Alright, for those of you that know me, I am not exactly known as being cutting edge in the technology department. I never really had a cell phone until 2004 when I started racing more on a full-time basis again. I figured that if you had to get a hold of me during the day, you could call me at work. If it was after hours call me at home. Other than that I was either driving or probably playing golf and didn't want to talk on the phone anyway. Well, times have changed, and it is now more important to be accessible. Things seem to come up more frequently than before and people, including myself, need answers right away, and this technology makes it pretty easy. Makes you wonder how anybody ever survived and ran a business 30 years ago before cell phones, fax machines, and the Internet.

So last week, with the help of my wife, Windy, I got set up with both a Facebook page and a Twitter account. After months of kind of giving her a hard time for wasting so much time on Facebook, I actually realized that it is a lot of fun. My wife likes to play a few of the games on there, and I will admit it, I got hooked on playing a few of them as well. See, for me, it is really more of an exercise in hand/eye coordination, which of course is work related and will make me a better driver and…well…Windy didn't buy that story either. Ha!

Besides all the fun games, the social networking part of it really can help a race team though. The more fans and people you have following you equates to a larger audience for your sponsors. This is a real number, with people that sign up to be a part of Kalitta Motorsports because they want to be in the know. The other cool thing to me is that you can follow your favorite race teams/drivers and get a more personal or “behind the scenes” idea of what is going on rather than the “cookie cutter”-style press release that is so common.

Things are going full speed ahead back at the shop in Michigan, and again I can’t tell you how both lucky and honored I am to be part of the Kalitta Motorsports family. As each day gets closer to the 50th annual Winternationals, I am getting more and more excited. I think we got rid of the rain for a while, and I expect our DHL Funny Car will be ready to do some serious battle.

Don’t forget to “friend” me and Kalitta Racing on Facebook and “follow” me and Team Kalitta on Twitter!

Usually when you mention the name West Palm Beach, thoughts of warm, humid, sunny weather come to mind. Well, not this time, at least last Sunday through Thursday. The temp in the early morning was lucky to get out of the 30sand the high was in the 50s, and if you were looking for that humidity, the water grain level was less than that of Las Vegas. What it did make for though was some excellent atmospheric conditions. Now, fuel cars can make up for the lack of those conditions but had there been any Pro Stockers there, they might have run in the five's...just kidding. Anyway, we had our DHL Funny Car there as well as Doug's Top Fuel car and Dave Grubnic’s Top Fuel car. Both Al-Anabi cars were there as well as all the Schumacher Fuel Cars, Bob Tasca and both of the Lucas owned Top Fuel cars. The Al-Anabi team is the one who rents the track for this "closed" test session and their Chad Head is in charge of track prep. Chad did an awesome job as records would have been set in Top Fuel numerous times and the Funny Cars got down the track almost every run. What was really unbelievable to me was that over the five days and with a few hundred runs made, many of them over 320 mph, there was not one single oil down!
 
If you are a reader of my blog, I told you that we were making some big changes to our car to make it more competitive. We changed about everything you could from top to bottom on our engine combination and it started to pay dividends right away. Our first four runs were on pace to run a 4.10 at worse and on the computer it looked really safe. Over the next couple of days we had a few gremlins to work out and had some problems with how some of the parts looked. Jon O and Nicky came up with a theory and we tried it out late Thursday. Everything was looking good again. On Friday the conditions were back to normal for Florida with temps in the high 70's and the track temp about a 100. We ripped off a nice safe 4.13 at over 303 mph which was low et for that session. Later on in the day on our last run we ran a great 4.09 at almost 307mph. My crew performed flawlessly and our DHL Funny Car ran within a hundredth of a second on almost every run all week. That kind of consistency is going to win us some rounds...you can count on that!
 
I was also very excited for my teammates Doug Kalitta and Dave Grubnic. Now for those of you that don't know, Connie tunes Grubnic's car himself. That’s why when you hear it run it is the "baddest" sounding of all the Fuelers, and I mean that in a good way. I can stand next to any Fuel car idling up on the starting line and not have to plug my ears…every one except for Connie's. They got that car down into the 3.80s and the engine looked nice and safe. Doug was looking like he is ready to make a big championship run. Jim O also made some changes to his car and it was ripping off high 3.70, low 3.80 runs at over 320 mph like they were giving them away. In the heat of the day they were right there with Dixon and Schumacher. Did I mention that those two cars ran a few 3.75 and 3.76 runs at 323+ mph?
 
This season is going to be a great one for everybody. Connie is really charged up about racing this year and he telling us to get what we need to be competitive, and that's what we are doing. Last year might have been his 50th in the sport, but mark my words, this is going to be one of the best years ever for Kalitta Motorsports and, as "Baretta" used to say, "You can take that to the bank!"
 
Jeff (if you have to ask who Baretta is, you are too young) Out!

After we spent Christmas day at Windy’s parents, we got all our warm clothes packed up to go to Toronto, Canada, for a few days. Usually my mom comes to sunny California for a visit, but this year we decided to travel back to see my mom. It had been quite a few years since I had been back so I was really looking forward to it. That and my daughter, Jenna, was dying to see some snow and feel some cold weather!
 
The other thing I was looking forward to was a little reunion that a couple of my old friends had put together. Once upon a time a LONG time ago when I was 16, I used to hang around at this shop where a bunch of guys I knew had really fast race and street cars. They were the guys that got me involved in racing and kind of taught me the ropes. Around that same time I got a job working at the local speed shop, Engineered Racing Services. I was in heaven. I worked at the best speed shop and got to hang around with people that had the same passion for cars and racing that I did. I learned pretty quickly and later on we built a motor for my first street car. I got to go to the local drag strip and learn everything there was to know about building and maintaining a race car. This came in really handy when I stared racing myself.

Anyway, every now and then over the last few years I would see a familiar face at the races and we would talk about old times. Well, about a year ago, one of the guys from that first shop, Leo D'Agostini, sent me an email congratulating me on my job at Kalitta Motorsports. We sent a few emails back and forth and I asked about some of the other guys from back then. Leo started to do a little investigative work, and after a bit had actually made contact with some of these people that we hadn't talked to in 25 plus years. Every month or so Leo or another one of the mainstays from the old shop, Neill Stevens, and I would swap an email back and forth. As it got closer to the end of the year I told them that we were going to come up to Toronto for a visit just after Christmas. They came up with a great idea to try and get a hold of a bunch of the boys from back then and have a reunion of sorts at a local restaurant and pub called Archibald's.

Within a couple of months our small get together ended up turning into a pretty big party with well over 40 people being there. Here's a good pic of some of the people at the restaurant. I had lots of friends from the old racing days, the owner of the speed shop and my first real boss, Greg Wicklum, was there as well as quite a few buddies I went to school and hung out with. It ended up being a great night and everybody vowed not to let another 25-plus years go by.
 
The next day we went up north to a friend of mine’s place that lives up on the lake. Randy is the VP Fuel distributor for a large part of Canada. I remember many years ago when he would work at his day job and just be selling a few drums here and there. Now with a lot of hard work he has turned it into quite the business. We got together with a couple of other friends and sat around telling some stories and going out for a nice dinner. My daughter even got to see some snow and make a snow angel. The night we went up there, the temperature with the wind chill was -25 Celsius! As you can see in the top picture, it was actually snowing when we were there.

We spent the next few days hanging around with my mom, doing some shopping and eating at a lot of my old favorite places. Jenna got to take her first ride on an underground subway, we updated my mom to a new Sony flat screen TV from a circa '80s 19-incher and hit about every mall in the greater Toronto area looking for a cool 2010 Olympic sweatshirt we had seen for my wife. It only took about three days and 10 stores to find it. I guess they were popular at Christmas time. We also ended up going to downtown Toronto to see another friend of ours.

Ray Commisso is one of Canada's premier Pro Mod drivers and he happens to own and run a beautiful Italian restaurant and bar called the Dimmi Bar and Trattoria. It is located in the trendy Yorkville area of downtown Toronto. Ray met us at the door and treated us to one of the best Italian meals that we have had in a long time. The place is really cool and the atmosphere is great. It also has a couple of big patios that are open when it's not freezing outside, and I hear that they are busy from 11 in the morning till 2 at night. If we make it back this summer, we will definitely be hanging out there.
 
If you live in the area or are visiting TO, make sure to drop by and say Hi to Ray...you won't be disappointed! Here's a pic of Ray and I and the sign out front of his place.
 
All in all, it was a great time and it went by way too fast. We are already planning another trip, hopefully this summer, to hang around on the lake when it’s not frozen and see a bunch of people that we missed on this trip.
 
I am leaving this Sunday to go to West Palm Beach to go testing for a week. We have a lots of new parts and pieces to try and I can hardly wait. I will fill you in after I get back.
 
Take care and have a great 2010... I know that we are going to!

A couple of months ago we decided to add another member to our family. We had been talking about getting a dog for my daughter Jenna to play with. Now, I have never had a dog before so we did a lot of research into getting one that would fit our lifestyle. We ended up getting a Labradoodle. They are not too small nor too big, are hypoallergenic and best of all do not shed. My wife ended up flying up to Northern California to pick her up right after the Vegas race. I have to admit that she is really cute and Roxy definitely provides us with lots of entertainment. Here is a pic of her with my wife and daughter.

This offseason has been really flying by and the guys are hard at work back at the shop getting ready for next year. I can say that in all my years of driving that I have never been this excited to get the year started. We have made some big changes to our car that should put us right where we belong ... in the hunt for the championship. It’s been a while since a Kalitta Funny Car has done this, but Connie wants it to happen and he is giving us every part and resource necessary for our team to accomplish this goal. I just got back from the race shop back in Michigan and what I see going on is giving me and our team a lot of confidence. We had a nice Christmas party complete with a catered lunch in the race shop for everybody involved with Kalitta Motorsports and as you can see in the picture, there a lot of people that are involved in the day to day operations that make the Kalitta team so successful. In the next pic you can see the banner that our friends at Pro Cal sent us to commemorate our win from Memphis. It is a big honor for me and our team to have it hanging in the shop next to the ones that Scott won, and I hope to have quite a few more hanging there by the end of the 2010 NHRA Full Throttle season.

Of course for those of you that know me, I have been getting my fair share of golf in recently as well as going to the gym pretty well every day. I want to be in tip top shape come the beginning of the season because I know it is going to be a long one. I even got the old PS2 out with my NHRA Drag Racing game. It is a fun way to keep the competitive juices flowing, practice your reaction times and generally just have a good time. I even managed to run a 3.98 to the 1,000-foot mark. Hopefully our guys can duplicate that this year ... if they can, it going to be a lot of fun!

Take care, and if I don’t blog again before Christmas, I wish each and every one of you a Merry Christmas and a great New Year!