Jeff Gordon will be seeking his thirteenth career restrictor plate victory on Saturday night at the Daytona International Speedway. Already in possession of six wins on the 2.5 mile superspeedway in 31 starts, Gordon is hoping to use that familiarity to pick up his first win of 2008 in the Coke Zero 400.

The first track built by NASCAR founder Bill France, Daytona, and it's slightly larger sister track Talladega, feature steeply banked corners that were originally designed to help cars achieve record speeds. Unfortunately, safety concerns brought about by those high speeds now require teams to run carburetor restrictor plates to cut horsepower from nearly 800 to fewer than 450 as NASCAR officials try to keep the cars below 200miles per hour.

Thanks to the decreased horsepower and slick bodied cars, the resulting racing is marked by large packs running inches apart from each other, lap after lap, with the driver using the draft try and move themselves to the front without starting or being caught up in, the big multi-car crash that seems to happen at least once during these events.

“At Daytona and Talladega, you're trying to get yourself into a position to challenge for the victory in the closing laps,” said Gordon, who is sixth in NASCAR Sprint Cup points, the highest placement for a winless driver so far in 2008. “You have to be smart during the race and understand your surroundings - try to stay away from bad situations.”

Gordon led five laps during the season opening Daytona 500 in February, but a suspension mount failure relegated him to just a 39th place finish.

"We were strong during the event. The car handled well and we were fast before the failure. We're going to make sure we don't have that problem again,” said Gordon.

This weekend's race is the 18th of 36 on the NASCAR schedule, and will get underway at 6:30pm (ET US).

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