Monday's Old Dominion 500 at Martinsville was only about the 10th short-track race Robby Gordon has ever run in any of the series in which he has competed. So, in preparation, we took Robby to Greenville-Pickens (S.C.) Speedway and tested for the Martinsville event. NASCAR doesn't allow teams to test at a track within seven days of a race taking place there, so Greenville-Pickens was our next best option. Greenville is a half-mile track similar to Martinsville.

	Royce McGee is the first-year crew chief for the No. 31 Lowe's Chevrolet team.

In addition to Robby, we also took Rick Mast with us to the test because Rick has done so well at short tracks in the past, and because he was going to practice and qualify the No. 29 GM Goodwrench Service Plus Chevrolet for our teammate Kevin Harvick so Kevin could concentrate on his duties at the Busch Series race in Memphis.

Robby was in good spirits when he arrived at the track Friday and he was ready to tackle the place. The time we spent at Greenville helped him get his driving rhythm acclimated to a short, small track. We approached our first practice a little differently than we usually do because, although Robby is not a rookie by any means, he's not a seasoned veteran, either. He just hasn't driven a Winston Cup car much and hasn't acquired a lot of seat time.

To some degree, we worked with Robby as if he was a rookie and we got a lot accomplished that way. Robby went out and ran 12 laps right off the bat in practice and figured out what line he needed to run. That was better than running two laps and coming back to the garage just to tweak the chassis like we and most teams normally do.

After getting Robby comfortable in the car, we put the Lowe's Chevy in full-blown qualifying trim and started dialing it in for that two-lap qualifying run. We made a lot of headway in a short time and I was really pleased with how Friday's practice went for us.

When it came time for qualifying, Robby under-drove the car just a bit because he thought it wouldn't stick to the track very well -- but it did stick. He ran a little slower on the second lap, whereas most cars picked up some time. We ended up 28th fastest in qualifying, which wasn't too bad for us considering Robby doesn't have much time on that track.

We practiced at noon Saturday and tested out some different shock packages. That allowed us to run a lot of laps and gave Robby the chance to see how hard he could drive the Lowe's Chevy and how far into the corners he could drive it. We got all that taken care of in that first practice and then Happy Hour started at 1:15 p.m.

We made some small chassis adjustments between the two sessions and Robby liked the way the car felt right off the bat with those changes. With 10 minutes remaining in practice, he was very happy with the car and wanted to just tweak a few things and call it a day. Not much happened Sunday other than cloudy skies and persistent rain. The race was scheduled to begin at 12:30 p.m., and all the teams went through technical inspection and got their cars lined up on pit road. But the rain started falling late in the morning and didn't let up. NASCAR officials postponed the Old Dominion 500 until Monday morning.

The race got underway Monday and Robby started working his way through the field. He soon radioed in and told us the Lowe's machine was awesome and it turned well in the center of the corners. It's really hard to pass at Martinsville but Robby was up to 21st position by lap 125.

Our pit stall location also made it difficult to maintain track position when we pitted because our stall was pretty far down pit road. The closer to Turn 4 a pit stall is, the bigger disadvantage a team is at when it comes time to exit pit road. But we kept digging and the pit crew gave Robby some good stops that helped move him up through the field.

Robby was in the 16th position by lap 164 but the Lowe's Chevrolet started to get a little tight in the center of the corners and we lost some spots because he had to compensate for the handling condition by not driving as hard. Plus, he noticed the brakes felt a little soft and had to be really careful with them.

Brakes are crucial at Martinsville because the drivers go full throttle down the straightaway and then get on the brakes hard to go into the turns. Making your brakes last the entire 500 laps at Martinsville is a tall order. Robby had only run at Martinsville two other times and he was still learning the art of brake conservation.

Lowe's Racing was still doing pretty well and running laps almost as fast as the leaders when Robby went to pass another car on lap 352. When he got underneath the other guy, the Lowe's Chevy got loose and the two cars touched, sending Robby into the outside wall. he No. 31 car was torn up pretty well and we had to take it to the garage to make repairs.

The guys worked hard to get the car back in racing form and we got back out on the track on lap 411. It would have been easier to just pack it up and head for home, but we need all the owner points we can get, plus Robby needs the added track time at Martinsville to help him learn the place.

When we got back out, we just tried to stay out of the way of those racing for the win. Robby still said the Lowe's Chevy was running well and he worked hard on hitting his marks and learning from those final laps. We finished up in the 38th position.

The Winston Cup teams head to Talladega this weekend for Sunday's big race. Robby has only raced at Talladega three times, but RCR has a strong history there. We're taking the same car Mike Skinner raced in the Bud Shootout and the Daytona 500 at Daytona this year, at Daytona in July and at Talladega in April.

It's the same chassis Mike had an accident in at Daytona in July, so we spent a lot of time repairing and rebuilding it. We took it to the wind tunnel and those numbers came out very close to where they had before the accident at Daytona. We've raced well the past two years at superspeedways, so with Robby in the Lowe's Chevy, I think we'll have a great weekend at Talladega.