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View Full Version : Jeff Gordon and TKG? almost happened....



SteveH
05-08-04, 11:14 PM
http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/printedition/cs-0405080269may08,1,3931083.column?coll=cs-sports-print

ON AUTO RACING

NASCAR is lucky Gordon stayed put
The driver some fans despise once seriously considered making the move to Formula One
Ed Hinton

May 8, 2004

Jeff Gordon, resurgent as NASCAR's hottest driver for the umpteenth time, is taking the most interesting weekend off of all Nextel Cup drivers.

He's in Barcelona for Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix as guest of the Williams-BMW team.

That's enough to restart recurrent rumors that America's winningest active driver (four Cup championships and 66 victories, including the last two races) is moving to Formula One.

But, one more time, it isn't going to happen.

This, to the chagrin of Gordon admirers (Jackie Stewart among them) who believe he would do well at the world's most sophisticated motor sport and of Gordon boo-birds who wish he would go somewhere, anywhere, other than NASCAR.

But, at 32, he knows he's too old to start over. So does team owner Frank Williams, whom Gordon so impressed last year in a just-for-fun drive in a Williams-BMW at Indianapolis.

Gordon's visit is just a friendly one.

What it does provide is an occasion for imagining . . .

Imagine Gordon long gone from NASCAR to F1.

It actually could have happened seven years ago, Gordon admitted recently.

If it had happened, what might F1 be like now? More profoundly for the United States and its entire sports scenario, what might NASCAR be like today?

Imagine a NASCAR that in the late 1990s came to a screeching halt as "America's fastest-growing sport" . . . an F1 with U.S. interest at heights unseen since Mario Andretti won the world championship in 1978 . . . and, along the way, a CART reprieved from its plummet to where it lies today, on life support.

The Oxford-based historian Niall Ferguson has led a movement in recent years for "Virtual History," or "counterfactuals." What if JFK had lived? What if King George III had negotiated and the American colonists had not revolted?

Consider carefully what might have been, and you can understand better what is.

Ferguson's bedrock rule of such projection is that there must have been, truly in history, a point at which a situation could have gone either way.

"It was in '97, when the BAR (British American Racing) team was being built," Gordon said recently. "They came to me and said, `We would like for you to run the CART series for a year, and in the meantime be testing an F1 car, and then come be a driver for BAR.'"

Wary of a startup team, he still was tempted enough that "I was on the phone with Jacques Villeneuve a lot." The French-Canadian, reigning world champion at the time, was leaving Williams to be BAR's first driver.

Gordon probably would have done well in CART--his season there would have been with powerful Team Green--and siphoned significant media attention away from NASCAR.

BAR was a flop out of the gate, and it ruined Villeneuve's career. But Villeneuve stayed too long because of personal and financial ties.

Gordon might have glanced off BAR quickly. F1 teams are notorious for stealing drivers from one another, contracts notwithstanding. Add the enormous factor, for F1 marketing purposes, that Gordon is American. Maneuvering for him could have begun even before he hit the Grand Prix tour.

A Gordonless NASCAR is a bleaker picture.

With Dale Earnhardt dead, there would be but one huge pop-culture figure, his son Dale Jr., who at nearly 30 has no championships and one Daytona 500 victory among 11 victories in five years.

The winningest active driver would be 47-year-old Rusty Wallace, with 55 victories, only one of them in the last three years, and one championship, won 15 years ago. Active former champions would include the laconic Labontes, Terry and Bobby, Dale Jarrett, Bill Elliott (who races only occasionally now) and Matt Kenseth.

All are popular within their limits. But could any of them host "Saturday Night Live," or fill in for Regis on morning TV, as Gordon has done so well?

Not forgetting Tony Stewart, but the question is whether he even would have come to NASCAR from the Indy Racing League if Gordon had not opened so many doors and made NASCAR so attractive to, and comfortable for, Midwestern, Western and Northeastern drivers.

It was Gordon, singularly, who brought torrents of mainstream, younger, more sophisticated American audiences with him into NASCAR.

It was Gordon who made NASCAR team owners turn their talent searches beyond the South, out to the open-wheel series and the dirt tracks of the vaster nation. Without Gordon's lead, how many "young guns" would there be today?

The old-line Gordon boo-birds might have retaken NASCAR as their dominion. But even their interest might have ebbed, with no one there to root so intensely against.

With NASCAR popularity thus truncated since '97, there might have been no $2.8 billion TV contract whereby every turn of a wheel is carried on at least a cable channel.

All of this is what might have been. One final point about what is:

Next time you throw a half-empty beer bottle at Jeff Gordon, try to think of it as half full.


Copyright © 2004, The Chicago Tribune

Railbird
05-08-04, 11:26 PM
I read that this morning

While I'm not going to knock Gordon;s talent, given his background that would have been an awful steep learning curve.

i

As far as the Nascar angle goes, they would have just drummed up another "wonder boy". The Bobby Labonte "kid brother" thing was getting a lot of play before the France's realized what they had with Gordon.

Methanolandbrats
05-08-04, 11:28 PM
Yup, mentioned on F1 qualifications for Spain. What a waste. I used to watch him on Thursday Night Thunder or what ever the hell the show was and his car control in sprints was AMAZING.

JoeBob
05-08-04, 11:42 PM
During that era, KOOL wanted to follow Players in having a nationalistic driver development program. They had the Team Green Academy, the Indy Lights Team, and required an American in CART. For their first season, they really wanted Michael Andretti or Robby Gordon, but they couldn't get either. It doesn't surprise me at all that Jeff Gordon was also on their list.

They ended up settling on Parker Johnstone - the only American with experience who they could afford. After Parker didn't give them the results they wanted, they ditched the "All American" requirement, and the rest was history.

FRANKY
05-09-04, 01:09 AM
During that era, KOOL wanted to follow Players in having a nationalistic driver development program. They had the Team Green Academy, the Indy Lights Team, and required an American in CART. For their first season, they really wanted Michael Andretti or Robby Gordon, but they couldn't get either. It doesn't surprise me at all that Jeff Gordon was also on their list.

They ended up settling on Parker Johnstone - the only American with experience who they could afford. After Parker didn't give them the results they wanted, they ditched the "All American" requirement, and the rest was history.

After he and little Al went shaking hands after their crash at Laguna Seca I would have turned by backs too. I was so mad at both, sorry for getting off the topic.

ferrarigod
05-09-04, 01:44 AM
I remember Vasser talking about how he also was offered the role, and Zanardi trying to get him to do it and move with him for the 99 season. BAR was interested in Jimmy and Alex was making his move to Williams and wanted his friend there.

Nothing new, funny how they wanted Gordon in ChampCars and not Crapwagons.(yes I know that honda wasn't in ftg series' then, just making a funny point about how they STILL see it, considering they ruled out dickson and all)

:gomer:

pchall
05-09-04, 07:57 AM
While I'm not going to knock Gordon;s talent, given his background that would have been an awful steep learning curve.


It really boils down to Gordon's management not wanting to go with the formula car learning curve and taking the stockcar/oval ladder as the quicker path.

eiregosod
05-09-04, 11:08 AM
even a modest stock car driver earns more than an excellent f1 pilot, (all barring F1 world champions)

pchall
05-09-04, 12:53 PM
even a modest stock car driver earns more than an excellent f1 pilot, (all barring F1 world champions)

Case in point: Michael Waltrip was 0 for career in Cup for almost 300 races but doing very nicely on t-shirt sales and all that. He has had a few wins in the last years, but that is still überWanker territory. Very well off überWanker, though. ;)

JT265
05-09-04, 02:14 PM
I think he should go for it. Hell, he's only 32, he could give it a shot for 5 years or so, and if he didn't succeed, he still has 20 years left to run Nascar.
:gomer:

racer2c
05-09-04, 02:20 PM
I'm gonna be a stock car driver! I'm a Virginian. Drink Bud. Drive a pickup. Oh, but my pa doesn't own his own gas station. Darn, and I was this close from gettin' sponsorship!
Why did you have to be a bureaucrat dad? Why! :cry:

Jervis Tetch 1
05-10-04, 08:04 AM
Since when is 32 considered too old?!?

Hell, I'd give 10 years of my life to be 32 again. I have no problem turning back the clock. :gomer:

ChampcarShark
05-11-04, 12:35 PM
I think he should go for it. Hell, he's only 32, he could give it a shot for 5 years or so, and if he didn't succeed, he still has 20 years left to run Nascar.
:gomer:


I agree, Bring Jeff to OWRS for a year. That way we will see if he is as talented as NASCAR claims he is. To me he is still a product of "the call" by NASCAR.

Let him come to the real racing series to shut my mout (if he has the talent that is).