Wonder Boy is grown up now

CONCORD, N.C. —  After a decade of proving he’s among the best to ever drive a stock car, Jeff Gordon still triggers an intense and divided reaction from NASCAR fans -- something fellow driver Kasey Kahne knows firsthand.

“I rode with Jeff Gordon in the back of his truck a couple times around parade laps at racetracks,” Kahne said. “It’s pretty wild to see some of the stuff that gets thrown or pointed at him.”

It’s a comment that makes Gordon burst with laughter. “I’ve been seeing it for so long I just smile and wave,” he said. “I’m just like, yep, cool, thank you. But sometimes guys who ride with me go, ‘Wow.’ ”

As Gordon, Kahne and 41 other Nextel Cup drivers return to suburban Charlotte for today’s Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, Gordon is again stoking fans’ emotions by mounting a charge for a fifth Cup championship.

If he wins it, the Hendrick Motorsports driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet would become only the third driver with five titles in NASCAR’s premier series. Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt each had seven.

Gordon has won three of the last four races this season, and has nine top-five finishes in 11 races this year. That has given him a whopping 231-point lead in the standings, virtually assuring him a berth among the dozen drivers who will compete in the late-season Chase for the Cup that determines the champion.

At 35, Gordon also has become more content, self-aware and mature. He attributes much of his happiness to his new wife, model Ingrid Vandebosch, whom he married three years after his first marriage ended in a highly publicized divorce. They are expecting their first child in late June.

“Being happy, and [finding] what makes me happy in everyday life and in my professional life, is what it’s all about,” said Gordon, whose website includes a page on his “faith and beliefs.”

“I welcomed God into my life a few years ago,” he states. “I regret that I did not do it sooner.”

But nothing has changed about Gordon’s intensity to win another championship to add to his titles in 1995, ‘97, ’98 and 2001.

He has won a series-record $85 million in prize money, not to mention millions more from endorsements.

Even so, “every year I won the championship there wasn’t a Chase, and I want that Nextel Cup so bad,” he said after winning two weeks ago at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway, referring to the Chase format that started in 2004.

Gordon has his work cut out today, starting 32nd in the race scheduled to start in the late afternoon and end under the lights.

It’s forecast to be warm and mostly clear at the 1.5-mile, high-banked Lowe’s oval, where Gordon has won four times. In fact, his first Cup victory was here in 1994 when he was 22.

And with his resurgence this year has come the familiar, visceral reaction from fans.

After winning in Phoenix last month to tie Earnhardt for career Cup victories at 76, Gordon held a flag with Earnhardt’s No. 3 out the window in a victory lap. Gordon did so as a tribute, but some fans booed and threw debris on the track.

It was worse the next week in Talladega, Ala., where Gordon won again from the pole to surpass Earnhardt’s mark. Cans and bottles rained on the track after Gordon took the checkered flag.

It has always been that way with NASCAR fans, who have been sharply divided about Gordon since he joined the Cup series in late 1992.

The Vallejo, Calif., native made winning appear so easy in the 1990s, and the way he routinely snatched victories from fan favorites such as Earnhardt sparked enmity among many that has never dissipated.

Earnhardt himself dubbed him “Wonder Boy” early in Gordon’s career, but the two later developed a deep respect for each other. Respect for Gordon also pervades the Cup garage today.

Mark Martin, the veteran driving a limited schedule this year for Ginn Racing, called it “an honor” when Gordon recently asked him to take Gordon’s seat at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., on June 24 if Gordon must leave for the birth of his daughter.

Gordon has never missed a start in 484 races but said he wouldn’t miss the birth “for anything. I love racing, but I don’t love it that much,” he said.

It’s all part of Gordon’s developing maturity and happiness.

“The fact that I’m even thinking about that is a change,” he said. “Earlier, I didn’t think about that, I just went day to day and did my thing.”

In fact, it was at Infineon Raceway last year that Gordon’s life -- on and off the track -- again found its rhythm.

By his standards, Gordon came to Sonoma in a slump. In 2005 he won four races but missed the Chase, and in 2006 he was winless when he arrived at Infineon. But on Saturday that weekend he proposed to Vandebosch. On Sunday he won the race.

“It was kind of like a sign, the turning of a corner,” he said.

No matter how big a points lead Gordon amasses after the first 26 races of the season, he’ll still be bunched back together with 11 other drivers when the 10-race Chase begins Sept. 16 at New Hampshire International Speedway.

But as Gordon marks the 13th anniversary of his first Cup win at the same track today, he knows this might be one of his best remaining shots at a fifth title.

“We have really been searching since about 2002, to get ourselves back in championship form, winning races, doing it consistently,” he said. “This is the first year, really, since then that we have been able to show that.”

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james.peltz@latimes.com