Gordon

It looks like Richard Childress Racing is back.

The Cingular Wireless team pulled out of Chicago with an eighth-place finish while our teammate Kevin Harvick took home the checkered flag for the No. 29 GM Goodwrench Service team. Jeff Green drove the No. 30 AOL Chevrolet to a 12th-place finish, as well. That's a great testament to the teamwork we have at RCR and what we can do when we pull together.

Team Cingular got a great jump on the field when the green flag waved Sunday and we charged from 21st to 12th after the first lap. The Cingular Wireless Chevrolet soon developed a tight-handling condition and I fought to keep it in the top-12 for the first 60 laps. We lost a lot of ground on a lap 62 green-flag pit stop, though. We dropped to 21st and track position was very important, so those spots were hard to make up. But we concentrated on hitting our marks on the track and soon the Cingular Wireless Chevrolet was the fastest car on the track.

We were back in 13th by lap 124, but I let the car get away from me a bit and brushed the outside wall on lap 151 and knocked in the right-front fender, making the car very tight. Team Cingular brought me into the pits on lap 185 for four tires and fuel, and pulled out the bent fender. The car was soon just as good as before and we began moving back through the field.

We soon got a bit concerned about fuel mileage, but were pretty certain we could go the distance. It wasn't an issue soon when the caution waved on lap 241, because the car uses less fuel during caution flags than full-out racing. The team elected not to pit, but several teams who couldn't make it on fuel had to pit.

The Cingular Wireless Chevrolet came out of that cycle of pit stops in third and we were set for the 19-lap battle to the checkered flag when the restart was given. But another car hit my left-front fender and bashed it in, hurting our aerodynamics and lap times. It happens sometimes and it's just racing, but it was a really huge disappointment. We could easily have finished in the top-five if that hadn't happened. We dropped to eighth by lap 260, but fought off the other cars and brought home our second top-10 of the season. But it was a great day for Richard Childress Racing as an organization. Congratulations to my teammate Kevin Harvick and all his guys. Everything seems to be coming together for all three of our teams.

That strong finish was great momentum going into this week's trip to New Hampshire International Speedway. Winning at Loudon last Thanksgiving was one of the most memorable moments of my career. I just hated we were there that weekend because America had been attacked and thousands of our people killed. The only reason we raced that weekend was because of the tragedy that took place Sept. 11. That's why Richard Childress and I donated all our purse money to the Uniformed Firefighters Association's Widow's and Children's Fund. We wanted to let them know that everyone at RCR was thinking about them despite our bittersweet happiness for winning the race.

We had the strongest car at Loudon all day last November. We started 31st because of owner points and worked our way all the way up. We were one of the top-five cars off the truck in the morning practice. We were also good at the first race at Loudon in July. Royce McGee put a great car under me in July, but we had a bad call in the pits early and went down one lap. But we ran with the leaders all day from there on out but just couldn't get our lap back. We learned a lot that race that Gil Martin took to the race at the end of the year.

We were in the position to run with Jeff Gordon the last 50 laps of the race last November. We beat him out of the pits on that pit stop, but got held up by Kyle Petty a bit and Gordon got back by us. My car really rolled through the middle very well and it was just plain good. I was able to get back in the gas very early off the corners, which is so important. We learned a lot there and kept working on the car during the whole race and pushed all day long to position ourselves to win the race.

Getting into Gordon wasn't supposed to be part of the deal. He checked up for Mike Wallace's car in front of him on the high groove when he started spinning down the track. Gordon checked up and I didn't get checked up quick enough and got into the back of him a tiny bit. It wasn't like I wrecked him -- I just moved him out of the way a bit. He took himself out of the race when he came back to retaliate and hit me.

I'd worked so hard to get a Winston Cup victory. We should have won three races last year and only ended up winning the last one. I was very happy to finally pull into Victory Lane and I think the Cingular team can do it again there. I've always done well on flat tracks. We ran well at Phoenix and Homestead, Fla., last year and they're both fairly flat. I ran well at Loudon in Indy cars. We plan on rolling out with pretty close to the same set-up we had at Loudon in November, which was very similar to what we finished with in the July race.

The tires will be different this time than they were in November because of the different weather conditions. Everyone kept talking about the tire controversy when we won the race last year. There was no controversy -- it was strictly a budget issue for Richard Childress Racing. There were no secrets about what we had. We took the old Martinsville tires, but they were the same tire and same code numbers as Goodyear brought that weekend. NASCAR allowed the teams to bring the Martinsville tires in order to save money. They've allowed us to use tires from past races because they group certain tracks together with the tires and you can run those tires in the next race if you fall out early and don't need them or you buy too many.

Lots of talk around the garage area lately is about whether or not to install soft walls at most of the tracks. The folks at New Hampshire International Speedway looked at doing it but that has been set aside for a little while. I think Winston Cup teams could benefit from soft walls at New Hampshire. I have some very close experience with the soft wall barriers because P.J. Jones was my teammate for the Indy 500 with Team Menard. He got his car turned around going into Turn 1 and backed it into the barrier. P.J. was going very fast, and when he hit the barrier at that angle, it flicked him back across the track but the g-load hit wasn't that big. Another testament to the soft walls was that the gearbox in the car didn't even break -- and he backed the car into the wall. The wall absorbed all that extra energy. The gearbox in an Indy car is designed to break with big impacts.

I hate to step out of line and say this, but now that they've lowered the groove another line at New Hampshire, I think it's only going to increase the angle we hit the wall at because we're going to be racing lower on the track and heading into the wall at a steeper angle. It will make the track faster because you will be traveling a shorter distance. I think we'll be racing the Cingular Wireless Chevrolet on the bottom, but I don't think it will be a one-groove track. The name of the game is going to be track position because it's so hard to pass. We'll try to do what the leaders do on pit stops, but not be the only one who does what the leader does -- like we did at Sears Point.

I really like New Hampshire because I got my first Winston Cup win there and I thought the track was just fine and didn't really need an additional groove. We got around Loudon just fine last November and hopefully we can get around it as well, if not better, this weekend.

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.