We last left off before Indy. We have to go back to when I was home in Arkansas. My childhood buddy and hometown PR guy, Chad Campbell, picked me up at the airport. I was home for four days and didn’t have any free time. Chad had my schedule booked solid. I first got to meet with John Aden. He used to be the President of Mac Tools and now he’s living in Arkansas and working for Wal-Mart. It was great to see John and talk about him now living in my home town in NWA. It was a good catch-up session. Later that night, I got to go home and spend some time with mom. My dad was on the road working. Mom and I hung out and watched the Olympics, and I got to sleep in my old bed.

The next day, I had to get up at 5:30 a.m. Chad had lined up four radio interviews in Northwest Arkansas on Thursday morning. We were promoting the first pitch at the Arkansas Naturals game at Arvest Field. I had fun doing the sports radio shows. They wanted to talk NHRA racing and I wanted to talk about Arkansas Razorbacks football. Then we all met at the ballpark where our Caterpillar dragster show car was going to be on display that night. We did a dry run of the night. When I got there, they presented me with three uniforms. It had my name and the No. 2 on the back. That was really cool. I wore one jersey and gave the other two to my parents to wear during the game.

Then it was off to meet the folks from Riggs CAT. Riggs is my local Caterpillar dealer in Northwest Arkansas. We spent a few hours touring the facility and meeting with the Riggs employees. I fit in a quick workout that afternoon and went back to the ballpark early to get ready for the first pitch. Riggs and Crossland Construction had a nice tailgate party before the game. I was blown away with the amount of friends and people there. Jason from Riggs brought me a ball so I could warm up for the pressure-filled first pitch. Arvest Field was built this year and it’s a really nice ballpark. The Arkansas Naturals are the AA affiliate of the Kansas City Royals and owned by former Wal-Mart exec David Glass. It was fun to sign autographs and take pictures and see a lot of old friends and faces. After that, I got to go to the dugout and meet all the ball players. I was pumped up until some of the players and my buddies were trying to make me nervous by saying make sure you get it to the plate and don’t bounce it. I actually was really nervous when I got to the mound. Before I threw the pitch, they showed a 30-second video of our car. It was really cool for the fans to see our car in action, so thanks to NHRA for making that video happen. Anthony Vestal and Jim Trace always make it happen! Then I thought about racing our 8,000 horsepower dragster, and throwing a little baseball 60-feet is nothing. I threw a hard strike right into the catcher’s mitt and it even made the glove pop. I was excited and have to thank AT Dave for getting me back in shape. The highlight of the night was that it was my mom’s birthday, so that was really neat to do the first pitch on my mom’s birthday. It was a great family celebration at the game. Here’s a picture of me and my mom, Cathy.

A few days later over the weekend before Indy, I had an appearance in Tulsa with Warren CAT. Our show car was again on display. My boy Cameron Beer of Forward Sports Marketing has hooked our show car up. It’s been all over the country. The Tulsa track is the first track I ever raced at. That’s where I made my first quarter mile pass. I have a lot of great memories of Tulsa International Raceway. Then it was back to Vegas for a few days and on to “The Big Go.”

Indy can be “hell week” for a lot of us. LOL It’s a real long week just getting ready for the race. We had sponsor appearances for MacAllister CAT and Wiese the day before qualifying began and let me tell you, it’s great when you get to finally hit the throttle for the first time on Friday night at O.R.P. I really felt like we had a car that would be tough to beat. We were really consistent, but we just weren’t fast. We were slow on the night runs and finished 13^th in the order. That puts you against a good car. When you line up against Brandon Bernstein, you’re always in for a tough race. We made a solid run, but it just wasn’t fast enough. We lost 3.90 to 3.94. When I woke up Tuesday morning and I looked at the points on NHRA.com, I saw we we’re just 60 points behind Tony Schumacher. That really excited me. We’re in a totally different position than last year. I love the Countdown this year. LOL Now, we’re only three rounds of racing behind the leaders.

I wanted to mention two more things from the weekend at Indy. Caterpillar brought a special guest, Brendan Watson, and his family to the track. They drove down from Michigan on Sunday to hang out at the track and in our hospitality. Caterpillar put together a nice care package for Brendan. He has been fighting illnesses his entire life. People think we have a lot of courage for driving a 300-mph race car, but Brendan has a lot more courage than we do. Fighting like he does take much, much courage. I was most bummed on race day because I told Brendan we would win the race for him and we didn’t do that. I really wanted to send the “Wally” to Michigan for Brendan.

Also, Slugger Labee, a NASCAR crew chief for Bill Davis Racing, hung out with us. He’s now working on Scott Speed’s Toyota Tundra in the Truck Series. He let me hang out with him at the Las Vegas NASCAR race this spring. He’s a big drag racing fan and we got along well. It was nice to have Slugger and his buddy “Knuckles” hang out at the U.S. Nationals. Here is a photo of Slugger with Rob Flynn and Mike Guger over the weekend.

After we lost on Monday, David Powers and Rob Flynn decided it would be good for us to do some testing. We made the drive North to Martin, Mich., for a day of testing on Wednesday. It was very conducive to let us achieve our goals. We made five laps and feel like we really accomplished some good stuff. We’re going to Charlotte with a race car that is fast and I believe can win races. And now we’re only 60 points behind Schumacher.

I’m still really excited about “the one” for me. That one that PR Ted thought was his “the one” turned out not to be. Too bad, she’s really cute. You’ll have that with girls. I guess he met another potential “the one” during the Indy race. We’ll see how that works out. He and I are a mess. LOL. It’s time to board the plane. Have a great weekend and hopefully we’ll see many of you great NHRA fans at Charlotte next weekend. We’re excited about getting to zMax Dragway and kicking off the Countdown to 1.

Take care,

Hot Rod