When Jeff Gordon gets booed, it still reminds him of Dale Earnhardt
Jeff Gordon learned a valuable lesson from Dale Earnhardt: Getting booed is not necessarily a bad thing. // Jeff Robinson, NASCAR Illustrated
Jeff Gordon doesn’t hear many boos anymore. That happens when you’re not winning as much and are no longer the sport’s dominant driver.
But when Gordon still hears a smattering of boos when he’s introduced at the track, he thinks of one man – Dale Earnhardt.
It is Earnhardt who caused Gordon to become one of NASCAR’s most unpopular drivers when he first entered NASCAR’s Cup series. And it was Earnhardt who helped Gordon learn how to deal with such a harsh reaction from fans.
Gordon, now 38, won his first two Cup races in 1994 at age 22, winning the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway and the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
It wasn’t until the next season, however, when he began to dominate the sport and challenge Earnhardt, the seven-time champion, for the championship that the boos began to rain down.
“Early on you come into the series and all you want to do is be successful, win races and compete at this level against such incredible teams and drivers,” Gordon said Tuesday during a test session at Talladega Superspeedway. “So we started doing that. Definitely that's when the boos started.
“At first they were cheers. The 600 and the Brickyard 400 in '94, that year we only won two races, and I don't remember where we finished in the points [eighth], nowhere near the championship battle. Seemed like it was all good stuff.
“Then in '95, we came out, we were just strong right from the beginning and started being very competitive, winning races, and a threat for the championship. That's when I really started to see, you know, the split between my fans and Earnhardt fans. And he had a lot of fans [laughter].
“There were quite a few boos. Some tracks it was more than others. Here at Talladega especially.”
At first, Gordon was surprised by the reaction of fans. But, thanks to Earnhardt, he quickly learned that it wasn’t such a bad thing.
“Early on, I was like, ‘Hey, what's that all about?’” Gordon said. “But then I realized pretty quick. Earnhardt was probably one of the first ones to say, I learned a long time ago, as long as they're making noise ...”
Earnhardt had been booed regularly throughout his career, first for his aggressive tactics on the track and later for creating rivalries with drivers like Darrell Waltrip and Bill Elliott. By the early '90s, he was booed for simply winning too much, as Gordon would be later in his career.
It wasn’t until the early- to mid-'90s that the cheers from his huge fan base began to overwhelm the boos.
“I think it was in '92, '93, '94, hearing him get booed, I was like, ‘What is that all about?’” Gordon said. “That was more of, in my opinion, a sign that you're doing something right. If you're out there winning the race and they're booing, you're doing more good than you are bad.
“I didn't put a whole lot of thought into it. It wasn't long, maybe a couple years later, where I realized it was definitely a good thing.”
