A Real Two-Timer

Robby Gordon won’t be the only one taking on the Indianapolis 500-Coca Cola 600 double on May 25. No other drivers will be joining the peripatetic off-road racer from Orange, but he will have an entourage of about 200, paying $1,100 each to watch their hero’s shot at history.

“You’d be surprised how many people want to be there to see me at both races,” Gordon said Monday while posing for front-row pictures at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. On Sunday, he qualified third for the 500, the second time he will start from that spot.

The $1,100 package includes round-trip tickets from Charlotte, N.C., to Indianapolis on a corporate plane, chartered buses with police escorts, tickets for both races, scanners to tell what’s going on between Gordon and the crew chiefs, and box lunches or dinners. Flying time between the cities is about an hour.

But Gordon, at 34 perhaps at the crossroads of his checkered career, is the only one who will attempt to drive 1,100 miles on the same day on two of the most trying superspeedways in the country, Indianapolis’ 2.5-mile rectangular oval and Lowe’s Motor Speedway’s 1.5-mile oval.

“Eleven hundred miles is a long way, but look at it my way,” he said. “I have driven the Baja 1000 by myself many times. In the 1000, I never have time for a two or three-hour break. So, with the Indy-Coca Cola double, I do have that break time.”

In 1989 he won the Baja 1000, driving in a Ford factory truck for 17 hours.

Attempting the open wheel-stock car doubleheader is nothing new to Gordon. This will be his fourth try, although one was altered because of rain. Last year he finished both races, getting an eighth in Indy despite a pit fire, and 16th in the 600.

“Mentally, I was completely all there,” he said of the experience. “Physically, I had cramps in my stomach at Charlotte. I made a mistake last year. I had a doctor with me for an IV between races, but I didn’t use it. This year I will take the IV because driving an Indy car is different from driving a stock car.

“You get shoved in the corner [in an Indy car] where it is all lateral Gs, and I think I used some muscles in my stomach from the G forces sideways, and I’m not used to using those muscles.

“So this time I’ll take the IV to help that, plus I’m using some other chemical products so I don’t sweat too much and don’t dehydrate.”

Gordon will be driving a Honda-powered Dallara for Andretti Green Racing here and a Chevrolet Monte Carlo for Richard Childress in Charlotte.

He got the Indy car ride as a replacement for Dario Franchitti, who was injured in a motorcycle accident last month in his native Scotland. However, it was a shock to Indy car enthusiasts when he was selected by Michael Andretti, with whom he had strained relations since an incident in 1995.

“It all happened in Cleveland,” Gordon recalled. “Michael gave me a flat tire during the race and I wrecked him after the race. But that was a long time ago. I had a good feeling the first time I talked with Michael about this deal. It took about 10 days to work it out, but I want to make it understood, I am a Winston Cup driver and I intend to stay with Richard Childress, but I just love the Indianapolis 500 and I wanted to be a part of it.”

Childress was a partner in Gordon’s Indy effort the last two years, but not this time. It is strictly an AGR team, jointly owned by Andretti, Kim Green and Kevin Savoree, who bought the CART Team Green from Kim’s brother, Barry Green, last December and moved over to the Indy Racing League.

“Richard is a fan of open-wheel racing and is all for me doing both races,” Gordon said. “He’s just tremendous as an owner. We have not had even one conversation, even when I broke my ankles riding a motorcycle, that I ever thought my job was in jeopardy.

“Everything is great. I just wish we were eighth, or leading, in Winston Cup points instead of being 13th, but I’m looking forward to grabbing a fistful of points at Charlotte. If it came to winning one race or the other, I’d rather win Indianapolis. I’ve already won a Winston Cup race and there’s only one Indy 500, but I don’t want to hurt my chances to score championship points in the other race.”

Surprisingly, Gordon says he will approach the 500 with a conservative attitude, quite contrary to his reputation as a hell-bent-for-election driver.

“The first time I showed up at Indy, I wanted to be quick right out of the box and I crashed A.J. [Foyt’s] car. I have not crashed a car at the Speedway since. The deal is to pace myself and not to run wide open all the time.

“On the other hand, my wide open is just a little more wide open than everybody else, so when I come back conservative, that’s like everybody else’s wide open.”

Gordon said he plans to pattern his strategy after that of Rick Mears, a four-time winner who, like Gordon, started as an off-road racer in the Southern California and Baja deserts.

“I watched Rick from a very young age and I saw how he was always around at the finish and that was a lesson that I did not learn the first year. And I have seen Rick fall way back a lot of times and keep working his car all day long and come back and win the race.

“I saw him do that at Indy and I saw him do it in off-road. That’s what I’m going to try and do [race day].”

It was in off-road racing, following in the tire tracks of his father Bob Gordon and good family friend Parnelli Jones, that the precocious Robby attracted attention. He was only 16 when he won his first off-road race, the Nevada 500, by beating his father. Two weeks later, he won his first Mickey Thompson stadium race.

Since then, his career has been a series of hit-and-miss efforts in all forms of racing. In IMSA road racing, he won in his class three times in the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring. He drove his first race in NASCAR in the 1991 Daytona 500, then abruptly switched to CART open-wheel racing with Ganassi Racing in 1992.

Displaying his versatility, he won his first race in SCCA Trans-Am in a Roush Mustang the same year.

When 1993 came, he was driving for Foyt and indirectly led to the legendary Texan’s retiring. Foyt was practicing in his own car before qualifying at Indianapolis when Gordon crashed. Foyt immediately pulled into the pits and announced that he couldn’t both drive and attend to Gordon, so he retired on the spot.

For the next six years Gordon couldn’t seem to decide between CART and Winston Cup before finally settling on CART by forming Team Gordon in 2000 in partnership with car owner John Menard. That venture came within two laps of winning the Indianapolis 500 in 1999.

Gordon took the lead on Lap 171 and held it for 27 laps but had to pit to refill a nearly empty fuel tank 10 miles from the end of the race. He and Menard knew that their fuel was low, but they were gambling on a caution flag late in the race and for one of the few times in recent years, there was none.

In 2000 he moved back to Winston Cup with Menard, once again failing to find the results to match his potential. After deciding he wasn’t happy as an owner-driver, Gordon joined the Morgan-McClure NASCAR team in 2001, but was fired after five races.

At loose ends, Gordon found a home with Childress, who a few years earlier had found Dale Earnhardt at loose ends. He drove the last nine races of the season and won the final race at New Hampshire, earning himself a contract.

“Winning the Indy 500 would be fantastic for me, but you know what I’d really like to do?” Gordon asked. “That would be to finish in the top 10 in Winston Cup and prove everyone wrong, especially the naysayers who said I would never fit in in Winston Cup. And we’re not that far away.”

After 11 races, Gordon is 401 points behind leader Matt Kenseth but only 12 behind 10th-place Sterling Marlin.

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Indy 500 Facts

What: 87th Indianapolis 500, fourth race in 16-race 2003 IRL IndyCar Series season.

* Where: Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 2.5-mile asphalt rectangular oval.

* When: 8 a.m. (PDT), May 25.

* TV: Pre-race coverage begins 8 a.m. PDT; Race begins, 9 a.m., Channel 7

* 2002 Race Winner: Helio Castroneves.

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ROBBY GORDON INDY FILE

* Gordon will run the 500 and NASCAR’s Coca Cola 600, marking the fourth time he has attempted to run both events in one day.

* Gordon has five top-10 finishes in his eight Indianapolis 500 starts, one of which was a fourth-place run in 1999 when he ran out of fuel while leading with less than two laps to go.