Meet the new, Zen Jeff Gordon, a Nascar racing legend who now balances a happy home life with his (still) burning desire to win
Jeff Gordon is ecstatic, bounding down the stairs of his soaring Charlotte, North Carolina, home, relaying details of how he just conquered his most challenging—and frequently travelled—road course. Clad in jeans and a T-shirt, he gives his wife, former model Ingrid Vandebosch, a high five, rattling off the details of his win, down to the corners he skimmed and the passes he executed.
After this victory dance, he turns to me, shakes my hand with a steady grip that belies his trim, 5’7” frame and then rehashes his feat. It turns out that the 42-year-old three-time Daytona 500 champion, one of the most famous race car drivers in history, has finally figured out… the carpool route to kindergarten.
“We’ve been trying to get better at it,” says Gordon, who alternates with Vandebosch on the morning run in the family Suburban. “There are a few little back roads.”
We’re standing in the sunlit living room of Gordon’s house in Charlotte’s South Park neighbourhood in our stocking feet (“Shoes off, please!”). His home is casually modern, the decor—monochromatic tan-and-taupe furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows—courtesy of Pembrooke & Ives. The walls are adorned with works by Alison Van Pelt and Matisse. Photographer Peter Beard is another favourite. There’s a billiards room, a bar and a well-stocked wine cellar, which hosts, of course, bottles from his own label. Outside, beside the 30-foot pool, sits a thing of childhood fantasy: A nearly life-size dollhouse.
A recent seventh-place finish at Bristol Motor Speedway and a controversial placement in the season-ending Chase for the Sprint Cup have improved the mood somewhat at Hendrick Motorsports, the racing group he partially owns. But Gordon hasn’t won a race in nearly a year.
That competitive streak was mixed with a substantial dose of humility. Bickford says Gordon, as a kid, would become shy when he started winning everything: Neighbourhood bike races, ball games, go-kart races on the track. He still carries that humility with him. (He has only one wall in Charlotte devoted to maybe a dozen trophies; “At home I like to be away from racing,” he ex- plains.) And when I ask him to divulge the secret of his success, he simply says: “If everyone drove as much as I do, they’d drive as well as I do, too.”
Later in the afternoon, Gordon and I sit out back by the pool before lunch. He has poured two glasses of a 2007 Ella Sofia Carneros Chardon- nay, a wine from his eponymous label. He takes a sip and leans back in his lawn chair. The sky is overcast in that heavy southern way, making the lawn look double-saturated in green. Ella is playing nearby with a stuffed bunny. Vandebosch is inside reading to Leo. I ask Gordon about his wife. The two seem very much connected. Earlier, I had noticed how he constantly had his arm around her, seemingly wanting to keep her close.
(This story appears in the July-Aug 2014 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)