On the Track with Jeff Gordon
 Matt Christopher & Glenn Stout
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2000 Little, Brown & Co.
  ISBN: 0316134694


Jeff Gordon was born to race -- took to it by age four & started winning when his dad brought home quarter-midget racing cars. Before he could get a license to drive on streets, he was winning on race tracks.

Jeff Gordon is one of the lucky ones who found his passion at an early age -- took to it & never looked back.

From BMX bicycles to 2.85-horsepower midgets to go-carts to open sprint cars with 650-horsepower engines pushing these little cars beyond 140 miles per hour, Jeff Gordon ate it all up & kept racing & winning.

“In one way, Jeff was living a double life. On the weekends, he was a professional race-car driver, albeit at one of the lowest levels of racing. But during the week, he was just another student at Tri-West High School.”

Jeff now had to decide which type of auto racing he would concentrate on & after weighing the pros & cons of Formula One cars, stock cars or NASCAR racing -- he chose to attend NASCAR Hall of Fame driver, Buck Baker's school in North Carolina.

By now television was watching this up-&-coming driver & in exchange for the ESPN publicity, Jeff got his tuition free.

By the beginning of the 1991 Busch season of the NASCAR circuit, Jeff Gordon was a driver to watch with his distinctive white Ford emblazoned with #1 on it.

That season Gordon won some & lost some, he did, however, set a record by winning the pole position in eleven races. People were starting to talk about him & sponsors began seeking contracts with him.

When he does at last, at the age of 21, win his first Winston Cup, he becomes the Rookie of the Year & is on to a history-making decade of NASCAR driving.

With black & white photographs, graphs of statistics, Career Highlights, technical data about all sorts of auto-racing & short, engaging histories of the various forms of auto-racing, the rest of the book, as they say, is history.

A simple, plainly-written biography of one gifted person whose family encouraged & supported him in his quest to be the best.

Matt Christopher's Sports Bio Bookshelf includes: Terrell Davis; Tara Lipinski; Greg Maddus; Julie Foudy; Hakeem Olajuwon; Mia Hamm; Sammy Sosa; Lisa Leslie; Tiger Woods & many more!

More from Matt Christopher -- the #1 Sports Series for Kid: Baseball Pals; Football Fugitive; The Basket Counts; The Hockey Machine; The Kids Who Only Hit Homers; Crackerjack Halfback; Double Play at Short; Olympic Dream; Face-Off; Penalty Shot; Shortstop from Tokyo; Wheel Wizards; Snowboard Showdown; The Year Mom Won the Penant; Soccer Scoop; Roller Hockey Radicals; Skateboard Tough & many, many more!
(07/01/01)

Rebecca