By Dan Neil

updated 4:17 p.m. ET March 25, 2008

Jeff Gordon is the winningest driver in NASCAR's premier series and a four-time champion. Late in a race, running three wide and foot flat on the floor while climbing Daytona Speedway's three-story-high banks — where in 2001 Dale Earnhardt Sr. hit it so hard it practically took his head off — he has (and will, if the opportunity arises) knocked the car ahead to steal its position, which is called "taking the air off." This is an act of unimaginable skill and perfect indifference to personal welfare. Generally speaking, Gordon races clean and fair, but he will happily play rough at 200 mph if the checkers are in sight. He'll also put somebody in the wall if he thinks he's been wronged. Gordon doesn't even blink. The man has liquid nitrogen in his veins and carbon-steel castanets in his fireproof undies.

Off the track, Gordon, 36, is a nine-figure millionaire, a successful businessman, and a sports icon. Following an ugly divorce five years ago, he's now married to model Ingrid Vandebosch, with whom he has a baby daughter, Ella Sofia. He owns a Hawker 800 jet. He loves football. Through his foundation, he raises money for sick kids. He is a phenomenal athlete, an Einstein behind the wheel. From all of this, NASCAR Nation can come to only one conclusion: Jeff Gordon is gay.

And not just gay, but an outrageous feather-boa'd queen around whom the chrome on trailer hitches is gravely endangered. Brokeback Talladega. Gaytona. Google "Jeff Gordon is gay" and you'll get nearly 4,000 entries. Of course, he is not gay. But that doesn't seem to matter.

The first time I met him was at the 2002 Daytona 500, when he was the reigning Winston Cup champion. It was the year after NASCAR's bitter-eyed alpha dog, Earnhardt Sr. — the Intimidator — died in a last-lap crash, and the maudlin crowd was in no mood to honor Gordon. During driver introductions, the horizon-wide grandstands whooped and cheered for has-beens (Sterling Martin) and hacks (Buckshot Jones), but when Gordon was introduced, I thought they were going to stone him to death with Budweiser cans. A black, poisonous pall of anger and frustration gathered over the crowd. Beer-bellied ogres held up signs that read "FAG: FANS AGAINST GORDON."

Gordon, by then accustomed to being the most gay-bashed straight man in America, smiled and waved. If it hurt, if he felt that it was unjust, if he wondered what these damn "fans" wanted, he didn't show it. Liquid nitrogen.

When I arrive at Daytona International Speedway's office before this year's 500 — which kicked off the 2008 season — I announce I'm with Men's Vogue. The lady behind the counter looks perplexed. What's that word? "Men's VOG?" she ventures, reading the envelope. "Vogue," I reply. "You know, like 'in vogue.'" She gives me the eye. "We never had any 'Vogue' here before," she says. Later, when I meet Gordon in his spectacular new motor coach, he laughs at the story. "Yeah, just tell them you're here to see Jeff Gordon," he says. "They'll go, 'Oh yeah, now we understand.'"

Gordon is wearing crisp blue jeans, a gray sweatshirt with a DuPont logo over the heart, a Chevrolet baseball cap, and cross-trainers. The much-derided perfect hair is going a little gray at the temples, as is the dense beard. "I avoid shaving every chance I get," he says. His cleft chin is a little weak, his upper lip a little missing in action, but overall, the pretty-boy charge still sticks.

The centerpiece of Gordon's 45-foot custom motor coach is the playpen, front and center in the living space. "We built it around babies," he says. "It's probably the only one of its kind." It's a week before the big race and V8-powered dragonflies are buzzing around the track outside, but when Gordon closes the door all is shut out. For most of the next nine months, he and his family will live out of the motor coach for as many as four days a week. "I will probably sleep in that bed" — the king-sizer at the back — "more than the bed I have at home."

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