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This is the flyer for the car show being held at Herbert Performance in Chino on July 18.

 

One of the coolest things that happened since the last time I wrote is that we had the opportunity to race at the Thunder Valley Nationals!  It was awesome to get back out to the race track for a weekend.  I got to see a lot of people that I hadn’t seen in awhile and it was fun catching up with everyone, I sure miss being out there!  The weekend went really well, even though we went out in the first round.  The loss to Doug Kalitta was so close!  It is one of the closest races in NHRA history!  Actually Doug and I were joking during driver introductions and he told me we had to make a deal – whichever one of us won in the first round against each other, had to go on to win the event – and he about did it to!

We had put that crew together only a few days before the event b/c we didn’t really know we were going until that week.  I pulled two of the guys from Doug Herbert Performance to help out for the weekend and they had never worked on a race car really.  Then we enlisted the help of two other guys who had worked on Funny Cars but not Top Fuel dragsters and none of the guys had worked together before.  But those guys worked their butts of that weekend, they did a great job, they didn’t make any mistakes all weekend!  I was really happy with how well we ran considering it was the first race we have been to all season.  I just hope it isn’t the last.  We had some folks help us out for Bristol and I owe a big thank you to Food City, zMAX and Bristol Dragway.  We hope we can work something out for a few more races this year.  I feel like things with the economy might be turning around soon.  I have had some conversations with a few companies but I really hope somebody steps up soon so we can get back out there racing full time!

We’re still moving forward with the land speed car; there has been a lot of stuff added over the past month or so.  If you haven’t seen it yet, make sure you check out the website for the project, www.lsrproject.com.  There is a whole section where you can see a ton of pictures of the car and the progress.  The car will be leaving my race shop in Lincolnton soon and will be taken over to Ray Evernham’s shop so we can get to work on the body.  Speaking of my shop, we had our annual May Open House and Car Show.  We always have a lot of gearheads come out for that, we started the dragster for the crowd and there were a lot of nice cars brought out for it.

May is always a really exciting month here in my hometown of Charlotte because of the All-Star Race and the Coke 600.  The whole town is pretty much consumed with racing for 2-3 weeks and although we don’t make left hand turns, us straight line guys end up getting to do a lot of fun stuff with all the NASCAR stars.  B.R.A.K.E.S. was set up at Speed Street, a huge fan event in downtown Charlotte.  We had guitar hero at the booth and that drew in a big crowd, and I got to hang out with some fans and sign autographs.

Jessie went to the Coke 600 with her friend Ally and they got to meet Shawn Johnson from Dancing with the Stars.  They thought that was pretty neat.  Jessie is out for the summer now so she’s excited about that.  It has been really nice here for the past week, in the 80s mostly, so it finally feels like summer is setting in.  The other morning Jessie and I went with Ginger to tape her segment on FOX Charlotte’s “Fox News Rising”.  Jessie had a good time meeting everyone and hanging out on the set.

A few weeks ago I got to film a show with SPEED, the drag racing game show, Pass Time.  It was really cool.  They were set up at zMax Dragway filming for two days.  I was up against Ken Herring and Kelvin Locklear, from CMT’s Trick My Truck.  It was a lot of fun and I won’t reveal who won – you’ll have to watch to find out!

We have another B.R.A.K.E.S. Driving School coming up this weekend and, something really neat that happened recently, we’re holding our first schools in South Carolina this summer.  On July 25 we’re holding a school near Spartanburg at the BMW Performance Center and then on August 8 we’re holding one in Columbia at the National Guard Armory.  We’re pretty excited because we’ve only been holding schools for less than a year and we already have the opportunity to hold some schools in South Carolina.  We want to keep spreading out; we’d like to find a location to hold a school down in Georgia, probably in Atlanta.  If you, or someone you know, could help us out with a location, check out the B.R.A.K.E.S. website (www.putonthebrakes.org) and help us get the word out about safe driving!

I’ll check in soon.