Event
Preview Fact Sheet
Event/Date: Sharpie 500/Aug. 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
|
3/23/03
|
36
|
17
|
498/500
|
Running
|
$89,527
|
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: 23.5 Avg. Finish: 28.83 Laps: 2,180/3,000 Money:
$337,719
NASCAR Winston Cup Points Position:
10th
NOTES:
- This Week’s Race Car (chassis No. 116) was last
run at Fontana as a brand-new car
- The No. 31 Cingular Wireless
Chevrolet will carry a special orange “reverse” paint
scheme this weekend at Bristol
- Gordon and the No. 31 Cingular
Wireless team are scheduled to test at Milwaukee Monday and Tuesday, Aug. 18
and 19
- Gordon is scheduled to participate
in a media question-and-answer session Friday in the Bristol media center at 10:00
a.m.
- Gordon has finished in the top
10 six out of the last eight races, including two victories
- The
Sharpie 500 will be broadcast live on TNT and PRN on Saturday,
Aug. 23 at 7:30 p.m. EST. Qualifying is scheduled for Friday, Aug.
22 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.
“I really like Bristol a lot.
Track position and pit strategy are very important at Bristol because
it’s hard to pass. If
you don’t have a good race car and are in someone’s
way, they’ll bump you out of the way the whole night.
The ‘bump-and-run’ started at Bristol way back.
The fans love it even if the fabricators don’t.
“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.
“The Cingular team continues to improve every
single weekend and continues to better our finishes at each track
every time we go back. We’ve
scored five top-10 finishes in the past six races and plan on
keeping that going. We’ve struggled at Michigan in the
past but we qualified third and came back with a top-10 finish. We’re taking it one step at a time and
trying really hard to dial our race set-up in.
Communication between all of us is great and that is a
huge plus for a race team as it grows and improves.
We’ve got a while to go before the season is over
but we’re getting closer and closer to our goal of a top-10
finish in the points and a place on the stage at the banquet in
New York.”