Jeff Gordon had a plan to race Formula 1, team up with Dario Franchitti

Imagine if you will, a world where Jeff Gordon moved from NASCAR to IndyCar and ultimately, to Formula 1? The Gordon to F1 plan that almost was could have changed American motorsports forever.

What if Jeff Gordon left NASCAR after three championships? What if he actually made that move to open-wheel racing once and for all? That all almost happened, according to Will Buxton.

IndyCar on FOX’s newest broadcast talent, Buxton, revealed a little-known plan that would have put Gordon in an F1 ride. It was a multi-year plan. He broke it all down with Kevin Harvick on his Happy Hour podcast.

“Back in the late 90s, early 2000s, there was a plan, and I only learned about it recently when I was researching for a book I wrote a few years ago, and I interviewed Jeff Gordon and I interviewed Dario Franchitti,” Buxton told Harvick. “And it turned out that, and this was before the stupid Super License rules came in … You know, Jeff was going to come over to the team Kool Green in IndyCar and run a season or two in IndyCar, and Dario was going to go over to BAR in Formula 1, and the long-term plan was that the lineup for BAR in Fomrula 1 was going to be Jeff and Dario.”

Jeff Gordon is an icon. Dario Franchitti, also an icon. And can you imagine Gordon in that Kool Green firesuit? I mean, come on. Would have printed money.

“That would have been box office and that would have broken F1 in America 20 years, 30 years before it finally broke through [with] Drive to Survive,” Buxton continued. “You get Jeff Gordon racing in Formula 1 alongside Dario Franchitti, these two great all-time champions out of American open-wheel and stock car racing and they’re racing as teammates in Formula 1? Boom! Job done. That would have been huge.”

There are a lot of “what-ifs?” in sports. Jeff Gordon has a number of them. What if he raced the Indy 500 and did the Double? What if he raced IndyCar full-time? Could he have been competitive in a Formula 1 car?

Unfortunately, those are questions we will never know the answer to. But there is one guy that is an awful lot like Gordon, and he happens to race for him now – Kyle Larson. Larson will attempt the Double for the second year in a row and is hoping to become only the second driver to finish all 1100 miles across the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 in the same day.