5/27/06
Looks like Summer decided to make a visit, man was it warm. We started out the night loose in warm-ups. A couple of twists here and there and the car was better in the heat. I started 8th and got up to second pretty quick, but couldn't get past the 4 car before the checkers. Jimmy and I decided to make a few more changes for hot laps, but we were still missing something. I ran down to Wayne's to pick his brain and with that info we decided to make a pretty major spring change before the feature. I started 16th and it seemed like I couldn't go anywhere. We ran about 10 straight laps under green and when the caution came out I think I was 12 or 10th. We ran about 3 more laps and I made it to 7th. The car was just awesome, the best it's ever been up top. On the restart I got going and as we went through turn 3, someone got turned around in front of me and I had to spin to miss him. I got into the wall a little bit with the left rear corner, but no serious damage. I started at the tail with about 6 laps to go and I think I made it to 15th. Tough night, but at least we had a great car.
5/20/06
Rain, rain, rain...
5/13/06
Too bad racing isn't like being a weatherman, you could be wrong
all the time and still get paid...
So even though it was windy and cold, it wasn't rainy and we got to race.
We started the evening out much better than last week, but that may have been an
omen. The car was a little tight in the middle so we freed it up a bit for
the heat race. I started 8th and got to 4th in about 2 laps, and that's
where I finished. We tried some more stuff in hot laps, but we made the
car too free. We backed out some of the changes and that had us ready for
the feature. I started 14th and by the time the first caution came out on
lap 3 I was in 7th. There were about 4 more cautions before halfway and
each time I would get my clock cleaned on the restart and by the time the next
caution flew I had battled my way back to....you guessed it, 7th. I spent
the rest of the race trying to pass some very wide cars and just stay out of
trouble. Unfortunately we didn't back out enough of the changes we made to
the chassis so we were just a little too loose to get to the front. I was
able to nip Frankie at the line to grab us a fine 6th place finish.
5/6/06
So as you might imagine, we took care of the shift linkage so that problem will never happen again. The one bright side to a miserable start last week is that we'll be handicapped to the front of the line this week. We rolled off the trailer for warm-ups and we were absolute junk. The guys got to work and we made a ton of changes for the heat race. I started on pole and the car was much better and we picked off the win.. We make a few more tweaks for hot laps and one more small change for the feature where we were starting on the pole. It doesn't happen often, but tonight the car was perfect. I could do anything I wanted with it. The race had a bunch of cautions and the only time I saw another car was after a late race restart when the 22 showed me his nose going into 3 and other than that I think we had them covered. Congratulations Kevin on your first win as a car owner and thanks to Jimmy and the crew for all the hard work the last couple of weeks!