Gordon

There's a reason that about 160,000 fans buy tickets to the annual night race at Bristol Motor Speedway. It might have something to do with the tightest racing on the circuit, wild wrecks, hot tempers and screaming matches. Unfortunately for the No. 31 Cingular Wireless team, you could throw NASCAR's "penalty box" into that mix last weekend.

We started moving up early in the race and were 25th just 18 laps into the race. But my radio earplugs fell out of my ears on lap 23 and I had no radio communication with the team. More importantly, I had no radio communication with my spotter, Tim Overby. So, I was extra careful on the track.

That didn't matter, though, because Bobby Hamilton plowed into the back of the Cingular Wireless Chevrolet on lap 31 and spun us out. I think that was his payback to me from Dover. But at Dover, I simply nudged and moved him -- I didn't punt or spin him out. The leader got by us on the track while I was turning the car back around and we lost a lap.

We dropped all the way to 39th but didn't get too down since we knew we had a good enough car to make up that lap. And if you can stay on the lead lap or close to it at Bristol, you will have a good finish when it's all over. We made up that lap on lap 69 but lost it again on lap 115 because the car was too tight and was hard to steer.

Kevin Hamlin and the Cingular team continued to make chassis adjustments that made the car better and we moved into the 20th spot on lap 299. We were running lap times with the leaders and keeping up with them, hoping the whole time to get past them and make up our lap.

Team Cingular was back in the top 15 by lap 377 and we had a good chance to make up that lap on a restart on lap 381. Jimmie Johnson was in front of me and he was two laps down. I wanted him to let me go around him on the restart so I had a better chance of making up the lap but he didn't want to do that. I thought it was part of the whole "common courtesy" deal to let another car pass you if they were fewer laps down than you -- but he didn't have to do that.

When the restart waved, Johnson didn't accelerate with the other guys. Two or three cars went by him on the outside line. I don't know if he missed a shift or what but he didn't go and we did. I accidentally got into the back of him and spun him around.

I never meant to hit Jimmie. I know he's running for a championship and I would never do anything to jeopardize that. Jimmie and I are friends, although I bet he has something else to say about me now. We made up our lap at the same time but NASCAR soon took that away.

NASCAR penalized me two laps for what it considered "rough driving," and held me on pit road for the next two laps. I didn't -- and still don't -- understand that call because several drivers spun out other guys during the evening and I was the only one that got the penalty.

Furthermore, Dale Earnhardt Jr. obviously jumped the start at the beginning of the race and he didn't get penalized like I did in the March race. I just don't get it sometimes. Why didn't Bobby Hamilton get penalized for turning me at the beginning of the race?

So, we were 24th and two laps down when the restart came out on lap 388. We drove like crazy to try to get those laps back but that was asking a lot with only about 100 laps remaining. We finished in the 20th position.

I was extremely disappointed with the whole evening. The Cingular Wireless Chevrolet was good all night and we could have easily finished on the lead lap or maybe had a top five if I hadn't been penalized. But as they say, that's Bristol.

Because of its nature, Bristol is a track where a lot of teams can lose or gain a bunch of points due to how many cars get wrecked and fall out. The same is true for Darlington, our next stop on the Winston Cup circuit.

On to Darlington
Darlington is tough, definitely the toughest track we race on all year. Why else would it be labeled "The Track Too Tough to Tame?" It's not as physically demanding on the drivers as Bristol but the track is harder to race. You don't race the guy in front of or behind you at Darlington -- you race the track, the Lady in Black.

One of the reasons it's so hard to race on is that the preferred line is so different than any other track we race on. The best groove is up against the wall -- not the most comfortable place to be. Even during qualifying, we'll keep the Cingular Wireless Chevrolet right up against the wall -- about two or three feet from it. It is a very narrow track so it's hard to stay that close to the wall without brushing it. The guys on the Cingular Wireless team and I were joking about putting some wood between the rollbars and the sheet metal so I can lean on the wall and not cave in the right side of the car. Just take a look at the wall at the end of practice one day and you'll see how difficult it is to stay off it.

Running well at Darlington takes a lot of patience. I've really worked hard this season on learning patience for places like Darlington. If you're not patient, you'll end up with the right side of your car smashed in or your tires bald in a couple of laps.

Darlington is murder on those Goodyear tires. Rockingham is the only track close to Darlington in this department and both tracks can kill a new set of tires in a couple of laps. Within just a couple of laps of putting on new tires, you can feel the tires losing their grip. When that happens, they start spinning on the straightaway. It's the wildest thing. It's amazing how smooth you have to be with the throttle to help you get hold of the race track and not spin the tires.

NASCAR has given the Chevrolets the same front air dam kick-out at Darlington that they gave us at Michigan. When you look at where the Chevrolets finished the race at Michigan, it doesn't look like the kick-out helped all that much. We all qualified well but didn't race as well as we qualified. I think part of that is that the new rules change affected the balance of the car.

The Cingular team tested at Michigan two weeks before the race and we were really good in the test. But then we kicked out the nose and we weren't that good in race trim. I think we got messed up because we had to focus on making the car respond to the rules change instead of just improving on what we had before.

I'm glad that NASCAR has given us that change again but I just wish there was a way for them to take away from the Fords and Dodges instead of making the Chevrolets and Pontiacs make a change. The Fords and Dodges just get to keep working on what they already have and already know, whereas we have to figure out how to make our car respond to the new change.

The chemistry on the Cingular team has certainly picked up. Kevin Hamlin and the guys are hungry and want to get to the front. We didn't finish where we wanted to at Michigan and Bristol but that wasn't because we didn't have a strong car. We finished where we did because of bad circumstances.

We have been fortunate enough to have no engine failures, no part failures this season. The guys do an awesome job of putting competitive, reliable equipment underneath me every week and we just need to get back to where we're capitalizing on that weekly.

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