Race #7 at New Smyrna Speedway
11-11-06

Racing 3 weeks in a row! Everybody's ready to take a week off but me! Its sad to think that we only have one more race and then we won't be racing again until next February. We finally got the car working pretty good now and I think if I could just get a little more seat time I could start running up front a little bit.

After all the talk about me driving it in too hard, it turns out that wasn't the problem at all. Last night we keep closing up the stagger and, when we got down to about 1 & 3/4 inches, the car stopped stepping out on me as I tried to get back hard in the gas... (more)

After calling everybody we could think of for advise, from the car builder to some of our trusted racing buddies, we finally decided to draw from some experience we had from when were trying to figure out the TQ. We had a similar problem in the TQ except it was always tight. We read somewhere that we needed to start by getting the car to turn to the center and don't worry about what the car was doing coming off the corner. Once we got the car to turn in and stick, we could adjust the stagger to get the car to come off the corner like I wanted it to.

In the first practice the car was a little loose going into the turn so we added a little more preload to the sway bar and went out again. This time the car turned in real nice but I was still pretty loose coming off. Since the corner entry was good we didn't change the chassis at all but added 2 lbs of air to the left rear tire. In the next practice the car was about half way to where it needed to be so we reset the tire pressures again adding yet a few more pounds to the left rear to get ready for the feature.

They put me in 5th for the start which is right where I like to start. This way I can sort of pace myself in the beginning but I'm not so far back that I have to try to make up a lot of time on the track. The 2 cars in front of me were sort of slow in the practices and I figured that the fast cars behind me would drop to the bottom to try to get around us. My plan was to drop to the bottom first and see if I could get past them too. I guess when everybody saw me go to the bottom they all decided to go to the top. It took me 2 laps to get by the 3rd place starter and by that time about 6 cars had gotten by me around the top.

Now in 10th place I settled in and tried to be smooth so I could catch back up with the cars in the front. I was making some progress but on lap 10 I got into something slick on the track in turn one and me and the car behind me both spun out. Of course that brought out the caution which wasn't so bad because it let us all catch up and we were pretty close to being the last cars on the lead lap anyway.

On the restart I was planning to get a jump on the car ahead of me but I went a little too soon and had to get into the brakes. We ran a few laps just as we started and then another caution came out for a wreck on the front stretch which took out 2 cars. Now I was in 8th place.

On the next restart I again tried un-successfully to get under the car in front of me and going into turn one I lost another position to a car that went around me on the outside. He also got around the next car putting me right back behind this slow car again. A car that was running 3rd or 4th got into the wall and had to leave the track which brought out the final caution on lap 14 and moved me back up to 8th.

I tried again to set up the car in front of me for a pass on the restart but they started a little slow and I couldn't do anything with him. Still, I ran him as hard as I could without hitting him and finally, with one lap to go, I got under him going into turn one and made the pass for a 7th place finish.

Even though there is one more race at New Smyrna Speedway this year, this race was the last one that counts towards the season points. We wanted to use this year to get me comfortable in the car while my crew learned what the car needed on the set up. I think we accomplished everything we set out too with one added bonus. It looks like I'll finish in the top 10 in points even though I only ran 7 races!