Event
Preview Fact Sheet
Event/Date:
Food City 500/March 23, 2003
Venue: Bristol (Tenn.) Motor
Speedway
Robby Gordon’s NASCAR Winston Cup Performance History
at Bristol Motor Speedway
Date
|
Start
|
Finish
|
Laps
Completed/ Total Laps
|
Status
|
Money
|
8/24/02
|
30
|
20
|
498/500
|
Running
|
$90,366
|
3/24/02
|
2
|
20
|
499/500
|
Running
|
85,331
|
8/26/00
|
13
|
41
|
121/500
|
Steering
|
27,500
|
3/26/00
|
40
|
32
|
473/500
|
Running
|
26,345
|
4/13/97
|
20
|
43
|
91/500
|
Accident
|
18,650
|
TOTALS Avg. Start: 20.8
Avg. Finish: 31.2 Laps: 1,682/2,500
Money: $248,192
NASCAR Winston Cup Points Position: 21st
NOTES:
- This Week’s Race Car (chassis No. 105) was last run at
Rockingham this year. The team also tested it at Homestead last
November.
- The Food City 500 will be broadcast live on
FOX and PRN on Sunday, March 23 at 1:00 p.m. EST. Qualifying
is scheduled for Friday, March 21 at 3:05 p.m. EST.
ROBBY
GORDON QUOTES:
“Bristol is down-and-dirty racing in a bullring.
It’s racing at its best — short-track racing with high banks.
I really have begun to like Bristol a lot. It’s one of my
favorite tracks now. Every time we leave there, it seems like there’s
a pit brawl brewing. You think ‘Damn, that pissed me off.
I want to get out of here.’ Then it’s ‘I can’t
wait to go back to Bristol again. We’re going to win it next
time.’ Bristol is just so much fun.
“Bristol is a rush-hour interstate at 120
miles-per-hour. There’s 43 cars sitting right on top of each
other, usually trying not to hit each other but wanting the next
guy to get out of the way. It’s a little nerve-wracking to
go around for 500 laps and hope the guy behind you or in front of
you or beside you doesn’t make a mistake. Because then it’s
your mistake, also.
“Surviving is the key to doing well at Bristol,
just like it was at Darlington. But your team can put more work
and effort into the Bristol race than any other team and still end
up dead last at the end. Bristol is about survival but it’s
also about luck. Too often it’s about being in the right place
at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time. One moment
you can be leading and the next minute someone runs over you and
puts you in the fence. The next thing you know, your guys are loading
your car onto the hauler to go home. Bristol doesn’t seem
like a very fair race track but I guess it all shakes out evenly
over the years among the teams. I just hope we can look back after
Bristol and say ‘that was a lot of fun and we learned a lot.’
If we can’t win the race, we have to accept what we’ve
got and not overdrive the car.
“Bristol is a track where you can get wrecked
pretty hard and still fix your car and get back in the race. There
are 500 laps, so if you’re 100 laps down and can get back in,
you will. Everyone tries to keep their fenders on at Bristol but
if they get sheared off in a wreck, you can still make laps there.
You can’t do that as easily at Atlanta or Texas.”
“Bristol is a pretty rough track and the
banking is very steep. When you come off pit road, you’ve
got to be careful going up the banking. It’s so sharp that
you can tear up the front valance when you get up on the banking.
The Cingular Wireless Chevrolet almost has to tiptoe going up the
banking coming off of turn one at Bristol. The biggest key to a
good lap is getting back in the throttle at the right time. You
think you’d have to drive it in as deep as you can, slide it
in the corner and get back in the gas. But in reality, when it
comes down to being quick, you have to lift off the gas a little
early, get the car stuck down in the corner and get back to full
throttle as soon as you can.
“Most of the tracks we run on are asphalt
but Bristol is concrete. There’s a big difference between
an asphalt track and a concrete track as far as a car’s grip
is concerned. The track temperature doesn’t seem to change
as much on concrete because it’s not a black surface that draws
in the heat and makes a slicker surface. Concrete creates a more
equal qualifying environment for everyone because the qualifying
draw doesn’t matter so much based on the time of day. With
asphalt tracks like Charlotte, you always want a later qualifying
draw when the sun has gone down a bit because the track is usually
faster then. But the concrete at Bristol is rough and there are
a lot of seams in the surface, so shocks are very important for
keeping the tires right on the track. Our shock specialist will
be one of the busiest guys on the Cingular team this weekend at
Bristol.”
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