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CART: Mid-Ohio Saturday Qualifying, Robby Gordon

15 August 1999

Robby Gordon

#22 Johns Manville/Panasonic/Menards Toyota-Swift
Qualifying Notes/Quotes ­ Saturday, August 14, 1999
MILLER LITE 200
Round 14 of 20 in the CART FedEx Championship Series
Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course - Lexington, Ohio

Rains today all but washed out final qualifying for Sunday's Miller Lite
200 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.  Standing pat with his time from
Friday, Robby Gordon will start his Johns Manville/Menards/Panasonic
Toyota/Swift 10th in Sunday's race.  Gordon's starting position, in a
time of 66.352 seconds represents, the best-ever qualifying position for
a Toyota-powered car on a road course.  Sunday's race begins at 2:30
p.m. EDT and will be broadcast an hour later on ESPN.

Quotes

ROBBY GORDON ­ "I'm really happy with the effort we've put together this
weekend.  We've been fast from the moment we unloaded the car and the
top ten qualifying position shows  just that.  Even without the rain
today I think we would've had a strong showing.  I've been told this is
the best-ever road course qualifying in Toyota history and I'm happy to
be the driver to help them reach that goal.  Their motor has slowly been
creeping up on the rest of the field.  More and more you're noticing us
qualifying in the fast group on Saturday afternoons.  For the race
tomorrow we're going to run like crazed dogs, this is where we want to
be and we're going to try and make the most of the opportunity."

BRIAN BERTHOLD (engineer) ­ "We had a good test here a few weeks ago and
that's the key to everything.  The car rolled off the truck with a solid
base setup and we were able to work on it from there without any type of
problems.  I think we ran close to 30 laps in practice yesterday.  As a
new team it really helps to have that many laps to sort out the car."

STEVE ABRAHAMS (Hospitality coordinator)­ "The rain is good for everyone
today at Team Gordon.  We secured our position in the top ten and my
tent got washed in the process.  I think the guys enjoyed the lunch
which is a always a personal goal for myself.   We shook things up a bit
and put fajitas and I also made the right call on weather because the
cool temperatures kept my salad crisp and the ice cream from melting."

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