Ron Capps’ NAPA blog – 1/13/10

Hi, everyone

Well, here we are in West Palm Beach, Fla., in January….finally (grin). I have to say that it was a great off-season and a great holiday season spent with family, but I am so glad to be putting my NAPA AUTO PARTS fire suit back on and making runs down the track.

We just made our third test run to half-track and our incremental numbers were right on line with our national-record run of 4.02 seconds on two of the three runs so far. So, needless to say, Ace has his game face on already.

I just got the word that Martin Truex was one of the fastest cars at their tire test. I am looking forward to going to a few races and cheering Michael and Martin on from the sidelines, I have a good felling about that NAPA team over there as well!

This track has made our test session so nice, Mark Dawson from the Maple Grove track and Chad Head have really put together an effort with the people here at the West Palm track and made it so that we can really learn a lot with our runs. We will be here all this week and then Ace thinks we will be done and the NAPA guys will go back to the shop in Brownsburg, get everything ready and then head straight to Pomona for our opening race.

You will soon see the new paint scheme on our car. It isn’t changing a whole lot except there will be more yellow on the front end instead of the red that dominated the front of the car. I have to tell you, the car really looks awesome. The fans are gonna know the NAPA car pretty easily from the grandstands now.

We will be shooting the new NAPA commercials for 2010 next week and then, before you know it, the Winternationals will be here. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the historic race in Pomona and I look forward to all the cool stuff that NHRA has planned for the weekend. It would be nice to win such a big race, and the way that testing is going already, I have a pretty good felling about our chances.

I have to get suited up again for our next run. I will update you all later in the week again.

RC

Hi, Everyone

Well, I am packing my stuff for our “Cruising with Capps” fan cruise that leaves on Saturday for eight days. I am pretty pumped about it this year ‘cause we took a year off last year and it will be great to see everyone again. The cool part is that it leaves out of San Diego, which is only 30 minutes south of where I live, so it will be nice and close.

I flew back to Indy for the NAPA photo shoot last week with all of the 2010 stuff and, I have to tell you, the new paint scheme is awesome in person. I tried to sneak a spy photo of it to put on here, but as soon as I took the photo I had about seven guys in navy-colored suits with sunglasses and things sticking out of their ears tackle me and take my camera. I was able to get up and still make my flight, but they almost made me late. The bad news is that they took my spy photos. The good news, though, is that there will be a picture of the new paint scheme in a press release that is coming out soon from DSR.

The NAPA crew is busy at our DSR shop getting all the new stuff ready, and just to show you how awesome my guys are, they have cut up one of our cars from last year and made me a real cockpit and I am gonna have a real Christmas Tree hooked up to it so I can practice. The great people at PortaTree ( http://www.portatree.com/ ) have always taken care of me and set me up with a hand-held tree to practice with. And they even sent me a full-sized tree that I have had here at the house and now I will have a real Funny Car cockpit hooked to a real Christmas Tree to practice with. It will have the Tree hooked up to my handbrake and my gas pedal so that even the staging of the car for practice will be just like I do it on the track.

That is the kind of commitment my guys have. I only mentioned to them how hard it is to actually “practice” in these Funny Cars and they took it upon themselves to make that for me. I can’t wait until I get it here and I am able to put my helmet on and jump in and practice, although I have a feeling that I will have to fight Taylor and Caden for it (grin).

I always find myself telling friends and family about some of the great restaurants and places that I see or experience, which comes with the traveling part of my job, so I am gonna share some of those time to time on this blog, I am sure this is how Siskel and Ebert got their start, right? (grin). For instance, if and when you are in Indianapolis, Oceanaire and St. Elmo’s are two of our favorite places to eat, and whenever I am in Vegas, my good friend Kerry Simon has a couple restaurants in town. But his place called Simon’s, which is in The Palms Place, is a must.

I read quite a bit, and some of the books that I have read this year are “The Shack,” the Twilight series (Taylor and I had a race to see who could finish the series first), and Jelly’s Gold by David Housewright. I usually spend most of my time in the non-fiction and autobiography section, but the last few years I have
been more and more intrigued by other athletes’ thoughts on things as well as books by some of the musicians that I have listened to in the past. Some of the books I have read recently are books by Chuck Liddel, Randy Couture, and Tito Ortiz from the UFC. Ty Murray is a friend and I really found his book very enlightening. A very hard book to find is one that my biggest hero, former football player/Cowboy Walt Garrison, wrote years ago, I had the pleasure of getting to know Walt through my sponsor Copenhagen all those years and, if you can find the book, it is one of those books you will pass around to your friends, for sure.

Some great books from the music world that I have read lately are books by Nikki Sixx from Crue, as well as a great book called “The Dirt,” which is the story of the whole band Motley Crue from the beginning (Vince told me that it is going to be made into a motion picture). I’ve also read the book in which Anthony Keidis from the Chili Peppers wrote a great story about his life, the book by the comedian Artie Lang, and the book that Don Rickles wrote, to name a few others.

I have to share this as well: I was on my way to the photo shoot in Indy last week and I had been told about a book called “The Road” that was gonna be released as a movie late in 2009, I highly recommend it if you are a book-reading type of person, and the movie is expected to clean up at the 2010 awards. It will grab a hold of you and, in fact, I had a woman sitting next to me on my flight home who asked me a couple of times if I was all right because I kept having to put the book down and wiping my eyes and shaking my head. Pretty powerful book.

Anyway, I think we have just clinched the “best Christmas lights” in the neighborhood again this year. No, there really is no prize, just the fact that you can see the lights while driving up the street is good enough for me. And when they come on at dusk you see everyone else’s lights dim. Did I mention that I am
a pretty competitive guy? (grin).

This is the time of the year that I usually start to get the scripts sent to me for the upcoming NAPA commercials. They have always had the best commercials every year for such a long time, and you can always tell when I receive them by all the laughing out loud coming from me in the other room, and it is usually because I can picture Michael Waltrip saying his lines. Martin Truex will also be part of the new commercials, and I can’t wait to work with him. I know NAPA will do a great job on making these commercials very funny, so get ready for them.

Well, I have to finish up my packing for the cruise and wrap up some loose ends since I will be gone for eight days. Have a great week and I will talk to you again before Christmas.

RC

Hi, everyone

Man, what a great season it was for our NAPA team. This has been one of those seasons that you just didn’t want to end, and, while the off-season is going to be nice, I can’t wait to get started back up again. I know that we are going to try and do most if not all of our pre-season testing down in Florida in January, but we will have to see how that goes, I suppose. That was kinda our plan last year, but, to be honest, it is a good thing that we decided to make a few more runs in Arizona because we found a gremlin and we found it just in time before showing up in Pomona, where we won the opening race.

Let me go back a little bit. We had a great season-ending race in Pomona. We qualified very well and made it all the way to the semi-finals, which put us third in the Full Throttle Championship for 2009. Third place is pretty good. In fact, we won five races, which is the most of any of the Funny Car teams and we had no DNQs, which is pretty stout considering the competition.

We went to the awards ceremony the next night and then I drove up to Santa Maria to participate in the Blaine Johnson Memorial Golf Tournament. I played with two of the usual suspects: announcer extraordinaire Alan Reinhart and our good friend Danny Shamoon. And this year we had Sportsman standout Kyle Rizzoli, who is a longtime friend of the family, playing with us. We played pretty well; I just don’t think we can beat the guys with the “better” pencil (grin).

I came home for a day and then took Shelley up to Napa for the weekend - Napa the “wine country” destination, not NAPA “the store,” for the record. lol. It was a celebration of 17 years and we did some wine tasting, and met up with our good friends Jeff and Teri for an awesome dinner. We hit a great spa and then on Saturday we drove over to Petaluma for another surprise. One of my favorite bands growing up is a Northern California band called Y&T. My friends and I drove up and down California to see these guys play when I was in high school. About five years ago I called a rock-and-roll industry friend and asked for a favor. I knew the band was from NorCal, and I wanted to invite my hero and Y&T band leader Dave Meniketti to our race at Infineon Raceway. I called his studio and 10 minutes later he called back and he and his wife Jill came out to the race that year and they have since been to quite a few race and are officially addicted to the nitro like the rest of us. Well, every November they play a sold-out two nights at a great little club in Petaluma called the Mystic Theater that I have tried every year to attend but something always seemed to come up. Not this time, though. I invited my two childhood friends Mike and Dan Donati to meet us for the show and what a show it was. We had a great time and they sound just as good now as they did back then.

We flew home on Sunday and when I walked into the airport I looked up at the TV screen and Michael was leading the race down in Homestead! I thought that he was gonna end the season with a win and THAT would have been pretty darn cool.

Well, we landed just in time to turn around and drive two hours North to Ontario, Calif., to watch my daughter Taylor compete in the 2009 WesCon Regional Cheer Championships, which she and her team won. It was a huge win because there were over 100 teams at this deal. At one point the event was delayed four hours and she had to be there at 9 a.m., and, get this, they finally performed at around 10 p.m. on a Sunday night!!! Sounds like some of our races (grin). It now means they are headed to Disneyworld in Florida for the National Championships. We are extremely proud of her!

We are going to stay close to home for Thanksgiving and go to Shelley’s parents’ house and then I am gonna head back to Indianapolis for a NAPA photo shoot with all of the new 2010 colors and paint schemes. The car is going to have a small change in looks and I know you all are going to like it as well. I will see if I can get a spy photo or two to put on this blog next week.

It will be back home for a couple of days and then we are off on the seven-day “Cruising with Capps” cruise and I can’t wait. You all have a great Thanksgiving, enjoy your time with family, and I will talk to you soon!

RC

Hi, Everyone

I am at my brother’s house with family the morning after our race here in Las Vegas and the reality has kinda set in that winning a championship in 2009 isn’t going to happen for our NAPA team. But I can tell you that we are going to try our hardest to make sure we end the season in Pomona with a win and stand up on the stage No. 2 if we can.

It was a fun weekend and, although we opened qualifying on Friday night with a great 4.04-second run that put us No. 2 in qualifying, I knew that Ace and the NAPA team were ready for race day and the warmer conditions that it was going to bring. And I personally felt very good about our chances. We had a very tough first round and the team responded with a great 4.13-second run which set us up against Tim Wilkerson for the second round and he had run a 4.15-second lap in the first round, so we knew it was gonna be a tough match-up. We lost to him with a great 4.15-second run to his 4.16-second e.t., which was a loss by two
hundredths of a second. A very tough way to lose and an even tougher way to end the day and weekend.

The good news is that we have a great race car that is capable of running as good as any team on the grounds and, with our last race of the season in Pomona in two weeks, it’s going to be fun to see what we can do there as well. We made it to the final round there last year and had the best car on race day, so I will be pulling my belts a little tighter because I know Ace will have our NAPA car hooked up, for sure.

I am doing an appearance here at the SEMA show on Tuesday and then fly home for a day and then out to Pennsylvania for the QUAKER CITY MOTOR PARTS COMPANY/NAPA marketing conference, I always look forward to spending time with those folks and the best part is that it is in Hershey, and if you have never been there, it is like being in the Willie Wonka movie, I suppose, because it smells like wonderful chocolate everywhere you go. lol.

While the season will end on Sunday night in Pomona in a handful of days, the schedule and the air miles I log surely won’t slow down, as we will have the NHRA awards banquet on Monday night, then I will then head up to the Central Coast of California to go to the Blaine Johnson Memorial golf tourney to celebrate Blaine’s life by trying to have half as much fun in life as he did (grin). I am then going to be gone the following weekend for our anniversary and then back home for a day and then off to Indy to do the photo shoots for all of our 2010 NAPA stuff. Then we get to go on the “Cruising with Capps” seven-day cruise with friends and fans for some fun before coming home and getting ready for Thanksgiving.

I know time will fly by and before you know it we will be right back in Pomona!

Talk to you next week!

RC

Hi, everyone,

Well, not a good way to start the week or the day. I just got to Atlanta and our flight out of Richmond early this morning was late getting into Atlanta and I missed the connection flight back to California. That’s normally isn’t so bad, but I was on my way back to get to Shaun Carlson’s funeral later today about an hour north of home and now I am going to miss it, and it that is a bummer. The weather is pretty bad, so hopefully I can still get home in time to surprise Caden by picking him up from school.

We had such a great weekend in Richmond and, for starters, the 4.04-second run that we made on Saturday was a sign that we have our NAPA hot rod back. It qualified us No. 2. In fact, the top three qualifiers were all DSR Funny Cars, which was pretty cool.

We made some great runs on race day and made it to the semifinals and, with everyone in front of us in the points losing early, we were able to make up quite a bit of ground in the points, ending up fourth when the day was over. We are basically a little bit over three rounds (each round win on Sunday is 20 points) behind the points leader with two races remaining, in Las Vegas and Pomona.

I am home for a couple of days and then off to Charlotte for a NAPA appearance, which includes giving rides to customers in a two-seater dragster. That should be fun.

We had a great time running the special Susan G. Komen car last weekend. I want to thank Mr. Susor and everyone at NAPA for the donation on behalf of everyone under the NAPA umbrella, but I really want to thank you guys for letting us represent the cause as well. I had fans all weekend telling me their stories that drew them to the cause, and I am pretty pumped to watch Michael try to put his car next weekend in the winner’s circle in Charlotte.

We will have our regular NAPA body back on the chassis for Vegas in two weeks. I’m looking forward to getting back in the car and making a run at the 2009 championship. We won the Vegas race this year in April, so, obviously, seeing Vegas on the schedule again is good.

Gotta run. Talk to you next week!

RC

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

Hi, everyone

Well, here we are on a Monday and I am in between runs as the NAPA guys are getting the car ready to make another test run at the Texas Motorplex.

After the very strange events of race-day eliminations yesterday that saw a one-lane race track, Ace decided last night to bring the chassis down from up in the trailer that we ran for the first half of the season. As you may remember from reading my blogs throughout the year, we had a new chassis built during the off-season and we started running it in Norwalk back in June. We then took the car we ran the first half of the season (with four wins) and had Norm and the guys in our DSR chassis shop front-half that car and we put it upstairs in the trailer as our back-up car and started running our current car which was built as a duplicate to the chassis we ran the first half of the season.

Well, as a casual fan, you may have heard crew chiefs talk about bringing new pipe out, and it is funny, ‘cause I have heard stories from the best crew chiefs in our sport, and for that matter in other types of auto racing, that go into a slump of sorts, and as a person on the outside, you wonder to yourself how such a talented person suddenly seems to “forget” how to make that race car as fast as it was not so long ago?? In most cases, you finally hear that they change cars and, whammo!, the car is in the hunt again.

Our case seems to fall into the same boat. While we were also trying new parts that DSR has made in-house, at the same time we brought out the new chassis. You never think that it could be the chassis, and usually you hope it isn’t too late.

We just made three runs in conditions that were not as good as yesterday’s first round of competition on race day, and the car ran quicker than the best run yesterday. The NAPA Dodge is reacting for Ace like it did earlier in the year, which is the best news for me. When we made the first run, it was like putting an old shoe on for me. I felt very comfortable right away and we have done it all within the “original” testing guidelines that NHRA imposed, which I can’t say for all the teams in the Countdown. That still has a lot of the teams rubbed the wrong way.

I haven’t been this excited in quite some time and the question will be, is it too little, too late? Not a chance. Robert Hight went from last to first in the Countdown points in two races. We have four races left and, more importantly, we have our NAPA hot rod back and our team is up for the challenge, believe me.

Then I got even better news this morning. We are getting to run our “Adaptive One Brakes” body this weekend in Memphis, and when I last saw that body on the car, we were pouring champagne on it in the winner’s circle in Topeka, so it couldn’t come at a better time.

We have the greatest teammates at DSR, the most talented people in every position at DSR, whether it is our hospitality people or the guys and gals at the shop or the race team members. It is so much fun to walk into the pit area every morning.

Speaking of teammates, Matt Hagan and his wife Rachel just welcomed their little girl Penny Louise into the world this morning. Congrats to the Hagans!!

My other teammates have had a great last two weeks as well. Cory Mac won the Charlotte race and his team is very much in the hunt. Tony Schumacher and the Army team won yesterday and took back the points lead, and Jack Beckman and the Valvoline/MTS team went to the final round yesterday and made a big move in the points. So, keeping a smile on Don’s face is the goal and our teams have done that a lot this year.

We are in Memphis this weekend. I am meeting with our local NAPA people for a get-together on Thursday and on Thursday night NHRA asked me to be involved in the Fan Fest downtown in Memphis. We did it last year and had a great time with the fans, and I look forward to seeing you all there again this year as well.

Talk to you next week.
RC

RON CAPPS’ BLOG – 9/25/09
Hi, everyone

I believe that timing is everything. I know you hear people say that a lot, but nowadays more than ever I believe it. I think it is true in life, in business, and especially now I believe that timing is everything when it applies to racing and, really, more now that we have the Countdown points system in the NHRA.

Our NAPA team has had such a great season this year. To win five races so far, to open the season with two straight wins, and to lead the points for most of the year is a dream. But it means nothing now that we have started what is a playoffs system for the next five races.

We roll into Dallas this weekend in fourth place in the points and only a round and a half from taking back the points lead, so now more than ever is the time for us to get back to where our NAPA team deserves to be - at the top.

We had a great weekend in Charlotte last weekend. We qualified very well, but our Sunday wasn’t as good, as we were upset the first round. We have put last weekend behind us and have already started thinking about Dallas this weekend, Ace strapped me into my quickest quarter-mile run of my life at the Texas Motorplex just a few years ago, and I have the feeling he is already planning another great weekend for the NAPA team. With only five races left to try and win a championship, we need a solid weekend to put the pressure on our opponents and get back to the form we showed earlier in the season.

We have been quietly working on a tune-up that we feel will keep us a little ahead of the competition. It has been a work in progress since, well, the race in Denver that we won, and I knew it was something that wasn’t going to happen in one run in one race. And, honestly, I knew it wouldn’t happen in three or four races, but I also new there was a big light at the end of the tunnel.

This weekend is calling for 90-degree temps, which will play into the hands of the teams that are the most disciplined and the teams that have worked the hardest at being the best, and in those situations I know I am driving the best car put together by the best group of guys on the grounds. We now just have to prove it. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Grin.

Talk to you next week!

RC

i, Everyone

Just now getting home from the “Prelude to the Dream” race at Eldora Speedway. It was another great success with another big check written by Tony Stewart for a great cause. I feel so lucky to be able to race in these different types of race cars and to be able to raise money for such important causes. The NASCAR late model that raised money for a cure for Autism, the Prelude race that raised money for the Fallen Soldiers and the one I can’t wait to share with you guys is the Funny Car that I will be driving in three weeks at our NHRA race in Richmond, Va. I have seen the car and as soon as I get the green light (pun intended, lol), I will post a picture of it on here. But I can tell you that they will have the collector die-cast cars available at that race. Usually, when someone runs a special car, it takes a while for the collector die-cast to be available. Not this time, though. NAPA worked real hard to make sure that the fans will be able to get their hands on it right away.

Well, the Countdown is finally here and now it is going to be a knock-down, drag-out six-race shootout for the championship. In fact, we have four races in a row coming up to kick off our Countdown and we start this weekend in Charlotte and the NAPA team has shown that it is deserving of a chance at winning a championship. We have won five races this year, which is the most of any other Funny Car team, and the NAPA team is listed as the national record holder with our 4.02 run we made in Arizona back in February. But, all of that means nothing right now because the points have been reset for the top 10 teams in points and now every run a team makes will be more important than ever.

After the long weekend in Indy at the U.S. Nationals race it was nice to get a weekend off. We had a surprise put together for Shell at a really cool small club called the “Belly Up” tavern in Solano Beach that we hit once in a while and this time it was the “Pine Mountain Logs” band that is one of our favorites to see live. We had about 12 of us that got together for dinner beforehand. My brother Jon and his family made the long trek over to join the friends and family as well, so we made the best of an off weekend before it got crazy again with our schedule.

Taylor’s cheer games are in full swing and Caden’s soccer team had its first game this last weekend, so it was good to be able to see that before we hit the road next weekend.

Ace has been working on a lot of things. Mostly he has been working on fine tuning his combination from earlier in the year. We were able to try some different things under race conditions that I really think is going to put us ahead of our competitors and now all we have to do is prove it. Wish us luck!

RC

Hi, everyone

Just got to the track in Indianapolis for testing on Wednesday. I am looking around and it almost looks like a national event here at the test.

Last weekend, in Reading, Pa., we had rain in the forecast for most of the weekend, and with that chance of showers it was crucial to make sure we got the NAPA car to the finish line and get qualified before worrying about racing on Sunday. The first qualifying session on Friday looked like it could possibly be our only run and, unfortunately, we smoked the tires basically at the step of the throttle and, when the first qualifying session was over, we were 17th.The forecast looked pretty grim on Saturday and I was starting to think that our qualifying streak might be over, especially when the chance of rain for Saturday was 92 percent. I woke up on Saturday morning and couldn’t believe my eyes. The sun was out! Man, talk about excitement. I went from thinking that we weren’t gonna make the show on Sunday to hoping that it would stay dry enough to get at least one run in. And we finally did on Saturday afternoon and Ace and the NAPA guys did a great job. We ran a 4.20-second run that put us 12th in qualifying, and then the rains came again and that ended qualifying.

We had a tough match-up with Bob Tasca in the opening round and lost a close race. He went on to win the event. They ran great all weekend and earned it, for sure.

We had a really, really good time at the NAPA store appearance in York, Pa., on Thursday prior to the race. They did a great job of promoting the appearance and they really seemed to have their act together and great people behind the counter. Thanks again, guys. See you this winter again, I hope.

We are going to test all day here in Indy and then I will fly home for a night and then head up to my NAPA store appearance in Visalia, Calif., on Friday afternoon. I am looking forward to hanging out with my NAPA teammate Eric Holmes who drives for Bill McAnally Racing in the NASCAR Camping World Series. It’s always great to see those guys and now Eric is an official NAPA store owner. We have plenty to talk about.

Our next race is the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis. It is the biggest and most prestigious race on our circuit. It is also a race that I have never won. Now, my crew chief Ed “the Ace” McCulloch has won it as a driver, like six times, so the advice that he gives out for this race is huge for me. It is a long and very demanding weekend and I hope we finally get an Indy trophy. We are ready to make our first test run. Talk to you next week.

RC