Bits aside, Gordon didn’t really deserve any of the hate he got. People were just being Gamers about some new guy beating all the old legends by being the same sort of good as they used to be.
Gordon was the first driver who truly popularized the sport outside of the south. He brought a lot of fans to NASCAR from the west coast and similar to Earnhardt, he had personality and charisma which made it easy for him to be marketable (something that every driver has lacked ever since, and why no one cares about Jimmy Johnson or Denny Hamlin or these other boring ass generic robotic guys).
The Earnhardt v Gordon rivalry was the last real rivalry in NASCAR and it worked cause they were so drastically different types of people and in how they raced and they were damn good. One was the up and coming hot shot kid in his prime, and the other was this legendary 7 time cup champion. Despite his age at the time, Earnhardt was still racing at a high level and competing for titles, all while Gordon was coming up and winning his.
And then you had Mark Martin, who consistently placed near the front of the pack in damn near every race in the 90s, yet never ended up with the kind of rabid fandom that you saw out of Gordon or Earnhardt.
Bits aside, Gordon didn’t really deserve any of the hate he got. People were just being Gamers about some new guy beating all the old legends by being the same sort of good as they used to be.
Gordon was the first driver who truly popularized the sport outside of the south. He brought a lot of fans to NASCAR from the west coast and similar to Earnhardt, he had personality and charisma which made it easy for him to be marketable (something that every driver has lacked ever since, and why no one cares about Jimmy Johnson or Denny Hamlin or these other boring ass generic robotic guys).
The Earnhardt v Gordon rivalry was the last real rivalry in NASCAR and it worked cause they were so drastically different types of people and in how they raced and they were damn good. One was the up and coming hot shot kid in his prime, and the other was this legendary 7 time cup champion. Despite his age at the time, Earnhardt was still racing at a high level and competing for titles, all while Gordon was coming up and winning his.
And then you had Mark Martin, who consistently placed near the front of the pack in damn near every race in the 90s, yet never ended up with the kind of rabid fandom that you saw out of Gordon or Earnhardt.
And then there was Dick Trickle...