Robby Gordon's best finish this season was a second at Watkins Glen. Credit: Autostock

10 Questions: Robby Gordon

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Robby Gordon is the typical Southern Californian: as apt to show up at California Speedway this weekend in a hot rod as a hopped-up off-road buggy built at his nearby Robby Gordon Off-Road shop.

There is no mistaking Gordon's seriousness, however, about fashioning a competitive NASCAR racing team while functioning as an owner/driver, as he'll do behind the wheel of his No. 7 Chevrolet in Sunday evening's Sony HD 500.

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During a break in preparation for the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway, Gordon sat down to answer 10 questions not necessarily related to his racing career.

What's your dream vehicle that you don't already own?

That's one thing in which I'm pretty fortunate, because I do own my dream vehicle: My off-road truck.

I know Greg (Erwin, Nextel Cup crew chief) is gonna cringe, but the reason why I say that is because there are no rules. When you can build a race vehicle without any rules and have fun with it, that's really cool.

I also have a very close version of that, that is street legal, and that makes it fun.

You know, Boris Said revealed a few weeks ago that his dream vehicle would be to have the off-road truck that you ran the Baja 1000 with, so have you had any discussions with him about getting him one of those?

I'm sure if he won the Daytona 500 he would come and purchase one of them, but they're not cheap cars. That vehicle is probably as expensive as any vehicle out there -- maybe only second to a Formula One car.

It's well over $500,000 for that car.

But as a street driver, if you were at a red light and one of those pulled up next to you, what would your thought be?

Oh, there are a lot of them out there. I built two of them at Robby Gordon Off-Road that are street vehicles that are like that, that run on the streets of California.

If time on the road weren't an issue, what would be your ideal pet?

What's that? A pet? Oh, I wouldn't have time for a pet, no matter what.

But if you had any time, have you ever considered having one?

I've got to be careful how I answer that (laughing).

What's your biggest pet peeve while driving on the road?

I think it's people stopping on the freeway to make sure it's clear to pull out. I see that all the time in North Carolina and I don't understand it.

You'll turn onto a road and you'll be on the frontage road leading to the freeway and they can't really see so they stop before they pull onto the freeway.

That's like the biggest opportunity for an accident that there possibly is, because once they do enter the freeway they're going to enter it at a 20 mile per hour speed rather than 50 miles per hour and just merge into it.

So like me, you're kind of a momentum guy -- you've got to keep the momentum up?

You better keep the momentum up on the freeway.

You've had a long career racing in many different divisions, with a lot of travel; so what's your worst hotel experience?

By far, Brazil. It was the Intercontinental in Brazil. My mattress was on cockroaches that were definitely big enough to have carried it away.

No break on the room rate, either -- right?

Oh, no (laughing).

If you had to choose, would it be being honest, or being nice?

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I think they come hand in hand. I think being nice is the first thing, and second is being honest.

What's your fondest childhood memory?

Gosh -- probably riding in Parnelli's (Jones) lap at Ascot when I was about six years old. I'll never forget that.

He was maybe not quite on the level of Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. today -- but he was definitely on the level of Ryan Newman. Getting the opportunity to climb in and go for a ride in one of his vehicles (was cool).

I can sit here and think of what a stunning opportunity that was, but as a 6 year old was it the thrill or did you really understand who he was at that time?

Oh, I knew who Parnelli Jones was. He had drag race cars, he had Indy cars, he had NASCARs -- he had everything at his shop, there in Gardena.

P.J. Jones and me were good friends, all the way from very young childhood on up.

What would your dream date be? Where and with whom?

Come on, we can do one different than that, can't we (laughing)? Come on, we're going to. Well, I'm not going to answer that stuff (laughing).

Racing and pranks seem to go hand in hand, so what's your worst prank, either perpetrated by you, or done to you?

I don't know (laughing) -- there's been so many of them, on the racing side of it.

Credit: Autostock

I think the funniest one was a long, long time ago when Brian Simo or somebody got in my rental car and poured a couple quarts of automatic transmission fluid into the gas tank.

That will make a car smoke so bad -- though it doesn't really hurt it. But I mean, it was just a smoke bomb, and I was driving it away from the racetrack looking in the rearview mirror at all that smoke.

OK, so he did that to you. But are you a prankster?

Did I pull something back? That was probably one of the funniest ones that's ever happened to me. Obviously, people have tried to put my car up on jack stands so that the wheels are a quarter of an inch off the ground, so when you put it in gear it doesn't go anywhere.

You're telling me all these things that have been done to you, so that makes me think you must be a prankster and they're just getting you back?

Oh, we've had some fun -- we've had some fun. You get the keys to the rental car and you hook the windshield wiper motor to a hose -- like a clear tube -- and you run it through the electrical panel and tape it to the bottom of the center console.

Then you smear something on the windshield, like a lot of dust and dirt, so the first thing they do when they get in the rental car is put their windshield washers on, and it shoots them right in the crotch (laughing).

Finally, what would you consider your "Welcome to NASCAR" moment?

Oh, I don't know. There are so many welcome to NASCAR moments, but for me, even having so many of them, I think the best experience for me was probably winning my first race in NASCAR.

That was probably my best welcome to NASCAR, but I've had races slip away before that were definitely ours.

At Watkins Glen, I got a black flag for passing before the start/finish line at which, I didn't pass -- I was just to the corner of the right side of the other car -- so I should have won that race in '97 but got a black flag.

I've had some good moments and some bad moments -- but I'm definitely glad I'm racing in Nextel Cup.