NASCAR- Robby Gordon Saturday Quotes - Atlanta
11 March 2000
#13 Menards/Duracell Ford Taurus Team Gordon Cracker Barrell Old Country Store 500 Qualifying Quotes Saturday, March 11, 2000 Round 4 of 34 in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series Atlanta Motor Speedway - Hampton, GA Robby Gordon finished a rough weekend at the Atlanta Motor Speedway without a qualifying position for Sunday's Cracker Barrell Old Country Store 500. Gordon was only able to run four laps in the morning practice session Friday due to a chassis/suspension problem. The lack of laps in the morning put Team Gordon behind the eight ball and a practice session behind. In first round qualifying, Gordon gained considerably from his final practice time, but still fell four tenths of a second from making the top-25. Saturday practice saw Gordon atop the time charts and with a strong car for second round qualifying. Everyone including Gordon was optimistic about making the race, but rains cancelled second round qualifying. Quotes: ROBBY GORDON " Well, things could certainly be better. We dug a pretty good hole here yesterday by missing that first session. We brought a brand new car to the race track, which was something we needed to do. Unfortunately we had a small problem with a suspension arm that took some sorting. You don't like to be in these situations, but the way the NASCAR schedule moves, this type of a thing can happen." "If you look at our progress this season, we get better the more we practice. That's to be expected from a team coming to the track with a fresh sheet of paper. As we move forward it is going to be very important for us to make full use of all the practice time available to us. Today, the rain just got us." "What I can tell you is that my crew worked harder than we have all season trying to make this car right, and we did in the end. We made drastic gains in qualifying vs. our practice time Friday and the changes we made from yesterday to today were great. Basically, right now we're where we should have been yesterday before qualifying. In my run yesterday, I didn't get through turns 1 and 2 as well as I would have liked, but the car was great in 3 and 4. This morning we solved that and I felt really comfortable. It's one thing to leave a track bewildered and scratching your head - we didn't do that this weekend. We're going home and that stings, but we loaded a good race car onto the hauler. Actually, there might be a few guys in the show who'd like to have our car right now. We'll be back at it for Darlington. It's a bummer, but that's the way racing is sometimes."