Robby's Trophy Truck had an electronic failure while he was leading the race. He worked on the truck for six hours, but couldn't get it going well enough to finish the race. Robby has won the legendary race two times in the past.

The Lowe's team didn't have those types of snafus last weekend. In the first practice Friday, Jeff said the Lowe's Chevrolet was loose exiting the corners and he was having trouble getting in the gas. We made some chassis adjustments and sent him back out, but he said the exit was still a problem and he needed more rear grip in the tires.

During the next hour-and-a-half, we continued to analyze what our car was doing and what we could do to improve the handling. Despite the changes we made, the Lowe's Chevrolet was pretty good the whole time. We just wanted it to be very good. The more we worked on the car, the faster it got, plus Jeff was fairly pleased with the way it handled.

We bolted a new set of Goodyear tires onto the car for qualifying and lined up on the grid for our turn on the 1.5-mile track. Everything fell into place and Jeff turned the ninth-fastest lap of the qualifying session. We were very pleased with the effort because we really needed a good starting position.

Track position is important everywhere we race on the Winston Cup circuit, but it's everything at Homestead because it's a flat track that lends itself to long, green-flag runs. It's easy to go one lap down on those runs, so it's imperative we stay up front and on the lead lap to avoid that.

We had a Saturday morning practice before we ran Happy Hour. Jeff said the car was good entering and through the corners, but was a bit too loose exiting the turns. We lowered the track bar and made some spring rubber adjustments. Nonetheless, Jeff still struggled with the car in the exit of the corners.

We picked and picked at the Lowe's Chevy all the way until the end of Happy Hour on Saturday and we were quite happy with our results. The Lowe's car was among the top-five fastest cars in Happy Hour and we expected good things Sunday.

We struggled a bit when the Pennzoil 400 got underway Sunday afternoon and slipped backward in the early laps because the car was tight. Jeff fell to 24th place by the time the first green-flag pit stops rolled around on lap 59. We called him down pit road for four tires, fuel and chassis adjustments, and sent him back out. We made a slow move back toward the front, but were still only in the 18th spot by the halfway mark.

Pit strategy played a big role in Sunday's race. We elected to change only right-side tires on our next pit stop, but didn't gain a whole lot of track position because several teams did the same. The two-tire plan did help us out on our last pit stop, though, when we moved from 14th to third on the track.

Because we took only two tires to gain spots on the track and other teams took four tires, we lost a few positions during the final laps because our tires weren't as fresh as the competition's. However, we still finished in the ninth position, the third top-10 finish for the Lowe's team this season, and the second in the last three races. We also picked up a position in the point standings.

Maybe more importantly, we gained more confidence and cohesion as a team. Robby will be back in the Lowe's Chevrolet this week at Atlanta Motor Speedway and he's geared up for the race. Robby sat on the pole at Atlanta in March 1997 while driving only 20 events that year. He also won his first career pole in a stock car superspeedway event in the ARCA race at Atlanta in 1990.

Robby's got three Winston Cup starts under his belt at Atlanta and we're hoping his fourth will result in a great finish this weekend in the Lowe's Chevrolet.