Atlanta Motor Speedway Friday notes II

GORDON ADDS SPARKLE TO SPONSORS: Georgia-Pacific on Friday - just hours before Nextel Cup qualifying that bears its name - announced a multi-year agreement to put its Sparkle brand of paper towels on the No. 24 Chevrolet of four-time champion Jeff Gordon, beginning in 2006.

Sheila Weidman, vice president of corporate communications and marketing for Georgia-Pacific, said the associate sponsorship deal will not take away from its other NASCAR sponsorships, including qualifying night at Atlanta Motor Speedway's fall race, as well as primary sponsorship of Kyle Petty's No. 45 Brawny Dodge. G-P also is a sponsor of the Victory Junction Gang Camp.

"I'm really excited about this opportunity to be a part of the Georgia-Pacific team," Gordon said. "I'm also looking forward to representing all of life's simple necessities that Georgia-Pacific is so well-known for. When this opportunity came about at Hendrick Motorsports, it really meant a lot to me because they do such a great job of bringing fun promotions out to the fans and the communities they live in. And I'm looking forward to being a part of that.

"I'm really looking forward to this relationship. I think it's going to be a lot of fun and hopefully very successful, as well. I'd like to kick it off tonight at Georgia-Pacific Qualifying Night. So, let's go out there and get that pole and I can't think of a better way than to pull off a win and get back-to-back wins for us after last weekend's race, right here in Georgia-Pacific's hometown."

GORDON ON WINNING BACK-TO-BACK RACES: Obviously, a win is extremely important for us. Coming off a win last week obviously carries momentum for us and builds confidence. But we also recognize that was a half-mile race track in Martinsville and this is a 1 1/2-mile fast, fast race track and our speedway program has been off a little bit this year. We came here and tested and so far today, that test has definitely paid off. For qualifying, I felt like we had to make a few adjustments. Hopefully we made the right adjustments; we'll find out when the sun goes down.

GORDON ON HIS SEASON (4 WINS, BUT MISSING THE CHASE):

"Its hard to win the Daytona 500 and not consider the season a success. I think what takes away from it for us is that we have won the championship four times. And because of that, we have a little higher expectations put on us. Don't get me wrong, it was disappointing to us to not make that Chase, but we put out the best effort that we possibly could, it just wasn't our year. We're going to hold our heads high and we're going to continue to work to make sure we are in that Chase and battling for that championship."

TRUCK CONTENDERS:

Ted Musgrave (about racing for the championship):

"You're in NASCAR; you're racing against the best in the world. If you win here in whatever division you're doing, and win the championship, it really means a lot -- to Dennis and I both. Each of us really want that trophy, we're both running as hard as we can, the teams are working as hard as they can and whatever happens, whatever the racing gods are going to give us is going to happen."

Dennis Setzer (had 227-point lead after win at Indianapolis Raceway Park in August, now leads Musgrave by just 54 points): "We've got a great team. It's good to be with this Silverado team. We had our hot streak in the middle part of the season. We built a lead up in about six or eight races. Our team has worked hard all the way through. Unfortunately, we just stumbled up on some of them. It doesn't fall the right for us sometimes. We don't do anything different, it just happens that way. It's been a great year for us. We've won four races -- first time in my career I've won four races."

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