Robby Gordon Seras Point Happy Hour

Qualifying position - 11th
Time - 71.488 seconds

Saturday at Sears Point had two practice sessions, one in the morning for an hour and the traditional NASCAR "Happy Hour" which followed the Southwest Tour event. In the morning session, Gordon posted the 10th fastest lap, 72.453 seconds while working raceday setups. Everything went as planned for Gordon in the session until the cool down lap for all drivers when the session expired. Mark Martin hit Gordon from behind exiting turn seven on the top of the hill. The red flag was waving in the corner and as Gordon slowed, Martin ran into him, damaging the rear bumper of his Ford Taurus. The car was fixed for Happy Hour where Gordon turned in the 4th fastest time of the session, 72.824 seconds.

Gordon had few complaints about the car following happy hour, but did feel the biggest hurdle he's had all weekend has been understeer going in to the corners.

Tomorrow's 112-lap race starts at 1pm.

ROBBY GORDON "I guess as a racer you're rarely completely happy with the car, but sometimes there's no perfect setup. Right now I'm having a little bit of a hard time getting the car to turn on entry. It's something we've been working on with this car since we started testing it, and I guess that's my only complaint. I have some power-down oversteer, but that's pretty typical at a track like this. The car is great coming down the hill through the esses, we've been fast there all weekend. And that's a very important place to be fast because it leads to the last corner which is the primary area for passing. I feel good, we should be strong tomorrow, it's all about saving your tires in the race and that's what we focused on today. Trying to turn consistent laps that don't wear out the tires. I think we'll be good, I'm looking forward to it and if it's anything like that Southwest race, the fans will have a good time too."

On Mark Martin incident -

"Mark just didn't think I was slowing down.  The red flag was waving and I
slowed, then felt him hit me.  He hit me pretty hard!  I feel sorry for him
because I think he got the worse of it.  He drove beside me and and gave me
that look like, "I'm sorry - it was an accident"  and from what I hear he
was just trying to get a little more out of the session.  No big deal."