March 28, 2006

Long time, No hear!  Sorry about that.  I’ve got to get in the swing of this journal thing.  I had a great vacation between California and Atlanta.  I took the family and went 4-wheeling with a bunch of friends from DEI.  We had a blast and plan on doing it again real soon.  That’s the cool part about the NCTS, is the schedule is great when you have kids at home.  It’s a lot less hectic, which is bitter-sweet, considering fewer opportunities to race.  Hopefully that will change and some more opportunities will open up for Busch or Cup. 

As you will read in Jeffrey’s entry, he’s been pretty busy as well.  He had a great test in the Limited Late Model and I can’t express enough how proud I am of his transition from dirt.  He ran his first race and did exactly what he needed to do……Finish!  We have a long way to go, but I feel he’s definitely committed to racing and we’ll see what happens from here.

I am very excited about my program at ThorSport Racing (TSR).  We have made some personnel changes and have included the assistance from DEI in a number of areas that I hope will continue and add only valuable information to the organization at TSR to build off of.  We had a great qualifying effort at Atlanta and had a great night a head of us until lap 15, when I was pinched up into the wall and hit hard on both sides.  It damaged the handling of the truck and was no where close to being competitive with the way it was driving.  To say the least, I was very upset and not at all happy with the situation, but that’s racing and the unfortunate side to it is the TV coverage is not any better.  Some fans have been wondering what happened, so now ya know!

We are taken all the positive results we saw at Atlanta and moving on.    I have not driven at Martinsville since I practiced Steve Parks’ Pennzoil car for him a few years ago.  I drove there in my late model car in the early 90’s, but that’s about it.  We’re testing this week for preparation of the Martinsville race, so I feel good about that.  I love short tracks and know it will be exciting.  I’m looking forward to it!

See ya at the track!