Insider's View: Robby Gordon

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- Earlier this season, one of our biggest goals with the Cingular Wireless Chevy was to get into the top 10 in the Winston Cup points, and ultimately to finish the season there.

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Even though we've fallen back to 16th in the standings, we're 226 points behind Terry Labonte and if everything works out our way we feel like we have a shot to get back to the top-10.

In the last nine races, we've fallen back a little bit in the points, but I don't really think it's a case where we've gotten off-track. We've really struggled at the intermediate tracks, and I consider Atlanta one of those type tracks, and we finished 21st there.

But at Loudon, N.H., we were leading the race and we ran out of fuel, when we had a really good car and we ended up finishing 21st. At Richmond we were running fourth and got wrecked.

At Martinsville a couple weeks ago, we came back and were running seventh and going to the front and we got wrecked again. We ended up 36th, which really didn't reflect how good a car we had.

If you take those three races right there, that's about 300 points we lost. If you take those 300 points back, what, we're back in eighth or ninth place in the standings?

You know, in hindsight we've been bad in some places, but we've had some really bad luck, as well.

It's not a situation in which we have to tear everything down and rebuild it, but unfortunately it has a lot to do with momentum and stuff like that. It's just a lot of bad luck, and that's something that happens to a lot of race teams.

Are we working harder? Yes, we are. But that creates another problem. Are we trying too hard? Am I driving too hard and is Kevin (Hamlin, crew chief) getting more risky with some of our set-ups, trying to get our act back together?

We're still a team and we're still trying to finish in the top 10, but the problem is when you get a couple of those weekends where you lose 100 points, it starts getting a little discouraging.

I think we've got some good races coming up for us and that motivates us quite a bit. I think we're going to be good at Phoenix this weekend. I feel like we could win at Rockingham, and of course the new track at Homestead makes it wide open for everyone.

The Cingular Wireless team tested at Phoenix a couple of weeks ago. Phoenix is one of my favorite tracks on the Winston Cup circuit. I won a CART race at Phoenix a few years ago and I've always liked Phoenix because it's a lot of fun to race on.

At the test we worked on a lot of racecar stuff, such as simply changing things around and trying to get a feel for what each change did what to our racecar. We tried different springs, different spindles and pretty much everything you can think of.

We made incremental changes just so we'll have a baseline during race weekend that will help us tune the car in just a little bit quicker.

One thing we feel works in our favor is that Phoenix is a pretty flat track and the Cingular team tends to do well on flat tracks. Loudon is another flat track that we've won on, but it's different than Phoenix.

The straightaways at Phoenix aren't as long as at New Hampshire, which has long straightaways and sharp corners. Phoenix is kind of a tri-oval the way it goes through the back straight, but it's a lot of fun.

Phoenix has changed so much the past 15 years and the place has really come a long way. As far as the latest changes, it's about half a second faster than it used to be. We pick up the speed coming off Turn 2 now that we don't have that wall to hold us down, which makes a very big difference.

My guys are doing a great job in the pits, with really, really fast pit stops so I think all we need to do is have another good run that will get some momentum back on our side, and that could come this weekend in Phoenix.

Phoenix has a different atmosphere than other tracks -- it's Arizona, after all. I know that there are many people from many different states, but the people go to Phoenix for a good time, and not just a good race.

	Robby Gordon says he's off-road endevors are anything but a hobby. Credit: Autostock

This event comes at a great time in the schedule, especially for the Cingular team. There is something about the area that allows us to relax more and have a good time. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the guys head out there early to take advantage of the area.

I will be, and one of the things I'm going to do is get some testing with the off-road truck that I'll do some pre-run practice with for the Baja 1,000, the off-road race in Mexico that is held right after the season finale at Homestead.

A lot of people call it a hobby for me, but it's definitely not just a hobby. It's a business we have going on out in California where we build off-road race vehicles for other competitors beside myself.

This year, the race starts on the Friday after Homestead, I guess, and our plan is to go down there and try to win. Off-road racing is very popular from, say, Colorado to the west.

It allows us to have a successful business that in turn enables us to go to Baja and do that event. It's definitely not a hobby. We run it like a business and we're pretty serious about it. This year we're running a Red Bull Chevrolet truck there, and we've got a crew coming along with us to do a TV show, so it should be fun.

We've got to do as much pre-run practice as we can because the course is so long at Baja and it's not a normal track like Phoenix or Rockingham where we can go out for a couple of laps and be familiar and comfortable with the track.

It's a grueling 765 miles this year and every corner is different. So, we'll do track reconnaissance and take pace notes in a couple of weeks. Having those notes makes it a lot safer for all the drivers and me because we know where every corner is and what's coming up on the track next.