Race #3 at New Smyrna Speedway
09-30-06 - VIDEO

Man it's been a long time since I got to race! It sure is good to be back on the track.

I've spent the last 5 weeks really thinking about what I need to do to get this car figured out. It's sort of funny but it seems that every article I read about race car drivers lately mentions something about how hard it is to learn to have patience. Dale Jr. said in an interview I saw that he finally learned to do what the car wanted to do. Boy, did that really hit home...

I've been trying so hard to win but I haven't always had a winning car. I finally realized that if you push the car beyond what it wants to do you can really get into trouble. My dad and my crew chief came up with a plan that we would look at the other cars and try to size up about where I was in terms of where my car was capable of finishing. Then, it was my job to try to get that position rather than trying to win. It seemed like a good plan but when we got to the track this week we were clearly the slowest car in the field.

There were 11 cars there and some of them were from the Goodyear Challenge series which fields the best Limited Late Model cars and drivers in the state. We figured that a few of them would drop out by either breaking down or wrecking so we set a goal of finishing 6th or 7th. Just to make things a little harder for me, my dad went down to the track office and told them that I had no business starting up front. So, they put me to the rear. One car didn't come out for the race and a few others lagged back on the line up so I wound up starting the race in 8th.

We had been tight all night in practice and had tried several things to loosen the car up but nothing was really working. We talked to a few people about what the car was doing and got some advise but then my dad mentioned that he thought that the right front spindle might be bent because he notice that the brake rotor appeared to be rubbing on something. After he mentioned that everybody said that there probably wasn't anything we could do to make the car better until we replace the spindle.

All and all the car wasn't that bad. It was drivable but it just wasn't very fast. So, we decided to go out and get some seat time and work on the patience thing a little bit. The plan was like in the first race where I was supposed to let them go on the start and wait to see how they made it through the first turn. Then, when things settled down, I was supposed to find my groove and see what the car would comfortably do and that's exactly what I did.

Like in practice, in the first few laps my car was kind of tight but once the tires got some heat in them the car felt better and better. In, fact by about half way I was starting to make up a little time on the cars in front of me but then one of the cars up front got spun and the yellow came out and during the caution my tires cooled off and my car was back to tight again. On the restart the car that spun was put behind me but he got a terrific run coming off of turn 4 and blew right past me.

When he spun he knocked off the left half of his rear spoiler so he had no down force on the left side and his car was really loose. He just about lost it twice right in front of me so, even though I was only running half throttle down the straight aways and could have passed him back, I was afraid that he was going to wreck and take me with him so I just cruised and watched him make a few pretty incredible saves as he slid and swerved to the finish.

So, I started the race in 8th, dropped back to 10th, was as high as 7th after the caution, and then finally finished right where I started in 8th place. My dad always says, " Any race where we can push the car back in the trailer is a good race!" Since there wasn't a scratch on the car, I guess it was a pretty good race.

Next week is a 50 lap race. I have never ran a race that long before but I have always thought I would do good in longer races because I get faster as the race goes on. A lot of times I get left behind on the start and then don't have enough time to catch back up before the end of the race. These guys tend to mess up early in the race and crash up front on the starts so it seems that all this may play in my favor. I plan to lay back a little on the start like I have been doing and save my best for last when the cars are spread out and should be easier to pass. Between now and then we are going to get a new spindle and then check everything on the car about 50 times so that we know that the car will finish the 50 laps if I can!