Feb 26, 2005 4 min read

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) – Robby Gordon just wants to go racing. A week ago, Gordon failed to make the field for the Daytona 500 despite finishing seventh in his 150-mile qualifying race. Then, to compound the agony, NASCAR fined his crew chief $50,000 and docked the team 25 car owner points for an illegal intake manifold they found before the start of Daytona practice.

Now, just when he needed most to be on the track for practice at California Speedway, his car failed its first inspection.

With NASCAR guaranteeing the top 35 teams in the car owner standings a starting spot in Nextel Cup races, Gordon – driving for a new team he co-owns with Jim Smith – is one of 13 drivers competing for the eight remaining spots in the 43-car field for Sunday’s Auto Club 500.

With the guaranteed starting spots and new rules switching Cup qualifying to Saturday and eliminating the final “Happy Hour” practice, Friday’s two practice sessions have become more important – particularly for the non-qualified drivers.

Gordon missed the first practice entirely because of the extended inspection process that also kept eight other non-qualified cars off the track.

“We have a good team with good cars,” he said. “We just want to get out there on the track and prove it.”

Greg Biffle topped Friday’s speed chart at 186.809, followed by surprising Daytona fourth-place finisher Scott Riggs at 186.800, Carl Edwards at 186.714, Ryan Newman at 186.711 and defending race champion and Daytona 500 winner Jeff Gordon at 186.162.

All of the non-qualified drivers finally did get onto the 2-mile oval for the second practice session, with former champions Bill Elliott and Terry Labonte, both starting limited schedules this season, leading the way. Elliott was seventh-fastest and Labonte 15th.

Robby Gordon was 20th overall but third-fastest among drivers needing to qualify their way into the lineup.

There is yet another new rule adding a twist to the weekend. The cars making the field will be impounded by NASCAR following qualifying and will have to start the race with the same tires and chassis setup with which they qualify.

The teams will be allowed to make some minor adjustments before race time, including changing tire pressures, removing tape from the grill that helps with aerodynamics in qualifying but would cause overheating in longer runs, adding up to 5 gallons of gas, adjusting the track bar, shocks and wedge bolts.

“Basically, it’s anything you can adjust without jacking the car up,” said Elliott Sadler, who won the Cup race here last fall.

Sadler likes the new qualifying procedure, which will be used at about two-thirds of the events this season.

“I think it’s fair,” he said. “I think you need to race your way into a NASCAR Nextel Cup race. I don’t think it was fair last year for teams to come up and maybe miss the show and a guy who gets a provisional runs one lap and says he’s vibrating and pulled it in. That’s not racing.”

The non-qualified teams spent Friday preparing for qualifying, while the 35 guaranteed starters worked mostly on race setups.

“My brother (Hermie) needs to qualify for this race,” Sadler said. “Who cares how he races. Put a qualifying setup in it, make the race and on the first pit stop change the front shocks – do whatever you’ve got to do.”

Robby Gordon is determined to make Sunday’s race.

“Nobody on our team got down after missing Daytona,” he said. “They just went back to the shop and starting getting ready for this race.”

The veteran racer, who drove last year for Richard Childress Racing, said starting the race in qualifying configuration wouldn’t be so bad.

“We had cars impounded for some races in the Busch Series last year,” he said. “The big thing is when they go from race setups into qualifying setups, you put tape on it and the thing loses a lot of downforce.

“But we’re used to this rule already and we’ve already found things we can do to feel comfortable with the tape on it and then pull the tape off and still be comfortable on the racetrack. When we were here testing our Cup car in January, we worked on race setup.”