When he first began NASCAR was still a relatively unknown sport outside the South. This brash young mustached kid had some nerve trying to break into a sport then dominated by Southern boys and traditional Southern values. His appearance in the early part of the 1990s was the cause of much disdain among the mainly Southern NASCAR fans. How dare this kid, born in California and claiming Indiana as his home, invade our sport and actually win.
The first memoires I had of Jeff Gordon were as a fan of the sport. In those days, you couldn’t see every race on TV, certainly not every single moment cars were on the track. Cable TV was around but not any sort of fulltime NASCAR coverage like is seen today. Races were seen in their entirety, ESPN had been doing that since the early 1980s, but there wasn’t much beyond that.
There had been others from outside the South who had raced in NASCAR MORE>>>
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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