Gordon

If anyone was looking for the No. 31 Cingular Wireless team to fall on its face after the No. 29/No. 31 crew swap, they were sadly disappointed last weekend at Pocono Raceway. We showed everyone that my top-10 finish at Dover, Del., last week was no fluke.

We didn't exactly finish where we had hoped, but we had a good, solid run going the entire day and built a lot of confidence as a "new" team. I'm sure Kevin Hamlin, the guys and I are going to have a very strong second half of the season. Hopefully all the Richard Childress Racing (RCR) teams will.

Terrible rain in the Pocono area all the way up to Friday morning caused water seepage on the asphalt surface of the track, forcing the cancellation of practice and qualifying. Therefore, the No. 31 Cingular Wireless Chevrolet rolled off the grid 26th based on car owner points. We had moved to 22nd when the first caution came out on lap 31 and made a great charge toward the front when the race resumed on lap 35. We were 20th by lap 38, 15th by lap 47, 12th on lap 60 and 11th on lap 65. Not bad for a day's work, especially since I've only raced once at Pocono and we haven't worked together before.

We moved back and forth between the 11th and 17th spots through lap 190 of the 200-lap race. We decided during the final scheduled pit stop to take only right-side tires to gain track position. We were headed right for a solid top-15 finish when, just seven laps from the checkered flag, the left front tire let go and forced us into the pits to make a last-second, green-flag stop. I'm guessing we just wore it out because we ran it through two runs -- we only took two tires at the last pit stop. Maybe we wouldn't have lost the tire if we had changed all four tires. We returned to the track as the first car one lap down to the leaders and maintained that position to the end of the race.

We were pretty disappointed, to say the least, but we weren't down. We had a good run and know we are going to be good this year. Pocono was just a preview of what's to come. The Cingular Wireless Chevrolet was good from the beginning of the race but we had to fight our way through the field. Hamlin and the guys really listened to the feedback I gave them and made the right adjustments. But the transition between my old Cingular guys and my new ones was flawless. I didn't see much difference. The communication between me and Hamlin was really good and I was already familiar with the guys. I think we already have a lot to build on and we'll be just fine this year.

Our next chance to get to know each other and try to build a foundation together is this weekend's race at Michigan International Speedway. I haven't had a whole lot of luck at Michigan in Winston Cup cars, but I've done pretty well in IROC and CART cars there. I finished runner-up in the July 1997 IROC race at Michigan and fourth in the August 1996 IROC race. I've raced four CART races at Michigan and finished eighth in one of them.

Although you can't really apply the information from those cars to the Winston Cup cars, the track time from those series should help me out a lot. When you start getting some track time at a certain speedway, you begin to learn what lines you can run. Michigan has a few different lines and not everyone runs the same line. The line we run this weekend will depend on what the Cingular Wireless Chevrolet is capable of doing, but if Hamlin, the guys and I work on it enough, hopefully we can make the car work well all over the track. That will give us a car that can set up and pass other cars, or drive deep into the corner when needed, or back off the gas early and get down to the bottom of the track to pass the other guys. There are many opportunities to pass at Michigan, but you've got to have the car capable of doing it or you just play "follow-the-leader" for 400 miles.

I have always liked running the bottom groove at Michigan, but unfortunately haven't had enough motor to pull my car out of the bottom. Hopefully with Spenny Clendenen and the RCR engine shop I'll have enough power to do that this time. The bottom is definitely the shortest way around the track, but it takes a lot of horsepower and "oomph" to get around there.

Michigan is a pretty flat track, but is slightly banked in some areas. It's kind of like California in that it's a two-mile, flat track and the Cingular team ran well at California earlier this year. I've always liked Michigan and I liked it when I raced Indy cars there. I've also learned to like it in Winston Cup cars. I just hope this weekend I can start having some of the good runs at Michigan that I had in the Indy cars.

I think Michigan will be a good track for the team this weekend. We're running the same car I finished seventh with in The Winston and 16th with in the Coca-Cola 600 after running the Indy 500 the same day. It was a great car. Hamlin and I are still obviously very new together, but we worked well together last week and hopefully can build from that experience and continue to improve. In my opinion, the transition to Hamlin and his guys was flawless last week at Pocono. I didn't skip a beat and don't think they did either. I was already familiar with all those guys and had worked hand-in-hand with them even though they were on the No. 29 team before. All the RCR teams try to work together. Now we're working on running up front together.

But before we get to Michigan on Thursday evening, the Cingular team is testing at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, S.C., Tuesday in preparation for next week's race at Sears Point Raceway. Hamlin has some great set-ups for road courses and I have a lot of confidence at them. We're hoping to get some valuable testing time in this week for Sears Point before we head to Michigan. It would be pretty cool to run well at Michigan and then top it off with a win at Sears Point. But we're trying to take it one week at a time now -- that's how you build a solid team.

Another part of building a solid team is having great backing from your sponsor. As most of you could probably guess, with all the incredible support Cingular Wireless provides our team, we take every opportunity to help them out as well. For example, recently I had a chance to work with Cingular's "Be Sensible" campaign to promote tips we all can use to drive more safely. This set of tips helps folks be sensible about using wireless devices while driving, and includes common sense reminders such as using voice dial and redial, or, placing your call before pulling into traffic, and using a hands-free device when available.

On the track, you learn really fast what happens when a driver doesn't pay attention, and it's the same on the road. That's why I make it a rule to concentrate on the road and always use sensible judgment when it comes to my wireless phone while driving.

To help promote the tips, I did a bunch of radio interviews for stations across the country, and we also used the "Be Sensible" logo on the No. 31 Chevrolet during all of the races in May. And, I'm not yet done talking about these safe driving tips, because I also produced public service announcements that are airing on 1,500 radio stations across the country. Cingular has done a lot of work on the "Be Sensible" campaign, and you can see it all at their website -- www.be-sensible.com.

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.