Here Comes Mr. Gordon

by Lars Anderson

Originally Posted: July 2 / July 9, 2007

There he is, striding quickly down pit road at Michigan International Speedway on a blue-sky afternoon in the Irish Hills of Michigan. Jeff Gordon, a California native, walks like a New Yorker these days--at a brisk pace with his eyes trained straight ahead, oblivious to the commotion that inevitably surrounds him--and now he's moving toward his car as he prepares for qualifying on June 15, two days before the Citizens Bank 400. On more than 30 Fridays a year for 15 years at the varied tracks on the NASCAR circuit, Gordon has been making this trek from his hauler to his car for qualifying. But this season there's something different about the four-time Cup champion who, through Sunday, sat atop the Nextel Cup standings with a 271-point lead. Actually, there's a lot different.

Before he lifts himself into his race car, Gordon rubs his hands through his wavy dark hair, which now has streaks of gray on the sides--the aging driver's paint scheme. He squints into the sun and, as if deep in thought, gazes into the blocks of grandstands that rise out of the lush countryside like skyscrapers. Then he chats with his crew. It used to be that Gordon was deadly serious whenever he was at the track, but now he and his guys are laughing hard, carrying on like teenagers before a drag race.

Moments later Gordon hops into his number 24 Chevy. He flips on the ignition, then thunders onto the speedway with a blast of horsepower that pounds on the chests of the 100 or so fans who are standing nearby. NASCAR's most dominant driver is back on the track, where this season, at age 35, he has suddenly recaptured the magic he flashed so consistently when he won 40 races in a four-season stretch in the late 1990s.

A four-time Cup winner from 1995 through 2001, Gordon finished no higher than sixth in the standings in the last two years, prompting whispers in the garage that his best days were behind him, that the trials in his personal life had robbed him of his edge. But this season Gordon has already won four times and finished second in three other events. His unexpected resurgence has everyone in NASCAR asking the same question: How has Gordon done it?

"The changes in Jeff have been going on over a period of three years," says John Bickford, Gordon's stepfather. "I explain it like this: If you get up in the morning and you're already not happy, you're not going to do your best work. But if life is perfect and everything is going your way, then you're going to do your job well, which for Jeff is to drive a car and communicate with his team. Jeff's now as happy as ever, both at the track and away from the track, and it's largely because of two people."

He needed to disappear, to get away from the track and away from the heartbreak. It was July 2002, and Gordon's eight-year marriage to Brooke Sealey was ending. They had been NASCAR's most visible couple--the Ken and Barbie of the garage, they were called--but now divorce papers had been filed, and the fans really let Gordon have it. Everywhere the Cup boys traveled, from Dover to Darlington to Daytona, the sea of Gordon bashers used the bluest of language to remind him that his perfect life had fallen apart. Gordon always acted as if he didn't hear a thing, but he always did.

Gordon started traveling to New York City, hoping to blend into the crowd. He loved to wander the big city, to walk the streets in blissful anonymity. He started spending more time with friends who weren't involved in racing. One day Gordon was invited to a house in the Hamptons for a minivacation. A group was getting together, he was told, and he gladly accepted the offer.

It was a postcard-perfect spring afternoon. Gordon was lounging by the pool when ... there she was, relaxing nearby in a swimsuit. Her name was Ingrid Vandebosch, a Belgian-born model. Gordon was smitten, and he quickly asked a friend who was seated next to her to swap places.

"You have to sit me next to her at dinner," Gordon pleaded. "Please, pleeeease."

That night Gordon had his first conversation with Vandebosch, who had moved to the United States 10 years earlier and knew virtually nothing about NASCAR or Gordon--"I really had to talk myself up to make a a good impression," Gordon jokes. Not that it mattered. She was as taken with him as he was with her. A few weeks later Gordon invited her to a race in New Hampshire. Every time he was around Vandebosch he felt love-struck, but there was a rub: He was going through a bitter, 16-month divorce, which turned public and ugly before it was finalized on June 12, 2003. (Gordon paid Brooke a reported $15.3 million in the settlement.) For two years Gordon and Vandebosch were just friends. Maybe one day, he thought, maybe one day.

The first time Jeff Gordon saw him, Steve Letarte was just a 16-year-old boy. Tall, gangly and wearing glasses, Letarte had only recently passed his driver's test when he persuaded Ray Evernham, one of his neighbors in Moorsville, N.C., to give him a job sweeping floors at Hendrick Motorsports. The year was 1995, and Evernham was Gordon's crew chief. "Steve was a good kid who was intelligent and curious," recalls Evernham. "He fit in right away."

From the start Letarte, whose father, Don, worked at HMS building chassis, peppered anyone he could corner with questions: How does this machine work? Why are you doing that to the car? How does Jeff like his car to feel through the corners? "Steve asked, like, 900 questions a day," recalls Robbie Loomis, who succeeded Evernham as Gordon's crew chief from 2000 to '05. "We drove to the racetrack together, and he never, ever stopped with the questions."

Letarte quickly worked his way up the job ladder: After being a gofer in the shop for two years, he became the tire specialist and then a mechanic. In February 2002, at the age of 22, he was promoted to car chief on Gordon's team--the second-in-command. Though baby-faced, Letarte was uncommonly mature. He already owned a few commercial real estate properties. He taught Loomis, who was 15 years his senior, how to appreciate fine wine and after-dinner cigars. But most important, he was developing a very adult rapport with Gordon. The car chief works closely with the driver to go over the changes being made to the car's setup and to evaluate how effective they are in actual driving conditions. "As a young guy Steve could dissect what I was saying and get a mental picture of what was happening in the car," says Gordon. "I won a lot of races with Ray Evernham"--47, to be precise--"but I've never been around anyone who can get on the same page with me as fast as Steve."

In September 2005, just days after Gordon failed to qualify for the 10-driver field in the Chase for the Nextel Cup, team owner Rick Hendrick decided on a bold personnel move: He made Letarte, at 26, the second-youngest crew chief in the 21-year-history of Hendrick Motorsports. A few weeks after ascending to the job, Letarte did something that surprised even Gordon: He ripped up two years' worth of notes and told his driver that they were going to build new race cars from scratch. Gordon and Letarte then headed to Atlanta for a two-day test session--two days that would end up changing the course of Gordon's career.

They were inseparable. As the '05 season wound down, Vandebosch was at Gordon's side for nearly every race. They had begun dating the previous fall, and Gordon was seriously taken with Vandebosch. Ingrid did something to Jeff, something that everyone close to him noticed: She loosened him up. Made him feel relaxed. Made him, well, discover who he really was. "Ingrid is the first person that Jeff has ever been around who actually understands him," says Bickford. "He's not afraid to be himself anymore, imperfections and all. Ingrid is funny, well-educated, worldly, and she brought out this whole new side to Jeff."

Gordon's demeanor at the track changed. He toned down the Christianity talk (his faith, though, is still strong) and started kidding around more, even occasionally telling jokes. Even if his car was lousy, there would be an easy smile on his face--the unmistakable sign of a man in love.

The feeling was mutual. "What [attracted] me to Jeff was that he is really cute, and I love his blue eyes," Vandebosch says via e-mail, "but what was most important to me is his good heart and his honesty. He is a real fun and positive person and does not let anything bring him down."

The two were sitting on a couch in Gordon's town house in Charlotte on Mother's Day in 2006 when they started talking about their future. Jeff wasn't planning on proposing and he didn't have an engagement ring, but gusts of passion started to blow, and suddenly the power of the moment struck him. Ever since his first marriage, Gordon had promised himself that he wouldn't wed again until his racing days were over. But as he looked at Vandebosch on this Sunday afternoon in May, Gordon kept thinking to himself: Why should I fight this? Why should I limit myself? Finally, his blue eyes met hers, and he said simply, "You know what, why don't we get married?"

They kept the engagement a secret for nearly six weeks. Then on June 24 Gordon held a croquet party--yes, he is the one NASCAR driver who actually enjoys his croquet--at Meadowood resort, in the heart of wine country in Northern California. The dozen guests were dressed in traditional white croquet attire, and after playing they took their seats around an outdoor table on a sprawling lawn. As the sun was setting over the Napa Valley, Gordon raised a glass of lemonade to his family and friends and said, "Ingrid and I are no longer dating." Gordon, who's always had a keen sense of theatre, paused, letting the crowd wonder if the couple was breaking up. Then he proclaimed, "We're getting married!"

The group erupted in applause. The next day, at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Gordon won his first race in more than eight months.

A few weeks after the union of Gordon and Letarte became official, the duo headed to Atlanta Motor Speedway in October 2005 for a test session. For the previous two years Gordon had essentially used the same setup in his number 24 Chevy as teammate Jimmie Johnson did in his number 48. "Jimmie had been running good for so long that we just tried to emulate what he was doing," says Gordon. "But that just didn't work. Jimmie and I have different driving styles. I don't use as much brake getting into the corner as he does. And I never felt comfortable in the car. I couldn't push it to the limit because I was loose into the corner."

Letarte had ordered his team to cut up the body of Gordon's car and rebuild it piece by piece, paying particular attention to the nose. At Atlanta, Gordon drove the new car for the first time and--presto!--he suddenly felt like he was no longer piloting an 18-wheeler through the corners. Gordon's lap times were quicker right away. In only his sixth start with Letarte, he won at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway on Oct. 23, his first victory in 23 races.

The two continued to grow together during the 2006 season. Though Gordon finished sixth in the standings, he was starting to consistently run in the lead pack. With Letarte calmly calling the shots from atop the pit box, Gordon raced to 14 top five finishes in '06, which was one more than Johnson, the Cup winner. Steadily, the Wonder Boy--the nickname given to Gordon by Dale Earnhardt more than a decade ago--was being born again.

The edge is back. It's April Fool's Day 2007 in Martinsville, and in the final laps of the Goody's Cool Orange 500, Gordon is all over the back bumper of Johnson. Gordon has the faster car, but Johnson expertly blocks him. The two bang into each other hard through the last turn--really hard--but Johnson beats Gordon by .065 of a second, a few feet.

Gordon hops out of his car on pit road. He curses, kicks a water bottle, even ignores a few fans begging for an autograph--something the p.r.-savvy Gordon hardly ever does. This is a rarely seen side of Gordon's intensity, but then again, this is the new Jeff Gordon, the guy who's so comfortable in his own skin that he now lets all of his emotions show, for better or for worse. "[Johnson] is the guy to beat for the championship," Gordon fumes in Martinsville. "I'm not happy."

So began two of the most dominating months of racing of Gordon's career. He won under the lights at Phoenix International Raceway on April 21. Eight days later in Talladega, Ala.--the soul of Earnhardt country--he took the 77th checkered flag of his career on what would have been Dale's 56th birthday. In doing so he passed the Intimidator for sixth on the alltime wins list, prompting scores of fans to hurl cans of Budweiser at Gordon's car.

Next it was Letarte's turn to win a race. On May 13 in Darlington, S.C., Gordon was in second place behind Johnson late in the Dodge Avenger 500, but his car was overheating and spewing steam from underneath the hood. The caution flag was waved with 22 laps to go. Johnson headed for the pits. Letarte issued a two-word command to Gordon: "Stay out." Letarte was often hesitant to overrule Gordon in 2006 and to make gutsy calls, but he has gained self-confidence with experience. Thanks to Letarte's directive at Darlington, Gordon assumed the lead, though he figured his engine was about to blow. But Letarte knew that no one could catch Gordon as long as his car was in front and in clean air. "We've got this," Letarte calmly said over the radio. "Stay with us." Gordon did, and his engine held out long enough to beat Denny Hamlin to the finish line for his third win in four races.

Letarte wasn't done. On June 10 in Long Pond, Pa., with thunderstorm clouds approaching Pocono Raceway, he ordered Gordon to pit even though he still had plenty of gas in his tank. The television commentators on TNT blasted Letarte, but he wanted Gordon to be on a different pit cycle than the rest of the field, which meant that Gordon would inherit the lead when everyone else came onto pit road. This gave Gordon about a 20-lap window to steal the race if rain started to fall. Then, just four laps before Gordon would have had to stop for gas, the thunderstorm arrived. The race was red-flagged, and when it was announced over the P.A. system that the event was called and Gordon was the winner, Gordon leaped into Letarte's arms on pit road. "You are the man!" yelled Gordon, who fully understood that he hadn't won the race, Letarte had. On Sunday at Sonoma, Gordon finished seventh. There was a glitch, however: In a prerace inspection NASCAR officials found that illegal modifications had been made to the front of Gordon's car. Gordon will probably be docked at least 100 points, and Letarte will likely be suspended for at least four races. (NASCAR had yet to announce penalties when SI went to press on Monday.) But don't expect this to derail Gordon's season. Letarte will still be in constant contact with the team each race weekend by cellphone and e-mail.

Could life be any better for Jeff Gordon? He married Vandebosch last Nov. 7 in Mexico, and the couple recently purchased a penthouse apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Last week in New York City, Vandebosch gave birth to their baby daughter, Ella Sofia Gordon.

"I'm in the best place in my life that I've ever been," Gordon said recently over lunch at a Birmingham restaurant. "That definitely plays a role in how you perform as a race car driver. I'm so happy to have Steve as my crew chief, and things couldn't be any better with Ingrid. Hopefully we can continue to roll."

There are still 20 races left in the season, so Gordon's 2007 story can't yet be fully written. But he has a beautiful new wife, a healthy child and his most successful team in years. Even if he doesn't win the Cup in November, he can still truly say his cup runneth over.