Gordon drives into NASCAR hall
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jeff Gordon didn’t give much thought to NASCAR while racing sprint cars in Indiana as a teenager.
He was too busy trying to get into open wheel racing.
But when Gordon’s career stalled, he headed south to try his hand at stock car racing and went on to win 93 Cup races – third on the career list – and four championships while helping NASCAR move from a predominantly regional sport to the mainstream in the 1990s. Gordon was honoured for his career achievements Wednesday when he was selected to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
Gordon said it feels “surreal,” considering he never thought this was the direction his life would take.
“I came down to North Carolina hoping and dreaming of something, but I didn’t know much about NASCAR racing,” Gordon said. “Everything was IndyCar, open wheel, sprint car and midget racing to me. I knew about the Daytona 500 and I knew who Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt were – but that was it.”
Gordon, a first-ballot Hall of Famer, received 96 per cent of the votes from the committee, meaning only two of the 57 voters didn’t vote for him. Only Petty (200) and Bobby Pearson (105) have won more Cup races than Gordon.
Car owners Jack Roush and Roger Penske also were selected to the Hall of Fame, along with drivers Davey Allison and Alan Kulwicki.
Roush has won a record 325 races across NASCAR’s three national series, including five national series owner championships, while his drivers have won three championships. He helped Matt Kenseth (2003) and Kurt Busch (2004) emerge into premier series champions and jump-started the careers of Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle.
But the 76-year-old Roush’s fondest memory in racing was when Mark Martin won the first Cup race for him as an owner in Rockingham, North Carolina, in 1989.
“What that meant to me is I could find a sponsor to keep going and for Mark it meant that the team was going to be solid and keep putting cars on the track,” Roush said. “There was some doubt in our minds if we were going to be able to turn the corner.”
Said Martin: “He mentored and gave the tools to people who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity had it not been for him.”
Penske won the premier series championship in 2012 with driver Brad Keselowski, and owns two Daytona wins with Ryan Newman in 2008 and Joey Logano in 2015.
Rusty Wallace, the third-winningest Team Penske driver said, “I don’t know of anyone who has accomplished as much across all levels of motorsports as Roger Penske. I don’t know anyone in motorsports that is more respected among all levels of racing as Roger.”