Ever had a moment so embarrassing that you wished you could just erase it from everyone’s memory? Recently, Jeff Gordon made an appearance on the Stacking Pennies podcast to recount one such tale. Despite being such a well-respected figure in the sport after all these years, even Gordon had some awkward moments on the racetrack that he would rather forget entirely.

Jeff Gordon reveals one moment that sticks out in his memory

A typical NASCAR race isn’t just about drivers showing up to a track, racing, and then leaving. It is much more than that. There are things like media duties, sponsorship duties, and extracurriculars. On that particular weekend in 2002, Hendrick Motorsports had a special collaboration for the race event.

Gordon told the host Corey LaJoie, “Looney Tunes is doing this big promotion with Chevrolet and they were sponsoring the events. So they brought out all the Looney Tunes characters, they lined us up in these golf karts. These golf karts were basically just unlimited, they were fast. They just repaved pit road so the grip level on pit road was ridiculous, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, why don’t you guys just race around cones.’

“Dude, I go to Turn 1 and I’m gone! I went in there, and my kart was souped up. I just slide across the bench, right off! Jimmie, almost runs me over, as I’m tumbling out, he tries to avoid me and misses my head by that much.”

But that wasn’t the most embarrassing part yet.

“I must have bruised a rib or something, I could barely get in the car. That was right before practice, I could barely get in the car in practice. So I would say that…”

Even Kevin Harvick had mentioned his take on it on his podcast once. “We were racing gold karts on pit road. We probably have the footage of this somewhere here at FOX. We were racing golf carts and I’ll never forget it because racing, racing, racing, whoop! Jeff Gordon out of the other side of the golf cart. Dude fell out of the right side of the golf cart. That was pretty funny”.

For that little exhibition race, Jeff Gordon was paired up with Bugs Bunny. Meanwhile, Johnson was partnering with Sylvester the cat, and they just about avoided Gordon. While all that was going on, Jeff Green and Daffy Duck went on to win the golf cart race. Robby Gordon and Pepé Le Pew finished 2nd.

Other partnerships included Kevin Harvick and the Tasmanian Devil, Bobby Hamilton and Marvin the Martian, and K9. Mike Skinner partnered with Yosemite Sam while Terry Labonte was with Road Runner. Finally, Joe Nemechek linked up with Speedy Gonzales.

The HMS vice president also made another confession

On a more serious note, Jeff Gordon also opened up about an incident that happened during a race. Back in his racing prime, the #24 driver was well-known for being one of the coolest and calmest drivers in NASCAR. However, there were occasions where the cool composure cracked.

In his career, there have been five major incidents that led to Gordon losing his cool. The earliest incident was in 2006 at Bristol with Matt Kenseth, and the worst that happened was a shove. Four years later, Gordon had a confrontation with Jeff Burton at Texas. In 2014, there was a massive brawl with Brad Keselowski at Texas again, after a late race incident. Finally, there have been multiple incidents with Tony Stewart in the past, which only escalated to a shouting match.

However the most famous incident was his clash with Clint Bowyer. Gordon admitted, “Maybe the one regret that I have, the Bowyer incident at Phoenix. If I could take back anything, I’d take that one back. I just lost my sh-t.”

That incident requires a bit of backstory. Back in Martinsville in 2012, Bowyer and Gordon collided. However, Bowyer would later find out that Jeff Gordon could hold a grudge. In Phoenix, the #24 driver deliberately hooked Bowyer’s car, triggering a massive wreck. After the race, the two duked it out on pit road. That culminated in a $100,000 fine and a 25-point penalty.