Hi, everyone
It is Wednesday morning and I am at the gate in St. Louis for my flight to Richmond for this weekend’s race there. I had an appearance last night in Cape Girardeau, Mo., for Auto Parts and Tire and NAPA, of course. Met some great people with a great company and I look forward to doing it again soon.
Of course, we just raced in Memphis last weekend and my weekend got started off pretty cool by getting asked to do an appearance for the great folks at Federal Express that NAPA has a great relationship with. Their main hub is in Memphis and I showed up on Thursday morning to get all the security clearances done and then Tommy Saurenman and the guys took me on a pretty cool tour which really was an eye opener for me and it showed me what happens when I send a package overnight via FedEx. We did a meet-and-greet with all of the people who work behind the scenes and the best part of my day was when they took me out to where all of the planes were and I got to drive a B1200 tow tractor, which weighs about 120,000 pounds and it is that thing you see moving the 800,000-pound 747s around at the airport. As you can see in the photo, Tommy and I were flashing the Valvoline “V’ sign while I got to drive it around. It was pretty cool.
That night we had the NHRA fan fest and autograph session downtown. We had a great turnout and then the staff from the track took a bunch of us out on Beale Street. I would post some photos of that but they conveniently misplaced them (grin).
Our race weekend was pretty interesting in the fact that rain was in the forecast but never showed up until Sunday, which was a little bit of a surprise. We qualified in the ninth spot, but I could tell that Ace was fixing to hit his stride with the track conditions and our NAPA Dodge. We were lined up with Daniel Wilkerson in the first round and when the cars left the line our NAPA car started to rattle pretty bad, which usually means you have underestimated the track conditions and, looking back, all but two cars did that in the first round. When the rattle came, I gave the throttle a quick pedal, which means in a fraction of a second I lifted off the throttle and then pushed it back down. The car hooked up and away I went, which was good except that Dan’s car popped out my side window and he was ahead of me. Just about the time I thought we were in trouble, I saw a flash out of his car and he fell back. I thought that was due to his car smoking the tires out there a ways. Well, I pulled the parachutes, got the car slowed down and radioed back to Ace that our car had a little fire, but it quickly went out and it wasn’t until I got out of the NAPA Dodge at the top end that I learned that Dan had just missed our car and crashed and hit the wall in my lane.
Man, watching the replay made me realize how lucky we were that things didn’t turn out much worse. He was fine, thank God, and our NAPA guys got our car ready for the next round against Robert Hight. His team was on a roll, and nobody thought they could be stopped. It was probably the biggest race of the season for us. If we lost, we were most likely out of it for the championship, but, like I told our guys, our team has won five races this year, we are the current holder of the national record, and that we could do it. We had had the fire in the opening round, so our guys had to rebuild the car in a lot of ways. To have to do so before one of our most important runs of the season made for some drama, but Ace and the NAPA team rose to the occasion with an incredible 4.10-second run at 308 mph to Robert’s 4.11. To be honest, I don’t think Robert or I knew who won, it was that close.
It helped us move a little closer to the top in the points and, while we ended up losing in the semifinals in another very, very close race, we really felt like we have the same NAPA car again that we had for most of the season.
It was really cool to see the Kalitta team win the race. I don’t think there was anyone who was rooting against them and I am sure Scott was looking down with that grin he had.
I had gotten the terrible news that our good friend Shaun Carlson had passed away at the way too young age of 35 and, while he had been in and out of the hospital with a rare heart condition, we had talked several times about him coming out and racing again. We are gonna miss him sorely.
I spent Sunday night after the race at a very good sushi place downtown in Memphis with a good friend and took in the Beale Street scene once again afterward while watching the ESPN2 broadcast of the race that day and switching between the Brett Favre game on Monday Night Football as well. It was a great way to end a long but good weekend of racing.
As most of you know by now, with the announcement coming out yesterday, we are gonna be running a special paint scheme this weekend with the Susan G. Komen Foundation on our NAPA car. It has been hard to keep it a secret and especially now that they were actually going to have a limited number of die-cast collectable cars made in time to have at the Richmond race this weekend.
NAPA president Bob Susor had a great quote in the press release, one that really made me think about how our helping with the awareness of breast cancer may help save lives. It really makes makes us proud to run the car this weekend.
We are 88 points behind the leader and with three races left, we had to be flawless in every way possible and that kind of pressure is what we live for. I know that the NAPA crew guys once again have a bump in their step and Ace has that look in his eye and, for me as a driver, that really gets me pumped up.
This race in Richmond has the potential of record-setting conditions and that 4.02-second run that is the record could be broken here this weekend and if a team can run better than that run AND back it up with another run within the one percent, it is worth a bonus of 20 points, which is equal to one round win on Sunday. So, it should make for a very interesting weekend in that respect as well.
Talk to you next week!
RC
