ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 17, 1996 TAG: 9609170107
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DOVER, DEL.
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder
JEFF GORDON and NASCAR are gaining popularity.
A mother and her two teen-age daughters stand nervously near the concrete wall at the Dover Downs International Speedway waiting for their racing hero.
The force of the passing 700-horsepower stock car sucks their breaths away and makes the rainbow-colored purchases they obtained from the merchandise trailers flutter.
Their bones shake, their bodies shudder, their ears sting from the engine's violent roar. They are scared for a second. Then they look at each other pleased, breathing in the air filled with smoke, oil and rubber and the engine hum of Jeff Gordon.
This season is the only time they've paid attention to auto racing. Sunday's MBNA 500 at Dover's Monster Mile oval, which Gordon conquered last year and again this past Sunday, is their first race. Jeff Gordon, the 25-year-old defending champion of the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit, is the only driver they like.
``We're here because of Jeff, No.24, the Rainbow Warrior, the best driver ever, and he got us into auto racing,'' said the mother, Joan Wilkinson, of New Castle, Del.
Her daughters' hearts were beating ``Vroom.'' So was hers.
For this family and many of the 100,000 spectators here, Gordon is their NASCAR ambassador.
Strangely, this defending Winston Cup champion is an anomaly from the once widely-held belief that all race-car drivers are toothless, tobacco-chewing, beer-guzzling grease monkeys who take on names like Fireball.
Gordon sports sleek sunglasses, not visor shades. He wears pleated slacks, not blue jeans. Gordon is loved, not feared.
He is nicknamed ``Wonder Boy.''
His clean-cut presence and success in Winston Cup has been a key part of NASCAR's mushrooming mainstream popularity.
His standing in this season's series championship - he is second, four points behind Hendrick Motorsports teammate Terry Labonte - has shown his sponsors - DuPont, Ray-Ban Sunglasses and Edy's Ice Cream, among others - that he is a durable, winning commodity.
In NASCAR, where slow and steady wins the racing crown, Gordon is the phenomenon, having won 16 races, 15 poles and more than $8.8 million in prize money in only four years in Winston Cup.
Compare that with Richard Petty, the winningest NASCAR racer in history with 200 victories and seven Winston Cup championships. He won $7.8 million in his career.
At the Dover track, longtime race fans say Petty will always be ``The King'' of NASCAR. But many others, particularly those younger than 30, say Gordon is their king and the personification of modern NASCAR racing.
Appropriately, Gordon was born in 1971, the birth year of NASCAR's modern era. He makes the perfect poster boy for a sport rapidly bolstering its clean, family-oriented image.
Gordon is 5-foot-7 and weighs 150 pounds. He has neatly-styled brown hair, blue eyes, a clear complexion, always a close shave, and, by many fans' standards, handsome looks.
He has an electric smile (with a complete set of white teeth). He doesn't smoke, and he doesn't drink beer. He calls women ``ladies'' and men ``gentlemen.''
Gordon and his wife - Brooke, 25 - live in a simple two-bedroom house in Charlotte, N.C., and have two cats. He answers the door and often signs autographs for those who come up the driveway.
``We met in Victory Lane,'' Brooke Gordon said. ``I was Miss Winston and Jeff had just won a Twin 125 at Daytona in 1993. I thought he was really sweet.''
Two years later, they married. She now travels the circuit and selects a scripture verse to put on his car's dashboard before every race.
Gordon's sizable legion of fans purchase everything adorned with his image or that of his No.24 rainbow-colored DuPont Automotive Finishes Chevy Monte Carlo.
In a drizzle, more than 1,000 fans, many in business attire and coats and ties, lined up to see Gordon on Thursday at a car dealership in Bordentown, N.J. The police were there for traffic control.
``It's amazing that these people would stand out in that long of a line in weather like this to get an autograph or a handshake or a picture,'' said Gordon shyly, overlooking the gathering. ``It's humbling. I could have never dreamed of this.''
He was sincere, not cocky, and that's part of why his fans adore him.
``People like Jeff because he is an excellent sportsman, a clean driver and good man,'' said Gail Snyder, the Pennsylvania coordinator to Jeff Gordon's 20,000-member national fan club. ``He has the largest following fan-club-wise, especially with the women and the families.''
His fans brought die-cast miniature cars and transporters, checkered flags, clocks adorned with their icon, even a used race tire for him to autograph.
And Gordon, amused, signed Selena Hope's tire, too. The Wyndmoor, Pa., resident is one of many new racing enthusiasts making the conversion to NASCAR and Gordon after being turned off by the salary squabbles of football and baseball.
``Jeff Gordon is more my style, but I hear that Petty is the king,'' Hope said. ``Jeff's just different.''
Consider ``The King'' Petty, the most famous NASCAR driver ever. He hobbled through the Dover Downs infield Friday in his blue jeans, boots and signature cowboy hat with a crown trimmed with python skin and a crest of quail bones and bird feathers - possibly taken from the grill of his car.
He moved slowly, his body a lifelong souvenir from the Asheville, N.C., race in which he broke his ribs in 1969, and the Sonoma, Calif., race in which he cracked a leg bone in 1990. He is almost deaf.
He waves to all the fans, yielding to a trademark grin beneath his mustache and dark sunglasses and saying, ``Hey darlin'.'' (He's running for Secretary of State in North Carolina.)
Even ``The King'' says Gordon's ``OK. He's young. He's OK. He's got some wins.''
Gordon, Petty's junior by 34 years and 184 NASCAR victories, walked quickly through the infield Friday after having qualified third for Sunday's race.
He was off to his next appointment. NASCAR's young prince has many.
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Jeff Gordon is closing in on his second straightby CNBpoints title. color. KEYWORDS: AUTO RACING