NASCAR will make its first ever appearance at the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing in 2014 when the ultra-successful 1998 DuPont Chevrolet Monte Carlo of series champ and NASCAR icon Jeff Gordon runs a few demonstration laps over both weekends of the Ferrari Festival on January 17-19 and 24-26.
The car – now owned by Bert Dove – has been displayed at the CRC Speedshow event but this will be the first time it has been run at a public circuit racing event in New Zealand.
By the end of 1998, this car and its driver had staked a claim to a major slice of NASCAR’s history books. Gordon opened the year with a very modest 16th place finish in the Daytona 500 but the following week at Rockingham, he battled a poor-handling car to win. He won again at Bristol four weeks later and went on to win a total of 13 races, a modern-era record.
This included victories at Charlotte, Richmond, Sonoma, Pocono, Indianapolis (which provided at the time the largest amount of prize money in auto racing with $1,637,625),Watkins Glen, Michigan, New Hampshire, Daytona, Rockingham, and Atlanta. Gordon won the 1998 championship with a massive 364-point lead over Dale Jarrett.
It is arguable that in the modern era of NASCAR, Gordon’s 1998 season is one of the very finest achieved. Compared with Richard Petty’s stellar season in 1975, both drivers won a phenomenal 13 races, though such a quantity is unrivalled since.
