Coming into Sonoma I didn't really know what to expect. I knew we had a good race car because we ended up No. 3 the weekend prior and the weekend prior to that. I knew we had a car that could run with everybody. It was just a matter of us stepping up to the plate and making sure we qualified well and raced well.

Sure enough, we got that No. 1 spot this weekend, which was huge for the whole team. For me, crew chief Tommy DeLago and the shelor.com guys it was a really big morale booster.

We were a little surprised but not too much because we knew we had a really good car. And Tommy did a great job tuning it and making the right calls in qualifying.

As everyone knows by now, we didn't fare so well. We didn't have the best luck on race day. Cruz Pedregon ended up taking us out first round, but we still gained eight points through qualifying and we're in 11th, only six points behind Cruz, who is in that final 10th spot. Still very obtainable, and we'll do our best to get into the Countdown to 1 playoffs, which will start after the U.S. Nationals on Labor Day weekend.

We have three races to make sure that we skip up a spot, and that's what we're going to do. We're going to the next race and make sure we do everything possible to win that race.