IRL, Indy 500: Robby Gordon Practice Notes from Indy

18 May 1999

Robby Gordon opened practice for this year's 83rd running of the Indianapolis 500 in his #23 Johns Manville/Menards/Duracell G-Force/Aurora/Firestone entry. Having flown in late yesterday (Sunday) from his CART FedEx Championship Series event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Gordon focused on shaking down his back-up car during a day cut two hours short by heavy thunderstorms. He completed 13 laps around the 2.5-mile superspeedway with a fast lap of 207.929 mph in shake-down mode. He was about to begin his speed runs just as the downpours started at approximately 4 p.m. CDT. Practice resumes Tuesday for the May 30th Indy 500, with Pole Day qualifying set for Saturday.

QUOTE

ROBBY GORDON - "We didn't hit our goal for the day, but that's okay. We did a lot of testing here before we showed up this week. We would've like to have gotten up to speed today, but we were shaking down our backup car, which will eventually be our primary car when we get it sorted out. We put about 30 miles on it today. But the end of the day was wiped out by rain. In fact, I was heading into Turn Two on my first hot lap of the afternoon session when it started pouring. It's amazing how big the rain drops are around here. By the time I got back to the pits, I was pulling rooster tails."

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