe, mainly from Formula 1. Hiring a driver with an extensive road racing background was seen as the safe choice, and team owners wanted to play it safe. Put simply, Jeff changed people’s opinions about hiring young American drivers. His first three years in Indycar showed people right away that kids from the sprint and midget series could jump in and be competitive, if given the right opportunity. Jeff’s success made more team owners willing to take a chance.” - Tony George, former Indycar Series President and Indianapolis Motor Speedway CEO

“Before Jeff Gordon, sponsors considering a driver wanted to stick their brand on well-known names: Andretti, Unser, Rahal, Fittipaldi. Jeff comes along at a point in time when most of the teams in the Indycar garage are asking rookies how much money they can bring. But here you have this personable, well-spoken young man from California who looks like a movie star. He didn’t have a famous name, not back then, but he was always a sponsor’s dream. And I think the sponsorship that a charismatic guy like Jeff can bring makes teams more forgiving of mistakes. You hire a rookie, you accept that once in a while you’ll get a torn up racecar. When you have the money to wheel out another one right away, that’s not such a big deal.” - H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler, former Charlotte Motor Speedway president and event promoter

“What Gordon did for open-wheel racing can’t be understated. Not just Indycars, but making Formula 1 more popular in the United States, even though his F1 career was relatively short. It’s not just his accomplishments on the track, it’s the entire new generation of U.S. open-wheel stars that his success helped usher in. All these talented young Americans with limited financial backing might not be here, or if they do get a shot in Indycars, they don’t get nearly the quality of equipment and sponsor support.” –John Oreovicz, ESPN motorsports correspondent

“If Jeff doesn’t make it in open-wheel racing, you might not have ever seen Tony Stewart in Indycars. You might not have ever seen Kasey Kahne or Ryan Newman ever turn a lap at Indy. You might not have seen Sam Hornish Jr. or A.J. Allmendinger or Sarah Fisher. You might not have seen Joey Logano or Kyle Larson. It may seem surprising given all the doors that are open for aspiring open-wheel racers today, but in the early part of Jeff’s career, most of the opportunities were coming in stock cars. In 1990, when Jeff was just starting to make a big name for himself in USAC, anything was possible. Several teams in NASCAR were looking at him, and he definitely had some serious offers to race there. I think it was only a few influential voices early on in his career that prevented him from taking that path.” - Robin Miller, former Indianapolis Star and Racer Magazine reporter
 
From a RACER magazine interview with Jackie Stewart before the 1999 Australian GP

Q: Beginning this year, Jeff Gordon will be a driver for your Formula 1 team, and I know you two are both excited about your future partnership. Right now, though, I’d like to talk about the past. As far as open-wheel racing goes, you’ve been a mentor to Jeff for nearly a decade now. How did your relationship get started?

I think “mentor” might be too strong a word (laughs). We’ve been good friends for many years, but Jeff’s always been bright enough and talented enough to make his own decisions, and make them well. Probably my biggest contribution early in his career was helping put together a Formula Three test for him midway through 1990.

Q: 1990 was a busy year for Gordon. At the end of the season he was the USAC national midget champion, besides doing the F3 test for you at Silverstone. How did the test go and what effect did it have on Jeff’s path to Formula One racing?

It took a bit of work persuading Jeff to go test for us. In addition to his USAC commitments he was racing a handful of events in the second-tier NASCAR (then-called Busch Grand National) series, so we had to schedule everything selectively. But he made a positive impression on us from the moment he arrived at the circuit for the test. A lot of nineteen-year-old kids are shy about greeting everyone, but he had a bright smile on his face the whole time he was going around shaking hands. Then, when Jeff turned his first laps in the car, I knew that he was a truly special talent.

Q: How could you render that judgment so quickly?

We’re talking about someone with almost no road racing experience to speak of. Usually, the first time we put a young man behind the wheel of an F3 machine, it’s a guy who’s raced Formula Renault, Formula Ford, something smaller but still much closer in stature than anything from USAC or anything else Jeff had driven before that. Plus, more likely than not he’s already sampled the circuit at which we’re testing. Jeff, meanwhile, comes to Silverstone, to a circuit he’s never seen before, and when we looked at how quickly he was able to adapt and get the car up to speed after having spent most of his career racing on ovals, we knew we had something unique. So we had to move quickly to keep him in the open-wheel fold.

Q: How real was the risk of him signing elsewhere?

At the end of 1990 Jeff had some offers on the table from NASCAR. I know that he had at least one full-season contract offer for 1991 from a well-connected team owner at Ford (in the Busch Grand National series). Many of the folks there at Ford wanted him in stock cars, but when I saw him test in England for the first time, that was when I started lobbying everyone who had any influence in their motor racing operations that it was better to keep him in open-wheel. I told them, “Do not let this one get away.”

Q: Jeff tested an Formula Three car for you but never ended up racing in that series. What factors ended up leading him to Indy Lights in 1991?

It was a bit of a compromise, really. I remember neither of his parents was particularly enthusiastic. John Bickford (Gordon’s stepfather) had some bad blood from earlier in 1990, when he’d been snubbed by some of the team owners at Indy who told him he’d need to bring money to get a drive. I think Jeff’s mother wanted him in stock cars because she thought they were safer. I wanted him to go to F3 but I think everyone else was a little bit concerned about relocating to Europe.

There were several reasons why Jeff and the rest of us settled on the Indycar developmental series. The promise of the Indy 500 was one, but racing Indy Lights also allowed Jeff to stay closer to his home in Indiana, and it was less expensive than Formula Three would have been. Our connections at Ford helped us find enough sponsorship for a full season in 1991. Later on Tony George (then Indianapolis Motor Speedway President and CEO) also stepped up to help us find backing. Tony was a big supporter of Jeff’s from the outset.

Q: Did you take an active role in persuading Jeff to keep climbing the open-wheel ladder, or was he adamant about racing Formula One from the beginning?

Only Jeff himself can answer that, but he has always relished the biggest challenge. That having been said, like most of the other young racers in USAC, he grew up watching the Indy 500, and he always maintained that he was going to consider switching to F1 only after he had won at Indy. In the early part of his career, winning that race was his singular goal.
 
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