When someone from the current group of NASCAR drivers unintentionally wrecks another driver, he often places a phone call within the next few days to smooth things over.
NASCAR Driver Voicemails: ‘Hey, Jeff Gordon? Sorry I Wrecked You Last Week’
By reaching out via phone, drivers hope to deal with their on-track issue so there are no hard feelings going forward.
Four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon isn’t clear on exactly how the trend got started. But he doesn’t like it.
“That whole ‘calling’ thing is strange to me,” he said Friday at Dover International Speedway. “Let’s say somebody wrecks me and they call me on Tuesday. They’re calling me so I don’t wreck them the next week! They’re not calling me because they really believe we should have a conversation.
“So I don’t want you to call me. And if I call you, you should be thinking the same thing.”
Gordon said back in the day, for the first five or six years of his career, other drivers didn’t even have his phone number – and he didn’t have theirs. Drivers didn’t say anything about the incidents to one another unless there was a confrontation at the track, Gordon recalled.
In recent years, though, even Gordon has placed a few calls. He dialed Martin Truex Jr. after their Sonoma wreck last year, because Gordon realized it was a “bonehead move” and he felt sincerely sorry for it.
But for the most part, if a driver calls Gordon, there isn’t going to be an answer.
“All of the sudden I get in a wreck with somebody and they’re calling me and I don’t know the number and I check the voicemail, and it’s like, ‘Oh, I got your number from such and such and wanted to give you a call,’” Gordon said. “It’s not a bad idea to reach out, but I just am one that I don’t expect it. I don’t take the call, I don’t call them back.”
And aside from that, there’s another reason Gordon doesn’t necessarily want to chit-chat about a racing incident over the phone.
“I prefer them to wonder if I’m ever going to get them back,” he said.
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