NASCAR

Issue date:
June 13-15, 1997

"You can't live your life worrying"

Jeff "Flash" Gordon is to stock-car racing as Tiger Woods is to golf: young, handsome, fiercely competitive -- and putting his sport in the spotlight.

damp Sunday afternoon on a treacherous Tennessee track known as Thunder Alley. Suddenly 118,000 beer-chugging motorheads let out a roar as the rainbow-colored Chevy Monte Carlo No. 24 bumps front-runner Rusty Wallace in the final lap of the Food City 500 and snakes across the finish line in an ungodly blur of grinding metal and an ear-splitting whine.

Jeff Gordon -- "Flash" or "Wonder Boy" to his fans as well as those he leaves in his dust -- laps into Victory Lane for the fourth time this year, waving to the other drivers.

He's 25. He looks like Tom Cruise. He has a Learjet; a morbidly obese bank account; a former beauty queen for a wife, sporting a diamond the size of a lug nut; a personal trainer; a PR firm; endorsement deals with Pepsi, Ray-Ban and Quaker State; steel-blue eyes; a dimpled chin; tousled chestnut hair; and a smile brighter than Plasti-Kote.

"I'm your very typical quarter-midget kid who made it to the big time," he insists, referring to his days driving the junior race cars known as quarter midgets.

In the gritty world of stock-car racing, where the average age is 38, Gordon -- the youngest Winston Cup Series champ and youngest Daytona 500 winner -- is being called the greatest driver in the history of the sport, and is partly responsible for taking it mainstream. New tracks in California and Texas, more races, in-car cameras, sophisticated owners and lucrative sponsorship from Fortune 500 companies all have contributed to the boom. So has Gordon, whose squeaky-clean image (see him in a recent milk ad) belies the image of good-time drag racers known as Junior and Fireball.

In fact, Jeff Gordon (favorite designers: Donna Karan, Hugo Boss) demolishes more than a few stereotypes: Instead of hunting and fishing (two traditional hobbies of stock-car drivers), he likes computer chess, scuba diving and golf. So well-spoken, so exceedingly polite, so wholesome he spends every night before a race attending Bible study with his wife, Brooke, a former model. She selects a passage of Scripture, types it up and gives it to him to tape to his steering wheel. "They're always different," he says. "I'm able to remind myself that I'm able to overcome anything."

ordon's performance at the finish line has been electrifying. As of June 13, he already had won six of this year's Winston Cup races, including the Goody's 500 in Martinsville, Va., where he led 432 of 500 laps, breaking Cale Yarborough's 1974 race record. He earned over $1 million in only five months and likely will exceed his 1996 winnings of $3.5 million. He is first in the standings, hoping to become the first driver since Richard Petty in 1979 to win both the Daytona 500 and the Winston Cup in the same season.

As Gordon strolls hand in hand with Brooke through the infield at the Bristol Speedway, their magnetism is apparent. "I'd never been googly with any other girl," Gordon confesses. "She had me wrapped around her finger from the first date." They lend a certain Camelot aura to the sport; awestruck fans ask for his autograph. "They're afraid to touch you," he says with a laugh. "Girls are sometimes shaking and crying." He is droll about his fame. "It's that small taste of being Elvis," he kids. "Minor. Minor."

After fellow driver Dale "The Intimidator" Earnhardt grumbled that the 5-foot-7, 150-pound Gordon probably would celebrate his 1995 Winston Cup win with milk instead of champagne, Gordon, finally immune to Earnhardt's years of needling him about being "The Kid," arranged for a waiter at the Waldorf-Astoria to carry out the gag. The waiter brought a silver champagne bucket to the dais. Inside was a flute of milk. Gordon stood and toasted a grinning Earnhardt, to the delight of the audience.

What's the difference?
	STREET CAR '97 MONTE CARLO	NASCAR Winston Cup Cars
Length	200.7 inches	200 inches
Weight	3,243 pounds	3,400 pounds
Cost per car	$17,995 (base)	$125,000
Cost per tire	$56-$139	$400
Quarter-mile speed from standing start	86 mph in 16.1 seconds*	147.5 mph in 10 seconds
Acceleration	0 to 60 in 7.9 seconds*	0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds
Gasoline	87 octane	104 octane
Horsepower	160	720
*Most recent performance stats, from '95 model. Sources: NASCAR, Chevrolet, Car and Driver magazine.

America's fastest-growing spectator sport (average attendance at Winston Cup Series events: 180,260), stock-car racing attracts rabid fans who follow the drivers with unbridled loyalty. Gordon has been a huge drawing card for teens and women. At Bristol, hordes of Gordon groupies gather at his souvenir trailer, plunking down cash for Jeff Gordon T-shirts ($32), baseball shirts ($25), key chains, tennis socks, action figures, sunglasses, toothpick holders, hatpins, fanny packs and infant layette sets.

From the sale of these collectibles alone, Gordon will earn "millions," says Bob Williams, president of a Chicago-based celebrity sports marketing firm. "It's scary what these guys do in memorabilia. Much more than they make driving a car." Gordon "is another one of these superstar athletes at a young age. You look at Tiger Woods in golf and Jeff Gordon in racing. I think he's going to be the first race-car driver to establish himself in mainstream endorsements."

So protective of his image he refuses to do beer commercials, Gordon is a frequent guest on David Letterman's talk show, played in a celebrity pro-am with golf's Arnold Palmer, and posed for pictures at an Oscar-night bash with fans Tom Cruise and Dennis Rodman.

ordon was born in Vallejo, Calif. When he was barely a year old, his parents divorced; mom Carol then married auto parts maker John Bickford. Bickford put Jeff on BMX bikes at age 4, followed by quarter-midget cars, open-wheel racers with six-cylinder engines. Jeff started racing every weekend, becoming national champion by his 8th birthday.

Competitors jokingly refer to him as the first "test-tube racer," and indeed home movies show a grim-faced, shaggy-haired 5-year-old in full racing gear who simply appears as a midget version of his current self. Same facial expressions. Same determination. Same shy smile when prodded to kiss the trophy presenter.

Next came go-karting and, at 13, sprint cars. But Gordon was too young to race in California, so the family moved to Pittsboro, Ind., to devote themselves and their limited financial resources to his career. "If it hadn't been for my stepdad," Gordon now says, "I wouldn't be where I am today." In high school, he was a minor celebrity, already racing on ESPN when most of his classmates still didn't have driver's licenses. A visit to Buck Baker's driving school at North Carolina Motor Speedway led Gordon to declare his life's intention. "I hear people say there's a natural ability, a God-given talent to be able to drive a race car," he says. "I don't know if I agree. Having done it since the age of 5, it's routine."

Sitting in his motor home during a rain delay at Bristol, Gordon has one eye on the TV (women's tennis) and one arm resting on his wife's shoulder. He gently twirls a lock of her auburn hair in his fingers and talks about meeting the former Brooke Sealey in 1993 when she was hired as a "Winston girl." A friend showed him her picture, and it was love at first sight. Brooke smiles. "He came up to me at Daytona and he asked me to go eat lunch. His voice was quivering," she laughs. "He was real nervous."

Drivers are not encouraged to fraternize with Winston girls, so the pair became experts at casing airports and restaurants for witnesses. When Brooke's reign as Miss Winston ended, they got engaged. Gordon rented out the banquet room of a Daytona Beach restaurant so they could be alone. "I was so nervous I went to the bathroom five times," he recalls. "I was trying to get the ring just right. It was in my pocket."

Brooke was raised in a religious family. After Gordon proposed, she asked him to dedicate their marriage to Jesus Christ. He agreed to a baptismal ceremony, which "cleansed me of my sins. It helped me put things in perspective: God comes first, family second and racing third. I try to keep the things I do morally in line with the way I live my life."

Perhaps that explains his unnatural calm, and his conviction that he's safer on the track than anywhere else.

"You can't live your life worrying," he says, adjusting his baseball cap. "I'm more afraid of dying walking down the sidewalk than I am driving a race car, because I know if I do it in a race car, it will be doing something I love to do."