In the words of our team owner David Powers, “I’m going to be forthright with you NHRA.com blog readers.” I’m sorry it’s taken so long to update. I’m riding along to Bristol in our black Tundra as I type.

Over the past three weeks, I’ve sold my yellow Viper on e-Bay. I got a call from e-Bay Motors and they said it was the highest viewed car in the history of e-Bay motors. I guess it helped to have ESPN2 talk about it on the TV show. A gentlemen from Colorado Springs, Colo., bought the car. It went for $75,000. I was sad to see it go. I miss my car. It was my dream car. But, it’s in good hands. He flew in to Las Vegas and drove it back home. He e-mailed some pictures from his trip home.



I spent the rest of my time at home getting ready for the six-week swing. I sent Rocco and Ozzie off to their mom, Tammy Lawrence, for the summer. I’m going to be away from home for most of June and July and she’ll take good care of them.



I flew to Norwalk right after Englishtown and was excited about getting to Norwalk after our meet-and-greet display at Matco Tools. That was cool to see the Matco headquarters in Stow, Ohio. I got the full tour and met a lot of nice folks that don’t have the chance to come to the track. I also got to hang out with some other Matco-sponsored drivers, like Angelle Sampey and Marty Nothstein, whom I don’t see on a regular basis. Bazemore and I also did a nice media tour in Toledo, Ohio. We visited three TV stations on Thursday afternoon to help promote the race. We also spoke with Matt Markey of the Toledo Blade during our drive.



It was a great weekend. I met a lot of nice people at Norwalk. At Englishtown, I brought out some new T-shirts. They’re for sale at the PiranaZ trailer. They have a cool Vegas theme to them. You also can get them online at the PiranaZ website. It’s neat to sign your own T-shirt.

At the track, we got our third pole of the season and our first track record with our 4.533. We had the track record at Englishtown for about 10 minutes until Shoe topped our Friday night run. He’s been showing us up lately, but we extended our points lead.



As many of you know, I hurt my knee back in February playing volleyball at a Matco Tools function in Hawaii. Things were fine and it didn’t bother me until Sunday. I re-aggravated the injury 15 minutes before the second round. Thanks to the fans that helped pick me up after falling. Instead of going to Bristol for the press conference, I drove to Indy with Lee Beard and PR Ted. They got me into to see Dr. Lintner, who is a very good knee specialist. I’ll need some surgery, but I can’t have it until after the season. I’ll be fine to drive.



I’m excited about Bristol. We’ve been to the final round the past two years at Bristol and I won my first race at Memphis in ‘05. We do well in Tennessee. We got the pole in Memphis last year too and didn’t get to race because we had to shut off at the line. I’m going to do a media tour in Knoxville tomorrow with Zak of the NHRA.

Remember, we need more peanut M&Ms for my cylinder head guy Dick Jackson.

Thanks for reading.