Event Preview Fact Sheet

 

Event/Date:  Sirius at The Glen/Aug. 10, 2003

Venue:           Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International 

Robby Gordon’s NASCAR Winston Cup Performance History at Watkins Glen International
                                                                        Laps Completed/

Date                Start               Finish             Total Laps                  Status                        Money

8/11/02         7                  3                  90/90                     Running         $108,706

8/12/01         4                  40                58/90                     Electrical       62,254

8/13/00         42                4                  90/90                     Running         52,600

8/10/97         10                4                  90/90                     Running         39,200

 TOTALS      Avg. Start: 15.8    Avg. Finish: 12.8  Laps: 328/360  Money: $262,760

 NASCAR Winston Cup Points Position: 11^th

 NOTES:

• This Week’s Race Car (chassis No. 117) won the June race at Infineon Raceway from the second starting spot
• Gordon and the Cingular Wireless team tested at Watkins Glen July 28 and 29
• The Cingular Wireless Chevrolet will carry a FDNY/Special Olympics special paint scheme at Watkins Glen. Cingular Wireless will donate to both organizations $50 for each lap Gordon completes, $500 for each lap he leads and $50,000 if he wins the race.
• Gordon is spending this week in California
• The Sirius at the Glen will broadcast live on NBC and MRN Sunday, Aug. 10, at 1 p.m. ET.  Qualifying is scheduled for Friday, Aug. 8 at 3:05 p.m. ET.

ROBBY GORDON QUOTES:

"The Cingular Wireless team does some different set-up stuff for the first turn at Watkins Glen.  I always head into the first turn in third gear so I don't have to use fourth gear.  As I get into the corner, I downshift into second and then into first.  I use first gear a bit differently than other drivers to give me better launch coming off the corner.  The key is getting the Cingular car set down in the bank in turn one and getting back into the gas without the car jumping sideways on us.

"There's a big difference between turn one at Watkins Glen and other turns at other tracks.  At Watkins, we begin the race with turn one, which is the slowest turn on the race track and it bunches up all 43 cars.  It's really important to get through turn one cleanly.  If we can do that, there's a good chance we'll have a really good run there.  Watkins Glen doesn’t have any low-speed corners like Sonoma does.  Watkins has a little more topography -- it is a little higher and then drops down going up through turns two, three and four.  The ess turn is the fastest.  The whole track is faster than Sonoma. 

"I don't really focus on setting up the car for turn one only.  The Cingular team puts more emphasis on getting through the chicane on the backside and getting up through the esses.  We try to get up through the esses well and do it wide-open and carry a lot of speed.  That makes up a lot of time on the race track. 

“The Cingular Wireless team had a good test at Watkins two week ago.  We made some great laps but we weren’t the quickest, so we’re going to have to work on our car a bit more.  I expect us to be a contender for the win, though.  We decided this year to start testing at tracks where we think we have a legitimate shot of winning and improve our odds of going to Victory Lane at those places.  That’s what we did at Sonoma and it paid off.  There just aren’t enough tests to test at the places you struggle as well as the places you excel anymore.   

“The Cingular team seems to be on a roll lately and we’re running well and having a bit of decent luck, to boot.  We had a good car at Indy but just got too tight there at the end.  I was trying to help my teammate Kevin Harvick get a bigger lead on the competition in the closing laps but my car got so tight that I began losing track position and couldn’t hold those guys back for Harvick anymore.  But he was able to extend his lead on the field and take home the trophy for RCR and I’m really happy for him and all the guys on the GM Goodwrench team.  They did a great job. 

“We’ve come close to winning at Watkins Glen before, just like we’d almost gotten there at Sonoma until we finally won in June.  We’ve been the dominant car at Watkins many times, especially two years ago. At one point in the 2001 race at The Glen, I let Jeff Gordon go by us just to see how good our car was and to see if he was stronger anywhere on the track than we were.  I wanted to have that information so we could tune on our car on the last pit stop if necessary to be the fastest at end of the race.  But we drove right by Jeff and he went on to win the race, so I think that said something about the potential of our car. We were the fastest car on the track. 

“We had just pitted and I looked over in the car and saw smoke coming from the right side of the cockpit, up against the roll bar.  At first, I thought we had knocked the fenders in on the pit stop and they were just rubbing against the tires.  But then I started going around the track and realized we were on fire inside the car. The guys pushed the car behind the wall and the telemetry box kept blowing up and wouldn’t quit burning up.  It was absolutely unbelievable.  I just couldn’t grasp what was happening because it seemed so outrageous. 

“That was one of the most disappointing moments in my racing career. The only worse memory I’ve got is when I was leading the 1999 Indy 500 and ran out of fuel on the next-to-the last lap.  They were both heartbreaking because I knew I had the field covered and then something crazy, unexpected and disastrous took us out of contention.  I won’t say that we were definitely going to win at The Glen but we definitely would have given Jeff a heck of a run for his money the last 30 laps. 

“I think I’ve written the book on how to successfully lose a race that you had in the bag at Watkins Glen.  It’s been very unfortunate because we’ve been strong at The Glen every year I’ve raced there and should have won about three or four times now. But we’ve just had some bad luck.  In 2000, we were the fastest car there, too, but qualifying was rained out and I had to start dead-last.  We still finished fourth.  Everyone knows what happened to the No. 31 team last year.  I just couldn’t believe it when that telemetry box blew up -- it’s like, ‘what next?’ 

“I’m really looking forward to going back to Watkins Glen with the Cingular Wireless team.  I love racing at The Glen.  Road courses have always been my favorite type of track and I guess that goes back to my days of road racing in IMSA and CART.  We had such an awesome car last year and I’ve had a lot of success on the track.  With the program we’ve got in place this year at RCR and all the preparation the guys have done, I think we’ll go back and be even stronger this time.  The most important thing is that we eliminate the chance of any problems occurring – but that doesn’t include explosive telemetry boxes with minds of their own.”