NASCAR
BNS: Watkins Glen: Tracy Gordon race summary
Tracy Gordon finishes ninth at Watkins Glen. Tracy Gordon, driving the Tic Tac Chevrolet on the NASCAR Busch North Series, maintained his eighth place points standings with a ninth place result in the first of two road races to be held this year, ...
Edited: Dec 22, 2003, 5:59 AM
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Tracy Gordon finishes ninth at Watkins Glen.
Tracy Gordon, driving the Tic Tac Chevrolet on the NASCAR Busch North Series, maintained his eighth place points standings with a ninth place result in the first of two road races to be held this year, the Little Trees 150 at Watkins Glen. Gordon now has seven top tens in twelve races so far this season.
Gordon started the race from the nineteenth starting position after turning a lap of 77.561 seconds (113.717 MPH) around the 2.45 mile road course.
"I don't think we have a bad car, I just didn't do very well qualifying," he said afterwards. Hopefully we can stay out of trouble in the race. If you can finish on the lead lap here, you'll have a good finish. I'm not much of a road racer, I don't really care for it, but we have to do it, but I'd rather stick to the ovals myself. We'll get this week out of the way and get back to the oval tracks."
Gordon took to the track and ran the first handful of laps in eighteenth place before pitting under caution on lap fifteen. The Gordon Racing crew added gas to the car and made a chassis adjustment, returning him to the race in fifteenth. As other drivers made their pit stops under green once the race resumed, Gordon rose to ninth in the standings at the 25-lap mark. He was up to sixth at the halfway point of the race, at lap 31, but his progress was stopped when the race was red-flagged for an accident where the retaining wall needed to be repaired.
While sitting on the track awaiting the repairs to the wall to be completed, Gordon's car suffered a flat tire. NASCAR officials allowed a crew member to go to the car on the backstretch with an air tank to fill up the tire, and when the red flag was lifted, Gordon came to pit road where the tire was replaced and the gas topped off. Back on the track, Gordon had an uphill battle ahead of him as he was outside the top ten as laps were winding down. But a combination of drivers falling out of the race, running out of fuel as the race was extended due to caution flags late, and spins ahead of him allowed Gordon to move up to finish ninth.
"I basically stayed out of trouble and came out with a top ten finish," he said after the race. "I was hoping to be more competitive, but my shifter was sticking between gears and I had a lot of trouble shifting. I was hoping to have a little stronger run and be in the top ten, but I ended up having a weaker run even though I still ended up in the top ten. If I'm going to keep this road racing up, I'm going to have to spend some money on transmissions, which I don't really want to do.
"I pitted twice," Gordon said, "I got a flat tire so I had to come in a second time. I needed gas too, that's for sure. It helped me out in the points because a lot of guys ahead of me in the points had trouble."
Gordon returns to the ovals next Saturday when the Busch North Series makes its debut at the Adirondack International Speedway in Beaver Falls, New York.
-ajc-
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