NASCAR

BNS: Thunder Road: Tracy Gordon raceday notes

Tracy Gordon takes top five finish at Thunder Road. Strong, Maine's Tracy Gordon moved up one place in the NASCAR Busch North Series standings after finishing fifth in Saturday's True Value 150 held at Vermont's Thunder Road International ...

Edited: Dec 22, 2003, 5:59 AM

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Tracy Gordon takes top five finish at Thunder Road.

Strong, Maine's Tracy Gordon moved up one place in the NASCAR Busch North Series standings after finishing fifth in Saturday's True Value 150 held at Vermont's Thunder Road International Speedbowl. Gordon's fifth place finish in his Tic Tac Chevrolet was his fourth of the 2002 season and moved him from eighth to seventh in the season standings.

Gordon, the winner of Thunder Road's Busch North race in 1998, qualified eleventh in time trials held Saturday afternoon, recording a lap of 12.849 seconds (70.044 MPH) around the quarter-mile oval.

"I didn't expect the pole but I expected a little bit better," he said after qualifying. "We had a good racecar and I think we will be good in the race. Practice was all right, we turned about the same in practice as during qualifying. The car's consistent. I think I can turn 12.90-second laps late in the race when a lot of guys are getting tight in the middle. I was hoping for a pole, since I'm capable of getting poles here. I could run old tires and still run 12.90s. We should be in good shape for the race."

For the first half of the race, Gordon ran in the tenth position, but once the race neared its final third, started putting on a charge. A lapped traffic thickened, Gordon took advantage to run in seventh on lap 100 of 150. Ten laps later, he was around Jamie Aube and in sixth. A final yellow reset the field and set the race up for a 21-lap dash to the finish. When the race restarted, Gordon quickly looked to join a battle for fourth between Dave Dion and Martin Truex, Jr., catching Truex as he fell back and taking fifth from him with ten laps left to run. Once he was cleared, he tried to move up further but laps ran out, and he had to settle for fifth.

"I thought the car was going to tighten up so we left it loose, thinking the track would tighten up," Gordon said after the race. "The track didn't, and we ended up being too loose the whole race. If we had to do it over, we should have probably tightened it up some more. This is only the second time I've ever been here and the track didn't tighten up. We had a pretty good run.

"I'm actually kind of disappointed," Gordon continued. "I wanted to come here and win and get out of my slump. But we'll take fifth and the points we picked up on some of guys who are ahead of us, and we'll go to Beech Ridge and have a good run next weekend."

Beech Ridge Motor Speedway, in Scarborough, Maine, will hold its rescheduled 150-lap race next Saturday night. Qualifying was held last week before the rains came, and Gordon will start the race in the tenth position.

-ajc-

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