Robby Gordon finished 13th at the Daytona 500. Credit: Autostock

New engine deal a jumpstart for Gordon

Switch from Menard to DEI brings reliability to startup squad

FONTANA, Calif. -- Robby Gordon winces when he thinks about how much it is costing his small team to run motors from Dale Earnhardt Inc.

"Our engines are about 25 percent of our budget," Gordon said.

	Credit: Autostock
	Inside the Numbers Robby Gordon Motorsports before and after the team's switch to DEI motors   Menard DEI Starts 27 3 Wins 0 0 Top-5s 1 0 Top-10s 1 1 Avg. Start 27.5 23.6 Avg. Finish 30.7 11.6

For much of last year, Gordon ran Menard engines in his No. 7 Chevrolet but wasn't getting the performance he desired. When all was said and done, Gordon had no choice but to make a switch, although he had a lot to lose.

He literally put the future of his race team in jeorpardy when he started writing checks to DEI to put the power plants under his hood, starting at Phoenix last fall. He also shelled out extra cash for more engineering help within his shop.

The results have been startling. Making the show each week -- something that before was a source of worry -- is now nearly a certainty. As a result, Gordon has been able to focus his efforts on building cars that will race well.

With the DEI motors, Gordon has three top-15 finishes in a row heading to California. The modest streak is certainly nothing to sneeze at for most teams, but Gordon finally feels he made the right decision when he made the call to start his own team after the 2004 season.

It wasn't always that way. Buying Menard motors last season was a controversial decision considering he was the only car in the Nextel Cup Series to use the engines.

It didn't work. Gordon failed to qualify for eight races, and even when he did make the show, he had no idea if the motor would let him run every lap.

Gordon's motors blew in a whopping seven races. The engine failures came at every turn, as Gordon failed to finish races at both big tracks like Pocono and short tracks like Martinsville.

By November, Gordon's patience reached its end, and he dug deep to pay for a new engine supplier.

"You look at your budget, and you're like, 'How are you going to do this?'" Gordon said. "We went to work and got great sponsors that allow us to go out and purchase engines [from] DEI."

Gordon says he is finally caught up in building cars back at his shop in Charlotte. Replacing his car count, he said, was a lot more fun than dealing with the engine issue.

"We have got seven cars done to date," Gordon said. "We have cars built through Atlanta. One thing I have always built is racecars."

Gordon still faces the serious problem of having to qualify on time for each of the first five races in 2006. Because he can't afford to run his car as hard as he'd prefer in qualifying, Gordon will be regulated to mid-pack qualifying starts, as he did Friday at California, when he was 34th.

Gordon says he left a lot in the table when he went out to qualify on Friday.

"I have to take this conservative approach for a few weeks here, and once we get ourselves in the top 35, we can go ahead and race," he said.