Combination of fast track, new car too much for some (cont'd)

Was Friday a preview of what to expect in Sunday's 267-lap event? Maybe not. Gordon and Loomis both pointed out that the spins and crashes in the first practice came during mock qualifying attempts.

"It's usually different when you're trying to make qualifying runs," Gordon said. "You're really committed and you're blasting the car down in there and trying to get back in the gas hard. In the race, you get a few laps to feel it out. I'm not going to say it's not going to happen [Sunday], but I would think it would happen more on qualifying day than any other day."

Fast Facts

What	UAW-Dodge 400
When	3:30 p.m. ET Sunday
TV	FOX
Radio	PRN / Sirius Ch. 128

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Bumps along the bottom of the track in Turn 1 didn't help. In such twitchy loose conditions, Loomis said, anything that upsets the vehicle is capable of snapping it around. Sunday, he expects more cars in the smoother, higher line.

"I think what you'll see in the race is, more guys will move up a lane," he said. "In qualifying everybody's trying to run the bottom and hit that bump. It's a pretty rough ride, and the suspension parts take a beating. You hit the bumps, and the cars just take off. We get to the race Sunday, it will probably settle down a little bit once everybody gets their cars driving a little bit better."

To make matters more difficult, teams practiced and qualified Friday in conditions completely different from the cold, windy ones which greeted them for a test here two months ago. Busch's top speed Friday was more than a second slower than the fastest lap set at testing, Montoya's unofficial track record of 186.761 mph.

But the test session wasn't a total waste. "You've got good telemetry on the bumps and the travel," Gordon said. "The grip level might be a little bit different, the consistency might be a little bit different, the track temperature is different. But it was still worth coming out here. I would have rather had these conditions, though."

At least Gordon's car survived the session in one piece. That couldn't be said for all the vehicles on the Sprint Cup circuit, some of which had to be massaged and hammered back into shape.

"I think what you're seeing is, some teams have got it, and some teams are way off," Gordon said. "That's kind of how this car works in the beginning stages of going to these different tracks. You're going to have some guys that have engineered all the right components and figured it out, and some guys that haven't."