I don’t really know where to begin on this one.  The writing was pretty easy the first couple of weeks, it’s become more difficult the past few.  I am an engineer after all, not exactly prone to story telling.

I’m in the plane flying back to Denver.  That’s a good start, no testing this week.  We were in Indianapolis last Monday and Tuesday for a tire test.  Testing is boring, long tedious days without any excitement.  But Indy is just such a spectacular place.  I got to spend about 20 mins by myself first thing in the morning on the second day just wandering around pit lane and the front straightaway, from corner 1 back to the yard of bricks.  I thoroughly enjoyed that.

I got to see my parents Wednesday on their way home from Arizona, and we discovered there’s a Bubba Gumps in Denver which makes me happy.  And then Thursday afternoon we flew to Alabama.  It’s never really been on my list of places to see, but the weather was beautiful the entire time so no complaints.   Thursday night we went to a Japanese place and I had the first sushi that I actually enjoyed, a shrimp crunch roll.

We had two practies on Friday, although in typical for us speedway fashion we only ran one, and only about 20 laps in it.  There just isn’t anything to learn really, so why put miles on the motor?  Made it a good day to try and get ahead on some stuff, and I’m now almost 3 weeks ahead on some of the prerace documents.  The car seemed ok in practice, so we buttoned her up in preparation for qualifying on Saturday.

Saturday was just qualifying at noon.  Talladega is an impound race, which means that we aren’t allowed to do anything to the car after qualifying before the race.  So saturday morning it had to be prepped and setup for qualifying and the race.  And we didn’t run very well in qualifying.  We knew we weren’t going to be great, but I at least hoped for a little more than that.  But as Martin commented, ‘we made the field on time’ (not a provisional) so that’s a plus!  And we were out of there before 2 pm which suggested possibilities…except that I was in a small town in Alabama.  I ended up having a nap and working out before team dinner back at the same Japanese place.  This time though we had hibachi apparently, the thing you see on tv where the guy cooks your food right at your table.  And it was delicious.

A sunny raceday without any chance of rain was really all I could hope for today.  We got everything setup and were ready to roll for noon.  Today was my 2nd race catching the first empty gas can, and I was a little excited and a little nervous.  It’s a pretty good adrenaline rush for me.  I only ended up having to catch 1 can so that wasn’t to bad.  We started 36th and worked our way forward the first stint, until we got a little bit hot and Martin had to find some clean air, which back us up to the mid 20s.  And we just worked from there, and rode the wave  Up to 2nd at one point, back to 20th, back up to the top 5, and back down again.   Restrictor plate racing is really about hoping that the race ends when you’re on top of your wave. And that worked pretty well for us.  With about 20 to go we got all strung out and we’re running 6th, and looking like we could stay out of trouble.  I would happily have taken that, but with 2 to go it got exciting as we were expecting.  For a second it looked like 3rd or better was possible, then it looked like we were headed for 12th, and we ended up 5th.  I will take that any day at Talladega. 

And the 22 had a bad day, so we’ve moved into 2nd in the point standings which is pretty awesome.  To Kansas on Thursday…

So lets start with the good: I didn’t eat a gas can, and we got our 8th top 10 of the season.  The bad is that it should have been a top 5.

Richmond is one of the places I was most looking forward to.  It’s just a cool track I think, 3/4 mile with a decent amount of banking, it’s unique and usually seems to put on a good show.  We got to the track on Thursday to go through inspection and get everything setup.  We stay at a nice Westin hotel and there’s a good Mexican restaurant withint walking distance.  Due to the schedue of the 2 day shows we did team dinner Thursday night.

And that seemed to produce a good Friday.  We had good long run race pace in practice in both sessions, and top 5 speed in Q trim in practice.  We ended up qualifying 6th, though we coulda/woulda/shoulda been second or third, the car was that good.  But a good Friday, 6th is a good spot to start from, if the car was good in the race we could win from there.  And just as important, stay out of trouble.

We knew all week that the forecast for Saturday looked bad, and it did not disappoint.  The garage didn’t open until 1 pm and it rained all morning.  If anything it picked up in the afternoon.  Nascar got all of the cars through inspection, and fairly promptly delayed the race until Sunday.  That was alright with me, we were scheduled to fly back to Denver Saturday night and then to Indy on Sunday.  So instead we would just fly straight to Indy Sunday after the race.

It rained again this morning, but stopped shortly after we arrived at the track, and the sun even came out for a bit.  I found out this morning that I would be catching the first empty gas can from the gas man during pit stops today.  This is something that had been mentioned before, though I thought it was just the guys playing a joke on the rookie.  Apparently I was wrong.  This was also the first week I didn’t have anything to add to the pit box, which was quite nice.  Just made sure everything was working and then back to the hauler for the pre-race meeting.  After the meeting I got changed into Todd’s fire suit and shoes and headed to pit road.  We started 6th and worked up to 4th the first run, the car was good.  We ran as high as 3rd for awhile I think, and never fell below 6th or 7th.  The pit crew was fast today, and I didn’t drop a single gas can!  I was warned not to let them hit me in the head, as the gas man is a big guy and he’s in a hurry to get rid of the empty can and grab the second full one.  And then we put on a bad set of tires.  Of course we didn’t know they were bad at the time.  We were running 4th at the time, and it turned out to be the start of a very long run.  They made the car really tight in the middle of the corner, and Martin struggled and fell all the way back to 17th.  We were a few laps from going a lap down when the caution flag finally flew.  From there it was damage control, we made a few changes to the car and it ran much better on new tires.  Martin worked back up to 10th, but that’s as much as we could get.  It was a frustrating result given how well we ran, and the fact that we had a really good chance to beat the guys around us in points.  It seems they are going to be very consistent and we have to take advantage of those opportunities when we can.  As Gary said after the race, ‘you can’t finish 10th with a 5th place car, you have to finish 3rd.’

I am now flying to Indianapolis for a test that’s supposed to be 3 days (Mon – Wed) though the weather doesn’t look great for Wednesday.  This weekend is Talladega which should be interesting…