Although he is eighth in the standings and 232 points out of the lead, Jeff Gordon enters Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway – site of his last NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory one year ago – on a positive note.

During a test at the 1.5-mile track last month, the driver of the No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet posted the fastest speed during the two-day session.

"You can’t read too much into that because teams are focused on different things during the test, but it was a positive two days for us," said Gordon, who started 18th and finished fourth here earlier this year. "That was our ‘mock’ qualifying run, so we feel good about that – especially since we struggled during qualifying in May.

"And I feel like the No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet drove well on the long runs. We weren’t quite as good as some of the teams on the shorter runs, so we do need to work on that. "But it was a very positive test and we certainly didn’t leave frustrated."

In 31 starts at the North Carolina track, Gordon has five wins, seven poles, 15 topfives and 17 top-10's. His first career pole occurred here in October of 1993, and he followed that up with his first career win here seven months later. Could this also be the site of his first win of 2008?

"I’m optimistic because of how we performed at Kansas," said Gordon, who was ‘under the weather’ but battled to finish fourth in that event. "We are learning more and more each time we run the Chevrolet Impala, so we are hopefully getting much closer to running consistently in the top five and battling for wins."

In the first three races of the "Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup," Gordon posted finishes of 14th (Loudon), seventh (Dover) and fourth (Kansas). But he was involved in a multi-car accident last Sunday at Talladega and finished 38th.

"Talladega is behind us and there is nothing we can do about that now," said Gordon. "We’ll focus on the race at Lowe’s and go out there Saturday night and try to win.

"There’s still a lot of racing left this year, and I’m not counting anybody out just yet. Everybody considered Talladega to be the ‘wild card’ race – and it was. But we’re probably going to have restarts this weekend where guys are battling hard for position in a pack of cars.

"There could be a points shakeup at one or more of the remaining races."  - paddocktalk.com