NEW YORK -- Even from the back seat of a black Lincoln Navigator, it's clear that Jeff Gordon is in control. He guides his driver through the streets of Manhattan with the skill of a spotter at a Nextel Cup road course, steering him around Columbus Circle, two blocks up Broadway, and then left on 57th Street. The four-time NASCAR champion has an hour to kill in between television appearances, and he's looking for his favorite diner for breakfast.

It's the kind of place where small brass nameplates above every table identify celebrities who have dined there. On this Thursday morning, Gordon is the most recognizable person in the joint, but no one bats an eye. He's a regular. "Hey, what did you do with the salmon?" he playfully chides the maitre d, over a lunchtime favorite that's no longer on the menu. Somehow famous and anonymous all at once, he seems perfectly within his element, right down to the charcoal gray Armani suit that blends so well with all that concrete and steel.

Inside The Chase

After seeing his 300-plus point lead vanish to teammate Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon realizes the time is now to flip the switch.

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• Complete Coverage

It's a perfect match, really, the king of NASCAR media in this media capital, a place where the streets are awash in more corporate logos than any Nextel Cup car. Gordon somehow belongs here, crunching on his Raisin Bran with skim milk only a few blocks from the Midtown condominium he shares with his wife Ingrid and daughter Ella, pushing a stroller through Central Park, slapping on a baseball cap and wandering through the streets unrecognized. There are plans for a new house outside Charlotte, a nice spread with a backyard and a pool and plenty of space for a new family to grow. But right now, New York is home. Gordon has become NASCAR's emissary to the most important city in the world.

On this day, he has help. NASCAR has brought all 12 of its Chase participants to New York for a media blitz, one that begins with wake-up calls in the pre-dawn hours for network morning shows, and ends with an afternoon free-for-all at the ESPN Zone in Times Square. Most of the other drivers are staying at a plush hotel where rooms go for $500 a night and a bedside panel controls everything from the lights to the television to the "do not disturb" sign. Gordon enjoyed a greater luxury -- spending the night at home, where the black SUV, complete with a No. 24 flag sticking up from the driver's side window, meets him at 7:30 a.m. He piles in, and a long day of appearances begins.

He's used to it. Gordon has been doing interviews since his earliest days as a sprint-car driver, when he stood out not only because of his talent but also his youth. He was a regular on the old Thursday Night Thunder broadcasts on ESPN. When he broke into NASCAR's top level as a 21-year-old back in 1993, he didn't challenge for race wins or the championship immediately, providing him with an adjustment period many of today's top rookies don't have. The result is the most media-friendly superstar sports figure on the planet, a man whose ease and professionalism in front of the camera have led to guest-host gigs on talk shows, and will almost certainly provide him with a multitude of opportunities once his driving days are complete.

"I don't mind it," he said. "I kind of grew up racing on ESPN. Because I was so young getting into sprint cars, there was a little bit more attention around me. So I got to get a little bit of experience at a young age. Any experience you get in it helps. Some of it you enjoy, some of it you just put up with. Some guys go into it with such a negative attitude that's it hard to ever get through it. I just try to make the best of it and enjoy it whenever I can. The times when you're not really crazy about what you're doing, you just do it and move on. But I do think the experience I had at a young age helped me get comfortable with it."

Not every driver feels the same way. Gordon crosses paths with many of his competitive peers over the course of the day, and it's clear that some of them are suffering through it or just gutting it out. "I can't believe anybody lives there," Kansas native Clint Bowyer would say later of New York. But Gordon knows the city well enough to give his driver directions to the tucked-away side entrance of ABC's Good Morning America, and avoid the crush of people at Times Square -- the one part of New York where he's guaranteed to be besieged by fans and autograph-seekers, and purposely tries to avoid.

He knows the drill: through security, up a massive elevator big enough to hold a racecar, a touch of powder in makeup, and then into the green room to chitchat and wait until the scheduled 8:30 a.m. spot. NASCAR is booking these appearances in groups, trying to push the Chase rather than one individual driver, a scenario that proves a touch clumsy at times as hosts try to interview multiple subjects at once. The previous evening, all 12 drivers appeared on David Letterman's late-night program, delivering a top 12 -- not the usual top 10 -- "reasons I love racing." Gordon is No. 2: "It's not one of those sports where you have to inject stuff in your ass to be good." He's savvy enough to know that some of his more sensitive fans may object to the curse word.

The appearance on Good Morning America won't be nearly as edgy. Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenseth and Jeff Burton soon join him in the green room, and the conversation is dominated by talk of fantasy football. Country music singer Kenny Chesney, unrecognizable in sweats and without a cowboy hat, comes in to say hello to Gordon. Chesney is performing on the program to promote a new album, but he's up against a juggernaut. "Kanye [West] is killing everybody," he says. Gordon, ever the pro, introduces the musician to everyone in the room, right down to public relations reps and a reporter along for the ride.

Then it's back down the big elevator and out to the street, and GMA's open-air set on the corner of Broadway and 44th. It's little more than scaffolding covered by a corrugated aluminum roof, but noisy, sign-toting fans push in from all edges. Even from 10 feet away, it's impossible to hear the questions posed by host Chris Cuomo, or the drivers' answers. But after the three-minute segment -- expanded from an original length of one minute, a fact that pleases the NASCAR rep to no end -- Gordon is smiling. "They talked to everybody. And he knew everybody's names," he said. "I was very impressed."

Gordon has about an hour until his next appearance, a spot with Johnson, Kenseth, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick on Live with Regis and Kelly, a program he's co-hosted several times. He fills the gap with breakfast and an in-transit telephone interview with ESPN Radio's Mike and Mike in the Morning. Chatting with hosts Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic before he goes live, he calls the upcoming 10-race stretch the Chase for the Championship. The exasperated NASCAR rep flips over a sheet of paper and frantically scribbles "Chase for the Nextel Cup," with the next-to-last word underlined, and hands it to the driver. "Hey, I don't have one of those," says Gordon, who won all four of his titles under the Winston banner. "I'd like to."

The radio interview addresses familiar topics: cheating, the forthcoming Chase, and of course future teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. "I think we're going to give him a good car and a good race team, and I'd be surprised if he didn't make the Chase next year," Gordon says as his SUV heads toward the Upper West Side studio where Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa host their mid-morning talk show. Gordon has come to know these streets well. He still has a place in Charlotte, a condo in a high-rise uptown. He used to split time between the two locations. Baby Ella, whose picture adorns the screen of Gordon's cell phone, changed that. For the time being, at least, daddy is New Yorker.

That fact seems to fascinate local writers, many of whom Gordon will meet with later in a print media roundtable. He's become the circuit's voice on all issues pertaining to the city. Why hasn't the sport seemed to catch on here? Why is it so hard to find NASCAR fans? Why does this place need a racetrack? His answers are all cogent. Because New York is an international city with international interests. Because big-city sports fans dominate big cities. And because if New Yorkers are going to go to a race, they need a place to call their own. Pocono, at 97 miles away the nearest Nextel Cup venue to the city, won't do it.

"They're not going to know enough about NASCAR ... if they can't really touch it and feel it," he said. "It's hard to talk people into going to Dover or Pocono or New Hampshire. If you can't drive through the tunnel or across the bridge to get to it, they're probably not going to go."

Now, it's time to go to Regis and Kelly. Gordon walks past camera-toting star-watchers who have been camped out in lawn chairs, and enters a small green room crowded with the NASCAR entourage. Daughtry, the band which performed prior to the previous week's race at Richmond, is also booked on the show, and the members seem none to pleased to have their green room overrun. The drivers are kept waiting for what seems an eternity before they're ushered out for a sometimes awkward interview that features a few wince-inducing attempts at humor. Afterward, the drivers are asked to throw pies at a trash can and walk a fake red carpet for a taped segment. The show won't even air until October.

The whole thing comes across as juvenile, something you can't imagine Regis and Kelly ever asking Tom Brady or Derek Jeter to do. But Gordon does it, with no complaint. You begin to wonder: What does it take to tick this guy off? Referring to NASCAR as "the NASCAR," for one. Or asking a Busch Series driver, "When will you get to NASCAR?" a query a younger Gordon faced a few times himself. Even the Top 12 on Letterman, he believes, could have been better -- he would have rather seen one or two drivers give an interview on the host's couch.

The conversation in the SUV is interrupted as the vehicle rolls through a construction zone. "Hey! Hey! Is that Jeff?" yells a burly man in a sleeveless shirt and a hard hat, who's evidently spotted the No. 24 flag. "Hey, Jeff! See that guy over there?" he says, pointing to a co-worker across the street. "He's a NASCAR guy!" Gordon orders the Navigator to stop long enough for the driver to roll down the window and shake a few hands. "Build it well," he tells them. "Construction workers always know you," he says later, the window rolled back up, "regardless of what state you're in."

It's a precursor of events to come. The day's next event is its biggest, a media smorgasbord at the ESPN Zone featuring all 12 drivers. It's in the middle of Times Square, a place where Gordon can't walk 10 feet without being asked to sign an autograph or have a photograph taken. The driver is ushered in VIP-style, though the back door and the kitchen, like the scene in Goodfellas. Everything becomes a blur -- another ESPN Radio interview, two minutes with local radio, satellite interviews with media at Texas Motor Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway. He has only a few minutes to inhale a quick lunch before he's ushered upstairs to a question-and-answer session with fans, some of whom have brought gifts for his new baby.

Off to a suite area to sign photos of all the Chase drivers. Back downstairs for a few local television spots and another brief meeting with writers. He's asked almost identical questions -- about the Chase, about losing his big regular-season lead, about Earnhardt Jr. -- over and over. The sameness becomes numbing, but Gordon doesn't flinch. "When you're passionate about what you do, you don't mind answering the same questions," he says in the elevator, in transit from one appearance to another. "But it is nice to get an off-the-wall one every now and then."

Then it's out the door, back to the black SUV, and off to a meeting with executives of The Associated Press at the wire service's New York headquarters. There's another round scheduled the next day at New Hampshire International Speedway, where the top 12 drivers in points give open interview sessions mandated by NASCAR. He has to be tired, wrung out, and ready to see his wife and baby before he leaves for that weekend's race. But he never complains. He never does.