Our Motorcraft/Quick Lane team has a fight on our hands, and I can tell you one thing — we’re ready for it.

There’s only one race to go until the Countdown to the Championship, and we’re 10th in the NHRA Full Throttle Series Funny Car points, just a half-round out of ninth place.

We rolled the dice with some of the changes we had to make in Brainerd knowing: No. 1, we had two races before the Countdown begins; and No. 2, we are testing in Indy, so we’d have more time to shake down the changes.

We’ve struggled all year to get our car to go down the track consistently. It’s been a problem all season and was just magnified in Sonoma with the clutch failure. In Brainerd, our car was consistent on Friday, but it wasn’t fast enough. At the end of the day, conditions were good and teams were running in the 4.0s. The more we tried to stand on the tune-up the more temperamental the car became.

Now we’ll go straight to a test session in Indy this week.

Mentally, from a peace-of-mind standpoint, I’m thrilled to have this test session. The last thing we wanted to do was go to the race in Indy without making some clean runs.

At the end of the day, there’s no one more disappointed in how we’ve done the last few races than the guys who live and sleep with this race car and that includes me. We just have to get this thing fixed. Fortunately, we have this test session to do that, and trust me we are not far off. When you live on the edge of a razor blade a small move either way makes a big difference!

What we’ve found is the tuning window is too small. Nobody is perfect and right now our Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Shelby Mustang isn’t giving us a margin of error. We’re making adjustments to give ourselves a tuning window.

Being in the middle of such a tight points race means we get a lot of attention. We’ll try to think of it positively that way! I’ll tell you one thing, we want to steal as much TV time as we can for our sponsors, and from a drama standpoint, the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Shelby Mustang will get a whole lot of visibility at the Indy race!

I’m excited about Indy. It’s arguably our biggest race of the year, and I’ve done really well there. I’ve been to three final rounds in Indy, including last year’s runner-up to Mike Neff. I love being parked on that big stage. Our Motorcraft/Quick Lane team has always found a way to step up big when our backs are against the wall. I know we’ll do that again.

Hey, have you heard about this big Traxxas Nitro Shootout? This is a big deal for us! Everyone wants to make it into the big bonus event in Indy, so give us a vote on NHRA’s Facebook page!

Remember this slogan: “It’s not a race without a Shelby! Vote Tasca!”

VOTE TASCA NOW: http://www.facebook.com/NHRA