BY TEAM FORD RACING CORRESPONDENT

Avondale, Az. — The Roush Racing Winston Cup entries slipped off their sleepy exteriors and donned the classic bad boy look when four of the five Roush-prepped Tauruses showed in the top-10 during Happy Hour practice.

The transformation may have come when water, in the form of a brief shower, was added to the mix and delayed the start of the final desert practice by about 15 - 20 minutes. This was later followed by a soaking afternoon rain, which played havoc with the Busch Series race schedule.

Championship hopeful, Matt Kenseth, practiced seventh fastest during the session. Kenseth said that his car was a little slow in the first session but “really came around” in the second session.

Showing Kenseth how it’s done were teammates Jeff Burton, who was fastest of the group; Greg Biffle, second fastest; and Mark Martin, who was fourth fast in the session.

TRACTION ACTION
Perhaps you noticed last week’s race winner Jeff Gordon having difficulty completing a proper burnout after winning last week’s race. You might have also noticed Gordon was able to run through Atlanta Motor Speedway’s corners so high that he was kicking up dirt and dust, but never pulled the car’s rear end into the wall. If so, you were not alone as a vast number of those who toil in the Winston Cup garage noticed these things as well, including NASCAR officials.

According to NASCAR PR staff, Gordon’s car was torn down, inspected with a fine toothed comb and special attention paid to the ignition system.

NASCAR officials did take the rear end from Gordon’s car into the Conover, N.C., R&D center, where the unit, away from the prying eyes of the competitors, was cleared later in the week. This confiscation was not widely publicized within the industry, but few were surprised when they did hear the news.

One driver simply said of the impounded piece, “It doesn’t surprise me. I was running as hard as I could and I certainly couldn’t pull half the moves that [Gordon] was. Nope. It doesn’t surprise me, that they took it and that they didn’t find anything wrong.”