Robby Gordon Mailbag: One week at a time

Robby, after running well at Daytona, you seemed to have fallen back in the field quite a bit. I know there are various reasons for this, and you and your team are working very hard at getting to the front. My question is, how or what do you do to keep your focus and not let unfortunate luck affect you or the team?

-- Dean Harvey, Southaven, Miss.

	Robby Gordon

I keep my focus by concentrating on one week at a time. There are 36 points races this year, and we can't get too hung up on one over another. If you do that and dwell on how well or how poorly you finished last week, you'd never make it through the next race. In this business, you've got to finish the race, take some lessons from it and apply those lessons to the next race. That's the only way to survive. The Cingular team has struggled a bit this season, but we're confident that once we get all settled with the new Monte Carlo body, things will turn around for us.

What is a greater contributor to odds of winning: Planning ahead and getting the car ready or adapting to changing conditions on the fly?

-- Tom Kribs, Caledonia, Mich.

They go hand-in-hand. You've got to have a good race car, but you've got to be able to adjust it throughout the race to remain competitive.

Robby, how do you decide which line to drive at a particular track? Is it a different line at each track for the Cingular Wireless car?

-- Rick Payne, Kennesaw, Ga.

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Certain tracks have a fastest line and are different than other tracks. We always try to find the fastest line on the track for the Cingular Wireless Chevrolet. We go to Darlington and run right up next to the wall. Certain tracks are different. Road courses are different than oval tracks. The superspeedways are different than the short tracks. If I'm not on the fastest line with the car, my spotter and crew chief will advise me as to what the other drivers are doing who are going faster than we are. Normally, we do things because that's where our car wants to be.

I'm a Kevin Harvick fan, but I'd like to know how all the Richard Childress Racing drivers work together to try to win races?

-- Ron Palardy, Cleveland

We are definitely one team with three different cars and drivers at Richard Childress Racing. The whole point of having a multi-car team is to learn from each other and pool as much information together as possible to make all the separate teams more competitive. We work together each day by sharing notes from practices, qualifying, testing and races. We talk about what made one of us better or worse than the others. We send one team to a test instead of all three and then that one team comes back to the shop and shares that information with everyone else. I think working together makes us more efficient as a whole. Probably the most evident proof of working together as a team shows up at places like Daytona and Talladega where we can actually draft together and help each other get to the front. But just because we're not next to each other on the track doesn't mean we're not working together.

Do you think the Winston Cup drivers who drive in Saturday's Busch races have a big advantage over the ones who don't? If so, is there any consideration on your part to ever run the Busch schedule, or would you even want to?

-- Chris Eaton, Blue Springs, Mo.

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I don't know if they have an advantage because a lot of the drivers have graduated through the Busch series. Busch series racing is competitive and has some impressive drivers. I want to race in the Busch series on the side just to gain more experience on some tracks that I haven't been to many times. It might be a bit of an advantage, but not too much.

What experiences from off-road racing and CART have helped you the most in NASCAR?

-- Mark Hooper, Azusa, Calif.

Off-road racing probably helped me with the racecars -- the tubular chassis and stuff that we've done with the cars to make them more sturdy and reliable. Obviously, NASCAR racecars don't go through the abuse that off-road cars do. In CART, the technology, aerodynamics, telemetry and testing probably helped me the most with the Winston Cup cars.

Robby Gordon drives the No. 31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series. Before arriving in NASCAR's top division, Gordon enjoyed success in the CART Series and off-road racing.

Throughout the 2003 Winston Cup season, Gordon will answer questions from SI.com users in a weekly Mailbag.