There was just one problem — Gordon was taking part in the first day of a two-day test scheduled for Hendrick Motorsports teams at Martinsville Speedway.

Gordon’s wife, Ingrid, their two children and Gordon’s stepfather and mother, John and Carol Bickford, were able to travel to Charlotte Douglas International Airport to tour the aircraft — and wound up getting to meet the President as well.

"I don’t like throwing this guy out there too much," Gordon said after wrapping up the first day’s work. "But it’s a situation where there was a young kid that I met in ’94 I guess, ’94 or ’95, at the Charlotte airport, and his family were big NASCAR fans. He came here and through the (race) shops. I was going through the airport to fly somewhere, and he was standing in front of me."

Gordon had just met the young man’s uncle, he said, "and he told me, ‘hey, there’s a young boy over there and is a huge fan of yours. If you could just say hi to him.’ So I said hi to him."

Twenty years later, Gordon said, the youngster now works at the White House.

"He’s a great guy, and a fan of mine, but I’m just as big of a fan of his and the work that he is doing," Gordon said.

"He was coming to Charlotte and asked me if we wanted to go do a tour of Air Force One. I said, ‘I’m testing.’ So Ingrid and the kids and my mom and dad were able to go.

"They didn’t know they were going to meet the President, they just thought they were going to go do the tour of Air Force One. But it worked out that they got to say hello to him as well."

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Headlining the moves for the Sprint Cup Series are changes for events at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway and Darlington Raceway. Atlanta’s Sprint Cup race had been held on the Labor Day weekend since 2009. Next season, it moves to March 1, one week after the season-opening Daytona 500. 

Bristol’s spring race will be run in April instead of March while Darlington, which hosted the annual Southern 500 on Labor Day weekend from 1950 through 2003 before moving to a May date, moves back to the first weekend in September. 

"The fact that we still get to go to Darlington, that’s what matters the most to me," Gordon, a five-time Southern 500 winner, said. "As well as what the fans are going to get to enjoy and what works for them, to come out and enjoy such an awesome race track with so much history.

"It’s always the Southern 500 to me. If I went to Darlington four times a year, I’d say ‘it’s the Southern 500.’ That’s just the way I look at Darlington.

"Bristol is an important race, a huge fan base there. You don’t want weather to deter fans that want to go to Bristol. I think that’s a good one. 

"Atlanta, being the second race of the year … I like going to Atlanta anytime of the year as well, as long as it doesn’t snow like it did that one year then I think that’s a great choice to have second."

For 2015, Sprint Cup teams will run a "western" swing, with consecutive stops at Las Vegas, Phoenix and Auto Club Speedway in March. 

The move could cut out at least one cross-country trip for teams.

"I like the western swing and how they have a bigger track, short track, bigger track so if the teams, and I haven’t talked to the team about how they would possibly coordinate that, but it is possible to make sort of a western hub and bring some equipment from the shop so you don’t have to go back and forth which could be a big help," Gordon said.

Las Vegas is a 1.5-mile track, Phoenix measures one mile and Auto Club is a 2-mile layout.

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