Robby Gordon - His Own Man

Gordon already has plans to expand his Charlotte, North Carolina, complex, making it about four times the size it is today. He hopes to add a second car as soon as they can put together a package to take to potential sponsors.

"That's the key to success," says Story. "The second car will double what we can learn and how fast we can learn it."

Single-car teams are at a distinct disadvantage-in time, talent, and financial resources-in developing a winning package.

Alba Colon, who heads GM's involvement in NASCAR, says Chevrolet shares information it develops with each of its contract teams.

"So Robby gets wind tunnel information and other data we come up with," she says. "But they won't get any information a team develops on its own. That stays within the team. The more cars a team has, the more data it can develop."

Gordon is something of a one-man, multicar team. He never stops developing as a driver or owner.

"People say I have too many outside interests, like the off-road stuff," he says, "but the off-road team is a separate business that makes its own profit. I realized early on that if I wanted to race for a living, I'd have to market myself every way I could.

"On off weekends, drivers go hunting or fishing or, in the case of Greg Biffle, escape to a forested hideout. Jeff Gordon plays golf or goes diving. When Robby Gordon isn't racing . . . he's off racing.

Off-road bikes. Sports cars. The Baja or the Paris-Dakar, often called the world's toughest test of man and machine.

"Robby does nothing but race," says Story. "He may be out in the desert, but he'll come back with an idea they tried on the off-road truck that he thinks we should look at on the Cup car."

Robby Gordon was stuck. His Hummer was somewhere in the African desert. It was dark and cold. The night was filled with strange sounds and smells. Gordon was frightened.

He and his co-driver/navigator were running across the sand after dark when the race truck jumped a dune and landed on a huge clump of "camel grass." The impact damaged the truck beyond what they could repair that night.

He calls the Dakar Rally-which tested him as a driver and as a team organizer-the most challenging of all motorsports events.

"It's like driving a 500-mile race every day for 16 days," he says. "It's not like a racetrack where you go around the same corners over and over again. In the desert, you never really know what's over the next dune. And you never see a pit crew until the end of the day.

"He was the fastest driver in two of the first three stages the previous year, but success eluded him this time when his Hummer slammed into the outcropping.

"We had satellite communications so the crew knew where we were," he says, "but there was no way they could get to us 'til morning. It's just too dangerous to be out in the dunes at night.

"It gets your attention. Yeah, I was scared. More scared than I've ever been in a race car."

Gordon says his team will get better as it matures.

"We have all the elements we need to be a Top-10 team," he says. "But what we need to do is come together as a team to do it."

That job has fallen to Greg Erwin, his crew chief, who was in the garage at Lowe's Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon as the crew thrashed on the Chevrolet.

Late Saturday, David McClure, the engine specialist from Dale Earnhardt Inc., decided the engine had to be swapped out before Sunday's race.

It put increased pressure on the young team. And on Erwin.

The first-time crew chief, who has worked with Gordon on previous teams, says he was ready to back away from racing when Gordon came calling.

"I know it sounds nuts, but I've always believed in the guy as a driver and a person. I came here knowing what I was getting into. There were no surprises," Erwin says.

But there were some disappointments.

"The reason we have so many young faces on the team is that we are a new team with no credibility yet," he says.

"It's hard to attract guys with experience to an organization like this. They don't want to leave a secure job and take the risk of joining a new operation."

Erwin says that creates a lot of churn in the crowded shop as guys gain just enough experience to market their talents somewhere else.

"It hurts us," he says. "We are constantly training someone, and that brings some problems of its own. We aren't where we should be. Half our failures are just bad luck, and the other half are self-inflicted. Half of those are on our part; the others are driver error.

"There isn't much you can do about luck, but we still need to address the other 50 percent. We just have to get to the point where we can close the deal.

"Driver introductions were already beginning as the Jim Beam car finally rolled through tech inspection. It was the last car to be pushed into the line.

Less than a minute after the green flag waved, Gordon and Dale Jarrett connected on the first lap, with Jarrett taking the worse of the hit. Gordon soldiered on, falling back and moving up until finally finishing in the 17th spot when the checkered flag fell 600 miles later.

It wasn't a bad day; it wasn't a great day.

Most other drivers took the next day off to rest up from NASCAR's longest race. But not Gordon. Before dawn the following morning, he was on a plane headed to Mexico to strap into a desert truck and attack the Baja once again.

"I don't worry about how other people describe me," he says. "I guess if I had to describe myself, it would be just a guy who loves to race."

Jerry F. Boone can be reached at jfboone@aol.com.