Robby Gordon Mailbag: Meeting our goals

I've been watching you race open wheel since your CART days, including the Indy 500 run for Foyt, your Champ car wins at Phoenix and Michigan, the Doubles, and your much-matured ride with RCR in Winston Cup. Considering you've now entered the top 10 in points and the season's first road race at Sonoma is coming up fast, what odds would you give yourself to win the Winston Cup championship this year?

-- Michael Hanks

	Robby Gordon

To win the championship this year, it's going to be a stretch for the Cingular Wireless team but it's what every race team dreams of when the season starts. We set goals at the beginning of the year to finish each race and we've been living up to those goals, racing well and scoring points. By the time we leave Sears Point, we should have a better idea of where we will shake out in the championship.

Do you do any winter sports like skiing, snowboarding, etc.?

-- James Prisciak

I really enjoy a lot of winter sports, even if I don't participate in them myself. I went to Winter X and enjoy a lot of winter sports. I love watching those guys race snowboards side-by-side downhill on a motocross track. I like downhill skiing. I'm not big into figure skating, though.

I saw your Double Duty feature on SPEED Channel and I have a question: Did you steal Buddy Rice's Red Bull helmet? That's one bad helmet and I was just wondering if you could provide the story. Did you race it in the Coca-Cola 600?

No, I didn't steal Buddy Rice's helmet! He may have had the Red Bull sponsorship before I did, but the helmets are based around Red Bull's can and their branding. They use Buddy Rice in the IRL, me in NASCAR, Tommy Clowers in Moto Super X. Red Bull also sponsors a couple of downhill guys. There are a bunch of Red Bull athletes and I'm happy to be one of them. I didn't race the Cingular Wireless car in the Coca-Cola 600 with the Red Bull helmet because I have a Cingular Wireless helmet with Red Bull on it for my Winston Cup car. That Red Bull helmet was strictly for the Indy car.

Robby, rumor has it you're building a new Trophy Truck to run later this year. When should it be finished? Also, I know you build custom shocks for the umlimited suspension classes but is your company also able to build custom shocks for cars such as the 9s?

-- Cory Bantilan

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We are building two new trophy trucks -- one for a customer and one for me and they should be finished by September. We can build custom shocks and we're exploring the off-road shock market right now. We build trophy truck shocks and are currently building turnkey, four-seat buggies that will have our shock absorbers on them. We're going to branch off and start making more of a production shock that will be more of a 2-inch, 2 1/2-half-inch and a 3-inch position-sensitive, coil-over shock. We're also making wheels that will work on class nine cars if they're allowed to use a cast aluminum wheel. We build trophy truck wheels and we're expanding our products all the time.

Congratulations on being in the top 10. Now that you've cracked that list, is there anything you'd say differently to your team to keep them motivated and hungry, yet still cautious? Do you just go full steam ahead?

-- John Ocal

I've got a great team with the Cingular Wireless guys and we work hard each week to keep pushing toward the front. We try to keep all our criticisms constructive instead of destructive. We've got good communication amongst ourselves and when we have something to work on, we discuss it, just as we do when we're doing something right. That's the way to a successful team.

I'm a big fan of the Cingular team. In fact, you are one of the reasons I got into NASCAR. Any idea what is going wrong this season? I get text messages from Cingular as to how you are doing and each week I see you are just a provisional qualifier. What do you think the team can do better to get farther up on the starting line?

-- Frederick

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I wouldn't say something is going wrong with the Cingular team this season but we do need to work on our qualifying packages. What you see is sometimes a bit misleading, though. For instance, for the Coca-Cola 600, we took a provisional because we decided to work on race trim during practice instead of qualifying trim because we knew we were going to start from the back because I'd miss the drivers' meeting. We've taken a couple of provisionals other than that one lately, but keep in mind we took a provisional at Dover and worked our way back up to a ninth-place finish. Yes, we are working on improving our starting position but we're also concentrating on working our way through the field if we get stuck in that position. Where you finish is definitely the most important thing, although it makes your job a lot easier when you start up front. But we've worked our way into the top 10 in points and we have no DNFs at this point.

Do you see yourself helping Toyota when they start running NASCAR, like you did with the CART Series?

-- Jim Barthol

I drive a Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing and my full focus is on doing a good job for them for as long as they'll have me.

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.