INDIANAPOLIS — With a tinge of gray hair at his temples, his hat on backward and his two young children by his side, Jeff Gordon celebrated as if he was 23 years old again.

Gordon won a NASCAR-record fifth Brickyard 400 on Sunday, eight days before his 43rd birthday and on the weekend Indianapolis Motor Speedway celebrated the 20th anniversary of his first Brickyard victory.

Gordon’s first win came before the celebratory kissing of the Yard of Bricks was en vogue, before he became a household name, while Sprint Cup Series rookies Kyle Larson and Austin Dillon were still in diapers. Now a family man with an aching back, Gordon used Sunday to show he’s still at the top of his game.

“If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere,” said Gordon, who has led the Sprint Cup Series standings for 13 of the last 14 weeks. “It’s certainly going to be a huge confidence boost for this team. We recognize the significance of this.

“We saw we were points leaders, we won at Kansas, but I don’t know if we believed we were capable of winning this championship this year. We do now.”

To prove it to himself, to his Hendrick Motorsports team and to his ardent fan base, Gordon needed a vintage close to Sunday’s race.

Hendrick teammate Kasey Kahne led a race-high 70 laps and seemed only to be racing against his gas tank when a late caution put the race back into Gordon’s hands. He’d have one shot at passing Kahne, on a dreaded restart, and nobody was sure if ol’ “Four-Time” had it in him.

Restarts are his Achilles heel, and he’s struggled with them for several years. And Kahne, who is winless on the season, desperately needed the victory to grab a berth in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship field.

“The restart is going to be the race, really,” Gordon’s crew chief, Alan Gustafson, conceded in a television interview moments before the field went green with 17 laps remaining.

Kahne picked the lower, inside lane for the restart, and Gordon found himself on the outside and exactly where he wanted to be. Gordon tried to set a quick pace as they headed to the flag, and Kahne tried to slow it down in the restart zone.

Gordon shifted into fourth gear and surged past Kahne on the outside, and Gordon kicked it into cruise control as he sailed away for the win.

“I think we both knew that was for the win,” Gordon said of Kahne. “Out of nowhere, I have the restart of my life.”