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NASCAR WCUP: Robby Gordon looking for more speed at Darlington

18 March 2000

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
Robby Gordon qualified his Menards/Duracell Ford Taurus 42nd in today's first round qualifying for the Mall.com 400 from Darlington with a laptime of 29.253 seconds around Darlington Raceway's 1.366 mile oval. Gordon today trimmed his lap times in each of the two practice sessions and also in qualifying, but it wasn't near enough needed to make the top-25. Gordon's troubles have remained the same throughout the day as he's been fighting a tight condition in turns three and four.

Quotes:

ROBBY GORDON "I'm great in turns one and two, it's coming through three and four where I'm missing something. The car wants to push as I hit the middle, then like most places these this year, I'm loose coming off onto the front straight. We made a bunch of adjustments before qualifying to loosen up the car and take away the push, but it's still there.

"I tried to hold my breath going in but the car just didn't want to turn. It's one thing when it's loose and you can hustle the car, but we're still stuck on fixing problem number one. Until we can do that, we're going to have trouble here. I think we might have been too conservative in the changes we made. That's what upsets me, we probably should have taken a more radical approach to freeing up this car. We look good for a provisional position Sunday, so tomorrow we're going to work on setups for the race and getting a better feel for this track."

Text provided by Kinnon Marshall

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