Gordon

Anything can happen in a NASCAR Winston Cup race and anything usually does. But in last Sunday's race at Richmond International Raceway, "anything" happened to the No. 31 Cingular Wireless team two separate times. Unfortunately, they weren't the type of unexpected occurrences we were looking for and even Spider-Man couldn't save the day for us.

What was supposed to be a short weekend for us with Sunday off turned into one long, disappointing weekend. The No. 31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet gave us problems Friday in practice and we spent a lot of time making adjustments, trying them out on the track, then re-adjusting again. We never got the car just right Friday and ended up with a 34th-starting position.

We got to sleep in a little Saturday morning because there was no on-track activity until the race. But we spent a lot of time in the garage watching the rain come down Saturday afternoon, hoping and praying that it would all be gone before the evening start time rolled around. The rain kept coming and the race was delayed until about 9:15 p.m. When we finally went racing, it was still sprinkling but NASCAR was doing everything they could to try to get the race in Saturday so we could have Sunday off. The teams get so few off-weekends that we will do anything to try to get a race in on the scheduled date.

It wasn't long before the rain returned, though, and NASCAR threw the red flag after the completion of 66 laps and eventually postponed the race until noon on Sunday. The weather situation was a pretty big disappointment for us because the Cingular Chevrolet was just coming around and we had picked off seven positions since the start of the race. We wanted to race that night.

The green flag waved shortly after noon Sunday and we were met with the challenge of adjusting our race car to the warmer, sunlit race conditions. The No. 31 Cingular Wireless/Spider-Man Chevrolet was very strong, but was still a bit tight entering the corners and a little loose exiting.

On lap 82, part of another car's rear bumper broke loose, drilled a hole in the right-front fender of the No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, pierced and went through the windshield, severely dented the dash and exited back through the hole in the windshield.

I drove the car into the pits several times for repair work without losing a lap but dropped to the 40th position in the process. We quickly began moving back through the field, and were in the 34th position by lap 133. The Cingular Wireless/Spider-Man Chevrolet developed a tight-handling condition due to the damage to the right-front fender so the guys continued to make repairs to it.

We pitted on lap 150 for four fresh tires and chassis adjustments that just seemed to bring the Cingular Wireless/Spider-Man Chevrolet to life. We worked our way through lapped traffic and moved into the 21st position by lap 210. We were running in the 18th position on lap 310 when I dropped down on the race track to bring the car down pit road. But as I steered the Cingular Wireless/Spider-Man machine to the left to enter pit road, the car shot out to the right and rammed head-on into pit wall.

I don't know if I hit oil or if it was the yellow paint that was peeling off on the track at that spot. It didn't feel like anything on the car broke -- just more like the car just slid the front end. It sustained extensive damage and we were unable to complete the race. We finished in the 37th position.

I was pretty bummed out about the whole deal. Just like at Fontana, Calif., we started out with a not-so-good car but worked our guts out to make it competitive. We easily had a top-15, maybe top-10, car at Richmond. It's just pretty frustrating that "freak" stuff seems to keep happening to the Cingular team. We really needed to score some points at Richmond and I'm really disappointed because we lost that chance.

I was originally scheduled to practice the No. 31 Menard/Childress/Cingular Wireless Chevrolet-powered Dallara Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Indianapolis 500. But since we raced at Richmond Sunday, I didn't get to Indy until late in the afternoon. But I did get to run a few laps during the last hour of practice. We were pretty good and came up to speed quick.

The NASCAR Winston Cup teams are going into their next-to-last off-weekend of the season. We tested at Lowe's Motor Speedway Monday and Tuesday evenings in preparation for The Winston and the Coca-Cola 600 later this month. We took a brand-new car that has never been run before and the same car that I crashed in qualifying at Texas. We did pretty well with both of them. They're almost identical in their lap times and both were good.

We learned that both of the cars are too loose. They're too loose getting into and exiting the corners. We did a lot of work on 15-lap runs in race trim to prepare for The Winston. It wasn't too hard getting out of the Indy car and into the Winston Cup car. I was up to speed pretty quick in the No. 31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet.

I think it's easier to go from the Indy car to the Cup car than from the Cup to the Indy car due to the different feel of the two cars. Indy cars turn into the corner a lot quicker than Winston Cup cars do.

We've definitely got our work cut out for us the next month and we're going to do the best job we can in both series for Cingular Wireless. The Indy/Charlotte Double is going to take up a ton of time and energy but I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing.

Robby Gordon drives the No. 31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing. He will be providing a diary to ESPN.com throughout the Winston Cup season.