Event Preview Fact Sheet

Event/Date:    Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500/March 9, 2003

Venue:            Atlanta Motor Speedway

Robby Gordon’s NASCAR Winston Cup Performance History at Atlanta Motor Speedway

TOTALS        Avg. Start: 23.6      Avg. Finish: 19.8                 Laps: 1,539/1,551          Money: $ 291,088

NASCAR Winston Cup Points Position: 14^th

NOTES:

• This Week’s Race Car (chassis No. 90) was last run at Homestead in November of 2002.  It since has been re-configured in the 2003 Chevrolet Monte Carlo body style.  Gordon also raced this car to an eighth-place finish in the 2002 Brickyard 400.  Kevin Harvick raced it in last season’s The Winston and the Coca-Cola 600.   
• Gordon and Team Cingular tested at Atlanta Feb. 25 and 26
• Gordon won the pole position for the March 1997 race at Atlanta Motor Speedway
• Gordon won the pole position in his career-first stock car superspeedway event in the 1990 ARCA race at Atlanta for car owner Junie Donlavey
• The Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500 will be broadcast live on FOX and PRN on Sunday, March 9^th at 1 p.m. EST.  Qualifying is scheduled for Friday, March 7^th at 3:05 p.m. EST.

ROBBY GORDON QUOTES:

“I think our test went pretty well at Atlanta. We worked on qualifying runs a bit.  I think I did three qualifying runs but most of our efforts for the two days were spent on race stuff. We were pretty happy with our qualifying at Rockingham but we were so disappointed with our race finish and we thought our race set-up was the area that needed the most work. We learned a lot about the new Chevrolet Monte Carlo body during the Atlanta test and during the race weekend at Las Vegas.  It’s all part of a learning curve.  We haven’t come out of the box running great with this new body yet but time and experience with the new car will fix that problem.  The Cingular car was really good off of the truck Friday at Las Vegas during practice for qualifying and we were happy with it.  But race trim with the new body gave us some challenges that we’re working on meeting.

“We’ve had good runs in the past at Atlanta and it’s one of the race tracks I really enjoy to drive. I know it’s an important race to our race team because Atlanta is the hometown of Cingular Wireless. We tested there last year and thought we were going to run pretty good but we were lost when we got back for the race. So, when we were testing last month, I focused on driving different lines on the track to try to put the car in more awkward positions. That’s what happens during a race, so I figured I should spend some time working with those situations.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get to run much with other cars so we didn’t get all the answers we needed about how the car handles with the new package and we’ll have to wait to see when we get to the track this week.

“I’ve really struggled at Atlanta ever since they re-configured the track a few years ago. I sat on the pole at Atlanta the first two times I raced there — in the 1990 ARCA race and 1997 Winston Cup race.  But it takes a completely different line to get around the track now than it did back when I won the pole.  Getting around Atlanta is an art in itself because there are some pretty big bumps on the track.  If I drive the Cingular Wireless Chevrolet into turn one and drive the normal line, I’ll ride over some fairly large bumps.  Either the car has to work really well or we have to compensate for that in order to get through the bumps.  The sooner you can get back in the gas coming off turn two, the quicker your lap is going to be.  The quicker lap is on the bottom of the race track for qualifying but that will completely change in the race.  In the race after the tires wear down a little bit, guys will be running really high on the track.

“When you go down the backstretch and off into turn three, it looks completely different than turn one.  From a driver’s point of view, it doesn’t seem like turn three is banked as much as turn one. Plus, there aren’t any real bumps getting into three, although there are some halfway between turns three and four.  The track seems like it flattens out more coming off of turns three and four than it does exiting one and two.”