BRISTOL, Tenn. – Robby Gordon hopes to have a deal done soon to have Kevin Conway drive a Robby Gordon Motorsports car the rest of the season and possibly next year.

Gordon put Conway in the No. 7 car at Bristol Motor Speedway last week and Gordon qualified the No. 07 for the Saturday night race.

Conway, a rookie, started the year at Front Row Motorsports, but Conway and sponsor Extenze broke away from the team prior to the Aug. 15 race at Michigan. Conway, who has struggled with three lead-lap finishes in 23 starts and still has the backing of sponsor Extenze, plans to move the sponsorship to RGM. Gordon drove the No. 07 car at Bristol.

Gordon says he plans to run the No. 7 car the rest of the year to remain in the top 35 and have one of those 35 guaranteed spots for the first five races next year. Conway finished 36th at Bristol, and the No. 7 car has a 125-point edge on the 36th-place Latitude 43 Motorsports No. 26 car and 144-point edge on the Frown Row Motorsports No. 38 car with 12 races left in the season.

“I’ve got some things coming in for next year that are really good for our organization,” Gordon said last weekend at Bristol. “I believe it will give us the funding to do some races with the 7 car, and if we could do a good job for Kevin Conway, maybe we’ll get fortunate enough that he’ll come back next year and do some races with us as well.

“The plan is we’d like to [have him run the rest of year], but every weekend it’s see how it goes. … He’s got to build his confidence. The biggest thing is we need to build his confidence.”

Conway had run only 25 Nationwide races (with no top-10 finishes) before making the jump to Cup.

“It’s a great opportunity,” Conway said. “I’m very thankful for Robby Gordon and the whole team for giving us this opportunity here this weekend at Bristol and hopefully in the very near future we’ll have some exciting news to announce about what our longer-term plans are.”

Gordon’s team fell out of the top 35 for part of the year and missed the race at Pocono with Ted Musgrave qualifying the car. Although he has put two cars in the field in each of the last three races, Gordon said he won’t run two cars the rest of the year.

“We’ll focus once we get toward the end of the season on one car,” Gordon said. “We’ll get ready for next year and get our inventory built up for Daytona and Vegas.

“It’s just a fact of the economy. I feel like I’m a pretty good sales guy. I’ve been able to sell sponsorship for a long time now. I’ve got a new, creative way of marketing that I think will be able to change my race team, for sure.”

From Scenedaily