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 Series races – third on the career list – and four season championships while helping NASCAR move from a predominantly regional sport to the mainstream in the 1990s.
NASCAR chairman Brian France, center, watches a video of driver Jeff Gordon after after announcing Gordon will be inducted into the 2019 class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame during an announcement in Charlotte, N.C., Wednesday, May 23, 2018. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)Gordon was honored for his career achievements Wednesday, when he was selected to the NASCAR Hall of Fame – an honor he said felt “surreal.”
“I came down to North Carolina hoping and dreaming of something, but I didn’t know much about NASCAR racing,” he recalled. “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 selection at age 46 and less than two years removed from his last race, received 96 percent of the votes from the committee, meaning only two of the 57 voters didn’t pick him. Only Petty (200) and Bobby Pearson (105) have won more Cup Series races than Gordon.