Hey everyone. We arrived at the new zMax Dragway at Concord for a little open house party on Tuesday night. Let me tell you, when you roll up and you stare at the tower; it was like you were driving into Disney World. I didn’t see Mickey or Minnie, but Bruton was in the house. They did a fabulous job on the facility. Bruton just raised the bar for anyone wanting to build a drag strip. I had some fun that night hanging with Kurt Busch and Kasey Kahne, and I got to drive an El Camino with a big block that ran in the 14s and a pimped out Mercedes S-class that ran 12.80s.

We had a big press conference for the first race of the Countdown in downtown Charlotte which was pretty cool. Doug Herbert fired up his car and whapped the throttle. I have never seen so many reporters fall to there knees. LOL They finally got to see the power up nitromethane up close and it made their knees buckle. The next day, Thursday, we cruised to Hickory, N.C., to hang out with Matco Tools distributor Steve Kistler. We visited a motorcycle dealership and it was cool to hang out and talk to all the techs and see the variety of Matco tool boxes they had throughout the dealership. That was a Matco strong dealership. That evening, we had dinner with Alan Fugate, the local district manager from Matco, at Carraba’s in Concord. It was a really good time other than me being sick.

Charlotte was good to me aside from being really sick. I caught a bad sinus infection and bronchitis. I have to send a big thank you out to Dr. Phil Surface of NHRA. I was down and out and if I would have let it go, I would have ended up in the hospital instead of racing on Sunday. The Charlotte weekend at zMax Dragway was a good weekend. We ended up qualifying near the top and we made it to the final round with the Matco Tools dragster for the fifth time this season and were only 46 points from the lead. Here is a picture of my girl Wanda and a big group in a suite at Charlotte.

That got us together to head home for a few days before we went to Dallas. We flew in Thursday and go to do a cool truck ride with my boy Carlos Gastelum. Here is Carlos and me at the pit during the Dallas race. That’s one of the neat things about being with Matco. No matter where we go, we have family everywhere. Matco has 1,500 distributors in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. That night, my crew chief, Lee Beard, hooked it up and took us out to Pappas Bros. Let me tell you, it was one of the best steakhouses I’ve been to in my life. When Lee tells you it’s good, you better believe it’s good. We all thanked Lee for taking us out to that wonderful spot for an awesome dinner. It was cool to hang with the legend Richard Tharp, too. If you can make it to Pappas Bros., I suggest you get the ribeye.

Dallas wasn’t the weekend that we expected, but we came out of there second in the points. We missed the Friday night run, but ran well during the day. We had a spectacular race in the first round with Steve Torrence. They have a great race team. We made it to round two against Brandon, and had a few things that went wrong. We have a great team, we’re still second and still within striking distance of Tony and we’ll work hard and move on to Richmond. We’re going to make this deal come down to the wire at Pomona.

After the Dallas race, me and my boy Ted jumped on the plane and flew to Vegas for a meeting with all the Matco district managers. We got to hang with all the DMs. It was a lot of fun. I got to sit down on the blackjack table with my boy Don Rayburn on Tuesday night. First, we all chipped in $10 and had $160 down on black on the roulette table. We hit the first time and let it ride. Our goal was to change Circus Circus to Matco Circus by the end of the night. LOL Obviously that didn’t happen. So, Don and I hit the blackjack table. In less than an hour, we both walked away with some ching-ching. So, we called it a night.

Now, we’re in the airport to head back to Indy to spend a few hours with the fam and then head out to Memphis tomorrow morning. Until next time, as always, love, peach and hair grease, and I’m out like shout.