Atlanta is special for Gordon

HAMPTON, Ga. -- It was at the fall Atlanta race 15 years ago that a 21-year-old driver with a peach fuzz mustache that made him look even younger got his first Winston Cup start.

The kid was barely noticed. That race, the finale of the 1992 season, was also the last one for Richard Petty.

“I was so young and naive and clueless as to what was ahead,” Jeff Gordon said going into his 506th start, today’s Pep Boys 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

He is 36 now, graying at the temples, seeking his 82nd win and leading the Chase for the Nextel Cup standings toward what may well be his fifth championship. He is where Petty was for so long: the pinnacle of NASCAR.

“It’s pretty amazing, from where I stand, how much has gone on in my life and my career for those past 15 years,” Gordon said.

Team owner Rick Hendrick had noticed Gordon in Atlanta the previous spring, driving a dangerously loose Busch car with dazzling poise, and sent his lieutenants out to sign the prodigy -- whatever it took. Then Hendrick brought him here for a Cup start to prepare for his first full season, 1993.

Gordon started 21st, and “throughout the day, the car was just loose on the short runs, but really fast,” he remembered. “I pushed a little bit too hard during one of those runs through the middle and spun out and crashed.”

A little later, “I remember seeing Richard in a ball of flames out there,” Gordon said of the frighteningly fiery crash with which Petty ended his career.

From that day, “probably the coolest thing that I carry with me was the drivers meeting,” Gordon said. “It was very unique. And still, to this day, I don’t remember a drivers meeting quite like that.”

Customarily at the Sunday morning meetings, “they introduce a celebrity or an official from a big company. That day it was all about Richard, and he spoke. I can’t really remember the things he said, but I remember his handing out these money clips that had an insignia of him with his cowboy hat, and each starting position was inscribed on one. I have one that has ‘21’ on it. I still have it.”

Much else went on that day to help obscure Gordon’s first Cup race. Davey Allison came in leading in points but was caught up in a crash, and Alan Kulwicki won the title. Both would be dead within a year -- Kulwicki the following April in the crash of a private plane, and Allison in July of injuries suffered in the crash of his personal helicopter.

All in all, that ’92 race is considered one of the most monumental events in NASCAR history. But Gordon wouldn’t be noticed again until the following February, when, still 21, he became the youngest driver to win a qualifying race for the Daytona 500.

Today, no driver will be more noticed on the track. Gordon leads his protege and Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Jimmie Johnson, by 53 points in the Chase, with three more races left after today -- at Fort Worth, Phoenix and Homestead-Miami. Second-year driver Clint Bowyer of Richard Childress Racing lurks in third, only 62 points behind Johnson.

Johnson won here in March and Gordon finished 12th, but “you have to be careful going by stats,” Gordon said. His crew chief, Steve Letarte, has openly taken the blame for that mediocre showing, saying he lost track of the pace car during repairs of a loose crush panel, and cost Gordon a lap.

“I don’t think if Jeff runs clean that there’ll be 11 cars [difference] in the finishing order, wherever we’re at,” Johnson said. “There’s going to be two or three spots, is the way I see this thing going to the end.”

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Ed Hinton covers auto racing for Tribune newspapers.