Background and career
Robert Wesley Gordon (born January 2, 1969) is an American semi-retired auto racing driver. He has raced in NASCAR, CART, the IndyCar Series, the Trans-Am Series, IMSA, IROC and the Dakar Rally. While no longer competing in IndyCar and NASCAR racing, he is active in top-tier off road motorsports such as BITD, NORRA, and SCORE International. Gordon owns and competes in the Stadium Super Trucks (SST), a series he formed in 2013 and whose championship he won in 2013, 2014 and 2024. He also operates the Speed family of brands, which includes the energy drink Speed Energy that has sponsored his racing efforts since 2010.
Gordon, the son of off-road racer Bob "Baja Bob" Gordon, started out competing in off road racing. He won five consecutive SCORE International off-road class championships from 1986 to 1990, a sixth championship in 1996, and a seventh championship in 2009. Gordon also won two championships in the Mickey Thompson stadium series, three Baja 500 in 1989, 1990, and 2005, and three Baja 1000 in 1987, 1989, and 2006. Gordon also participated (and won) the last SCORE International off road race at the now closed Riverside Raceway in 1988. Gordon had continued off-road racing throughout his career in Champ Car and NASCAR. In 2005 Gordon took part in the famous sixteen-day Dakar Rally, driving for the Red Bull sponsored Volkswagen team. He became the first American to win a stage in the car division. He won two stages in total and a twelfth place division finish. In 2006, Gordon took part in the Dakar Rally in a Hummer H3. Team Dakar USA did well until stage nine, when a damaged radiator caused late arrival at Atar, Mauritania, and subsequent disqualification. Gordon and co-driver Andy McMillin won the trophy truck class in the 2006 Baja 1000, finishing second overall in the race. After that, Gordon competed in his third Dakar Rally in 2007, driving the Monster Energy Hummer H3 for Team Dakar USA. He finished in the eighth position, his best finish in this race. His current trophy truck sponsor is Speed Energy and drove his Monster Energy truck in the 2007 Baja 500 with a second overall finish. Gordon's sisters Beccy Gordon and Robyn Gordon competed in the 2006 Baja 1000 on the all-woman team All-American Girl Racing. Gordon raced in selected Traxxas TORC Series events, including the 2010 AMSOIL Cup World Championship race at Crandon International Off-Road Raceway. He led the first lap of the race before retiring with mechanical difficulties. Gordon finished third in the 2009 Dakar Rally in South America, where the event was moved after terrorist threats led to the cancellation of the 2008 event. He finished eighth in the 2010 Dakar Rally in South America with his Monster Energy truck. He was excluded from the 2012 edition after stage 10 for illegal modifications of his engine.
In June 2012, Gordon announced that he was founding and owning a stadium truck racing series of his own, titled the Stadium Super Trucks, based on the stadium truck racing concept developed by Mickey Thompson. The series ran its first season in 2013. A lot of drivers affiliated with Gordon's closed Cup Series NASCAR team such as P. J. Jones for example, followed Gordon to race in the Super Trucks. Gordon won the inaugural Stadium Super Truck championship in 2013, by seven points following a year-long battle with former Mickey Thompson Off-Road teammate Rob MacCachren. Gordon's series was renamed to Speed Energy Formula Off-Road in 2014. He won a second championship that year with six wins and a 75-point advantage over Sheldon Creed. That year, the series also made its X Games debut as part of X Games Austin 2014, where Gordon finished third and won a bronze medal. He medalled again in 2015 as he scored a silver. Since 2015, the series started expansion overseas, hosting a race in Australia at the Adelaide 500. Later in the year, Gordon also participated in the Goodwood Festival of Speed in Britain. During the 2017 and 2018 seasons, SST and the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS) clashed on various instances. In June 2017, the night following an SST race at Hidden Valley Raceway in Australia's Darwin, Northern Territory, Gordon took a truck to a local nightclub and began to perform donuts. A day later, he was summoned to court for violating the city's anti-hooning laws and was fined $4,150 after pleading guilty on four traffic charges. Gordon defended his action, stating he had asked security guards if it was allowed, to which they agreed. CAMS subsequently revoked Gordon's competition visa for future events, indefinitely prohibiting him from racing in Australia. Four months later, Gordon issued an apology to CAMS and donated $10,000 to the Australian Road Safety Foundation, resulting in his visa ban being lifted. In 2018, the series was banned by CAMS for safety reasons following a wreck at Barbagallo Raceway that sent a truck's wheel into a vacant pedestrian bridge; despite legal action from Gordon, SST lost the case. CAMS ended the ban in 2019 as the sanctioning body and Gordon formed a three-year commercial rights agreement, branding the series' Australian operations the Boost Mobile Super Trucks; the new Australian championship began in 2020.
In 1990, Gordon began racing sports cars. He won races in both Trans-Am and IMSA Camel GT, where he had four consecutive class wins in the 24 Hours of Daytona from 1990 to 1994, and three consecutive 12 Hours of Sebring class wins.
Gordon's first start in the CART IndyCar series came in 1992. His first full season and Indy 500 start would come in 1993 with A. J. Foyt's team. He raced for Derrick Walker from 1994 to 1996. With Walker, he captured his first career pole in 1994 (Toronto), and both his CART career wins in 1995 (Phoenix and Detroit). For 1999, Gordon fielded his own team in the series with little success as the Toyota power the team used was still sub-par in performance. Gordon raced ten times in the Indy 500 from 1993 to 2004 fielding his own team in 1999, 2000 and 2004. He, along with John Andretti, Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch, Kyle Larson, and Katherine Legge are the only six drivers to race in the Coca-Cola 600 and Indy 500 in the same day. In 1999, Gordon came within one lap of winning the Indianapolis 500, driving his own car sponsored by John Menard. After racing hard all day, he was in the lead and trying to conserve enough fuel to finish the race without a final pit stop, but his fuel ran out coming out of turn 3 on the penultimate lap and he had to give up the lead to Sweden's Kenny Bräck. During his time in open-wheel, Gordon earned a reputation as a tough and sometimes overly aggressive racer. According to Gordon, though his decision to leave open wheel was based largely on "safety concerns", significantly more plausible an explanation to Gordon's estrangement from top-tier opened-wheel racing in North America is directly attributable to a high-profile incident during the 1996 Grand Prix of Cleveland, where Gordon was evidenced to have exited his vehicle mid-race, after a mechanical failure, and while standing atop his car, Gordon kicked the Ford Motor Company logo on live national television. Gordon and Ford would not make amends until 2007, when Gordon's NASCAR team switched to the manufacturer. In 2001, Gordon, following his departure from Morgan-McClure Motorsports, re-joined Foyt's team for the Indianapolis 500. The team was a joint venture between AJ Foyt Racing and Richard Childress. With the car, Gordon qualified on the front row and dominated early on before strategic pit stops shuffled him to mid-pack by the time the race was over. It was one of Gordon's best performances at the Indianapolis 500, and it later opened up the doors for Gordon to join Childress' Busch team later that year.
Gordon made his debut in stock car racing in November 1990 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, driving for Junie Donlavey in the Automobile Racing Club of America season finale; he finished 21st, but turned heads by winning the pole for the event.
