Napa Auto Parts 500 Qualifying Quotes – Atlanta

Robby Gordon qualified 33rd for Sunday’s Napa Auto Parts 500 NASCAR Winston Cup race from Atlanta Motor Speedway. Gordon ran a fast time of 29.099 seconds in his TurtleWax/Menards Ford Taurus. In Friday’s practice, Gordon lost an engine on his second lap. The entire practice was lost as the team put in a new engine for qualifying. Gordon’s lone lap of qualifying Friday produced a lap of 29.411 seconds, but was hindered by the car bottoming out in turn one. As the car bottomed, Gordon had to lift out of the throttle to avoid losing control. His time Friday was 36th-best and the team opted to requalify Saturday.

Saturday, however, started out much like Friday with a blown engine on the first lap of practice. The team worked feverishly to replace the engine again, finishing just in time to roll the car out to the grid. Gordon’s requalification lap was with minimal bottoming in turn one as compared to Friday. The right front shock was stiffened up slightly and left front tire pressure was raised a pound to keep the front from compressing into the track as the car entered the banking.

Robby on qualifying – "We’ve been here for two days, turned four laps and somehow we’re in the show 33rd. Go figure. Maybe we had it all wrong from the beginning this year and ran too many laps. Show up, turn a lap or two and get ready for the race with happy hour – not a bad deal, eh! I’m just kidding, weekends like this are way too stressful. The silverlining in this is that Mark (Tutor) put a pretty darn good car together for us to roll out of the truck. Honestly, we’ve changed a pound of tire pressure, a front spring and that’s it. We kept the car from hitting the bottom going into turn one, but that’s all we’ve worked on.

"With the rain, I’m not sure if we’ll ever get happy hour in, but hey, who needs it at this point. Might as well keep our course for the weekend and go into the race cold turkey as well. And on that note, I think we’ve got a good race car for Sunday. Iit’s the last fiesta of the year – I plan on having fun out there."

Atlanta Practice/Qualifying Photo Gallery