Four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon is coming out of retirement for one weekend to compete in a Porsche Carrera Cup North America race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, to be held over Labor Day Weekend.
Gordon, who retired from full-time NASCAR racing after the 2015 season, will be reunited with longtime crew chief Ray Evernham, marking the first time the duo has raced together since 1999, Porsche said in a press release. In Cup Series competition, they won three championships and 47 races (out of Gordon’s career-total 93) together.
“I’m looking forward to getting back in a race car and competing against a talented field of teams and drivers,” Gordon said in a statement. “It’ll be a fun way to spend the holiday weekend and make some new memories.”
2021 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup race car
The Carrera Cup is a spec series using the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup, operating as a support series to IMSA sports car racing in North America. An entry list of more than 30 cars is lined up for Indy, where drivers will run the Speedway’s 2.4-mile, 14-turn road course. Gordon will reprise his signature number 24 for the race.
This isn’t the first time Gordon has dabbled in sports car racing. He won the 2017 Rolex 24 at Daytona on his second attempt, driving a Cadillac DPi-V.R prototype. He is only the fourth driver to win both the Daytona 24-hour race and the Daytona 500, with three wins in the NASCAR season opener to his credit.
A record five-time winner of the Brickyard 400 on the Indy oval, Gordon first sampled the road course in 2003 when he swapped cars with Formula 1 star Juan Pablo Montoya, taking the Colombian’s Williams-BMW for a test drive.