CONCORD, N.C. — Standing in the lobby of Hendrick Motorsports’ race shop for the Nos. 5 and 9 teams, Jeff Gordon sees the scuffed, blackened right side of the No. 24 Chevrolet he drove to Victory Lane in the 1997 Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway.
The memories come flooding back. But instead of the pure elation that comes with winning the race and the $1 million bonus it paid, Gordon is overcome with another emotion.
“I look at that and that actually makes me mad because I almost lost that race,” Gordon says, pointing out his late wall contact while trying to fend off a hard-charging Jeff Burton. “He ran me down, and then I got in the wall. And then he really ran me down. One more lap and it would’ve been over.”
That 30-second exchange offers an incredible insight into the competitive nature that helped make Gordon one of NASCAR’s best, particularly at the track dubbed “Too Tough to Tame.”
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Now the vice chairman of the team he drove for over two decades, Gordon was nearly unstoppable atop the “Lady in Black’s” rough, abrasive and narrow pavement, where his rainbow-schemed Chevrolet seemed to shine brightest. As Darlington celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, the time feels right to reflect on Gordon’s unbelievable statistics at NASCAR’s oldest superspeedway ahead of Sunday night’s Cook Out Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
No one has won more Southern 500s than Gordon’s six, including an outrageous stretch of four consecutive from 1995-1998. His seven total wins at the South Carolina track are the third-most all-time, only behind fellow NASCAR Hall of Famers David Pearson (10) and Dale Earnhardt (nine). In eight races from the 1995 Southern 500 to the spring race of 1999, Gordon finished no worse than third. And in 36 starts across his 23 seasons, Gordon led laps in 27 of those events.
Ray Evernham was Gordon’s crew chief during those peaks in the 1990s, together winning three NASCAR Cup Series championships and 47 points-paying races. They still can’t believe their Darlington successes all these years later.
“We’re both in awe of what we did together and the things that, in some ways, will never be done again,” Gordon said. “Certainly, it never was repeated in either one of our careers after we split up, so we do revel in those seasons and those moments of how great that was and get to relive it now.”
NASCAR CLASSICS: Relive the 1997 Southern 500
The unique, asymmetrical 1.336-mile oval remains one of the biggest challenges on the NASCAR schedule. Gordon’s last start came in 2016, already nine years ago, with a 14th-place finish while substituting for an injured Dale Earnhardt Jr. Since then, cars have changed, former contemporaries have joined him and retirement and fresh faces have joined NASCAR’s big leagues. As the environment has changed, so too has the on-track intensity.
“These guys are pushing the car so much harder every lap, so I think physically, mentally, I think that’s where you’re seeing the difference of today’s driver,” Gordon said. “It’s always been a challenging race track, but we could pace ourselves in the late ’90s, right? And I think that now, you’re just living on the edge even that much more because you can’t give up a position. There’s just not as much give-and-take. When you hit pit road, every detail of entry to pit road, pit-road speed, the pit stop, the exit, everything is so precise now — and even the level of detail that you go into getting your qualifying lap, your track position, and then maintaining it through the race.”
Gordon was a quick adapter to a track notorious for wearing drivers and equipment to their cores. In four Xfinity Series starts before leaping to Cup, Gordon earned one top five and two top 10s around two mechanical DNFs. His early Cup starts weren’t as fruitful, with one top 10 in six starts. But that seventh start produced the first win of his incredible eight-race stretch from 1995-1999.
MORE: All 93 of Jeff Gordon’s Cup Series victories
“The cars were better than I was, and I had to catch up. And then, as my experience level grew, we grew together and did a lot of great things together,” Gordon said. “So to me, Darlington was always a track that I felt pretty comfortable at, where a lot of other people were, ‘oh, it’s so intimidating,’ and, ‘oh man, this is the most difficult track.’ And I didn’t see it that way because, right away, it just was a track that I seemed to feel comfortable at. To me, I raced a lot of the very intimidating tracks from Eldora to Knoxville to Winchester and Salem. So to me, driving a midget and a sprint car around some of those places was a lot tougher than going to Darlington. But the difference was 500 miles. That’s where it got challenging.”
Through the track’s 75 years of history, there have been plenty of iconic moments, some featuring Gordon’s incredible successes. That history is felt as soon as you walk onto the property at the track “Too Tough to Tame.”
“You can’t recreate history, and yet we can celebrate it,” Gordon said. “And I feel like every time we go to Darlington, everybody is celebrating what the track means, whether it be drivers talking about the surface being old and sliding around just like you have for years at Darlington, or you see the throwbacks. You see the fans. And you can just tell when the fans are at Darlington, they feel like they’re going back in time, as well as playing into the future of the sport. And it just seems like everybody is on board with its place and its history with NASCAR.”
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