I have to tell you about a wedding that we went to last weekend. It was for our good friends Paula Baldwin and Gary Flanagan. We first met Paula back in 1997 when I worked for Frank Hawley's Drag Racing School. I was working there over at the Pomona Fairplex and I noticed a race car trailer parked around the corner that had a TF number on the back. Long story short, I ended up meeting Bobby Baldwin and Scott "Scoots" Graham over at the shop they were using. Bobby had raced Top Fuel for quite a while and his day job was doing excavating and earth moving. He actually did a lot of work for the Fairplex so I would see him and Scoots pretty often. Before long our families were introduced and we started hanging around a lot more often. Bobby and his wife, Paula (also the Greek's daughter), had a little girl named Krista. Now that little girl is taller than me! Over the next few years we had a lot of fun together and became pretty close. Bobby was one of those "genuine" kind of guys and just loved to live life, almost as much as he loved Coors Light! Sadly Bobby passed away suddenly from a brain aneurysm back in September of 2001.

We still continued to see Paula and Krista, albeit not nearly as frequently as before. She had a lot on her plate getting her life back in order, and for some reason, things just seem a little more awkward after somebody passes away. Over the next few years we would run into Paula and Krista every now and then, and they both seemed to be doing great. I don't remember exactly how many years ago, but we went over to Paula's and met her new beau Gary Flanagan. Gary had known both Bobby and Paula back in the day and I am sure was a pillar of strength for Paula. Gary is a great guy, and you could tell that he really cared for Paula and Krista. Over the last couple of years we have become a lot closer again and have a great time just hanging out. So it was no surprise when we got an invite to their wedding.

They got married at a restaurant close to where they live. It was a nice Italian place called Antonino's, and the food was awesome! It was set up pretty cool as they had a huge sunken bar and area to hang around at and then a beautiful restaurant to sit down and eat. I knew there would be a few racer types there but I had no idea how many. It was like the Hot Rod Reunion, only a week before the Bakersfield one. Of course "the Greek" was there, and he had a great time chasing the belly dancer around while she was performing. I only hope that when I am 82 or whatever the sundial he uses to calculate his age says he is that I am having just as much fun as he does. I then saw the world famous Hawaiian, Roland Leong. Roland always has some great stories and it is hard to believe how long that he has been racing for and all the "legends" that he has worked for. Roland had a lot of drivers over the years and has accomplished more than most in the sport of drag racing. He still tinkers with the nostalgia cars, but I could tell he would love to come out and work as a consultant for one of the "Big Show" cars. He was sitting with probably one of the best machinists in the sport, J.T. Stewart. J.T. has come up with a lot of innovations in the sport and runs a very successful business called Dynamic Machine. The drag racing part of the business is a very small part of what he does, but I know that we run his clutch management systems on all our cars.

Next we ran into Tim and Kim Richards. I was kind of amazed that they were there all the way from Florida until I heard that Kim was Paula's maid of honor at Paula and Bobby's wedding many, many years ago. I have known Kim for probably 15 years, but it is still hard to imagine her all dressed up as a maid of honor… sorry Kim! As you can see from the pic, Tim and Kim both looked great and well rested. I guess that's what happens after you take all the travel and stress out of your lives. They haven't taken up golf yet though, so you never know what will happen in their future. After that I saw a guy that I first met about 10 years ago. His name is Ronnie Capps (the original) and the first time I had met him was at Frank Hawley's. He was actually the first student I had to run in the 5's with our alcohol dragster. Ronnie was a great driver and as I found out later has been involved with the sport for a long time. From what I understand he has done about everything from building cars to tuning them. We also saw Ronnie's wife, Leigh. Now if you know Leigh, she is always the life of the party… lots of fun to be around and obviously, also a big motorsports enthusiast. Leigh's dad was the late Lil’ John Buttera. John was probably one of the best machinists that has ever been and his contributions to the automotive industry are almost unmatched. John built Funny Cars for the "Snake" and Don Schumacher just to name a few. He was also responsible for building many of the "trick" parts used by many teams back in those days. Later John got into working with billet aluminum and his products revolutionized the street rod industry. He also built an Indy Car that qualified 6th for the Indy 500 believe it or not. Leigh is a big follower of my blog, so I thought I would surprise her and include this pic of her and I.

Needless to say we had a great time at the wedding and wish Gary and Paula a long and loving marriage. Now, back to racing. I am getting ready to go to Gainesville in a few days, and I have a feeling that it is going to be a great weekend for Kalitta Motorsports. We have Doug running the Darrell Gwynn tribute Coors Extra Gold car, which looks awesome, and nothing would be better than seeing that and Connie's Bounty Hunter car in the final.. .and on the Funny Car side, I really don't care who we meet in the final with our DHL car!

Thanks for reading!

Alrighty, a lot of cool things have gone on over the last week, so I will do my best to get you up to speed. I left last Wednesday to get into Phoenix. We had a TV deal to do on the local news first thing Thursday morning. After a nice dinner with Jim O., I decided to try my luck at the slot machines. Our team stayed at the new Wild Horse Casino right next to the track. It was a nice casino, and the rooms were great. Anyways I found a 25 cent Wheel of Fortune machine and decided to "invest" a few dollars in it. After winning and then losing about $40, I decided to throw another 20 at it. It paid off as I won about $150, so I cashed out and went to sleep. On Thursday after our TV deal, we hung around the track and I went through my pile of parachutes, folded them all up and got them ready to go for the weekend. Thursday night was basically a carbon copy of Wednesday night except I moved on to the $1 machines. After losing a bit, I ended up winning about another $150 and went over to the bar to watch some of the Olympics. I was just in time to watch Shaun White destroy the competition in the Snowboard HP Competition. It was unbelievable how much higher he was going than the rest of the guys!

Friday afternoon, I got a call from my wife saying she had arrived with my daughter Jenna at the Phoenix airport. They had run in to Danny Gokey at the airport and got a pic with him and Jenna. Of course, I was like, who? She explained to me that he was the third runner-up on American Idol and pretty well known. Who knew? Our day at the track started off with a tire smoking run at about 200 feet. Our DHL crew went to work and after looking at the computer, came up with a good game plan for the night session. They did a great job as our DHL Funny Car ran a nice safe 4.15 to put us in the 6th spot after qualifying ended.

Why is it always that when you look at the weather report for the races a few days before the race and everything looks perfect, it almost means it's going to rain for sure? Same thing when they call for 3 days of rain, you almost know for sure it will mysteriously rain everywhere but at the track, and the race will get done with no problems. Phoenix was no different as 0% chance of rain for the weekend a couple of days before turned into 100% chance of rain Saturday and Sunday. We managed to get one run in on Saturday after dodging rain drops for a few hours. We had a couple of things we wanted to try on the car and what we did ended up working a lot better than we thought. That along with a fix to a part that has been giving us fuel system issues all year caused our DHL Funny Car to have tons of power and smoke the tires at about 200 feet but not before we recorded our best 60-foot time in a couple of years. The guys knew they were on to something and sat down to figure out what to do with our newfound power for Sunday.

Sunday was more rain and as usual when NHRA about gets the track dry, it starts again. It is very hard emotionally as a driver as well as a tuner as you try and get pumped up for your race only to sit around for another hour or two when it starts raining again. I am sure all that time doesn't do the tuners any good as well, as there is just more time to second guess yourself. We finally got to run Jim Head at almost 4 p.m. in the afternoon. I knew that lane choice was going to be important, so I staged it really thin to get the best e.t. possible. Our DHL Funny Car left the line hard recording the best 60-foot time of the session, and by the 330 timer we were already 7-hundredths ahead of Jim. Unfortunately, at about 500 feet, our clutch welded and started to smoke the tires. I pedaled it a couple of times, but Jim ran a decent 4.17 to put us on the trailer. After looking at our run on the computer, we were well on the way to a 4.08 or so run, so that is giving us a lot of confidence going into Gainesville. Our fuel system issues are now resolved, our motor is making some great power, and our 60-foot times which we have struggled with in the past, are now at the top of the list.

We flew back home on Sunday night but were glued to the computer on Monday. Why, you ask. Because my teammate Doug Kalitta was going to his second straight final in as many races driving the Technicoat/Kalitta Air Top Fuel car. Doug's car has been running great and when it hasn't, he has shown his great skills behind the wheel to expertly pedal it into the next round. Connie has Grubby's Top Fuel car running great as well and after a "nuclear run" to get a little TV time on Friday came back in the first round to run a spectacular 3.84 to put Brandon Bernstein's 3.89 on the trailer. If you saw it on TV it was kind of funny to see the look on Kenny Bernstein's face after Grubby laid that run down. That put Grubby up against Doug in the next round. Doug's car dropped a cylinder at the hit, but Grubby smoked the tires giving the win to Doug.

Later on Monday after many rain delays, Doug finally got to run Cory Mac in the final. Cory laid down a great 3.81 and Doug had some problems early in the run. Congrats to Cory for the win, but Doug is right there in second place and is looking great going into Gainesville. Speaking of Gainesville, I hate having to wait almost 3 weeks to go racing again especially when I know that all the cars in the Kalitta Motorsports stable are ready for a win at anytime. We keep making refinements to our DHL Funny Car and it is evident if you look at it closely. Everything just looks better from the paint, to the way the car is plumbed and wired, to the way everything is detailed just a bit nicer than before. I know I have said it before but we are on the verge of really kicking some you know what, and I can't wait for it to get started!

Back on the homefront, I was also very proud of my daughter, Jenna, who made the Principal's Honor Roll at school. This means that she had straight A’s in every class, and on top of that she got the "good conduct" award that basically means she pays attention in class and doesn't get in any trouble, unlike what her dad used to do in school… Ha, ha. She also excelled in her fundraising abilities for the American Heart Association. Her school does something called "Jump Rope for Heart" to raise money for AHA, and Jenna always loves to help out. She ended up raising $1600 by herself and it doesn't hurt when you have Connie and the Kalitta Motorsports people, The Cowboys, and some of our other associates within arms reach for her to sweet talk into a donation! She also just turned 10 years old on the Tuesday after the races, so we got her an iPod Touch to play with. It's amazing how fast that kids can pick up on this stuff. It is certainly a lot different world than the one that was around when I was 10! Speaking of birthdays, our fearless leader Connie turned 72 on Wednesday. You'd never guess it though because he is like a kid at the candy store at the races. Whenever one of his cars starts up he comes running to watch... probably making sure Nicky doesn't waste too much nitro on our warm up. J

I had a big golf match coming up on Friday, so on Thursday I went to the club to get practiced up. I spent about 3 hours there just hitting balls, chipping, and putting and thought I was going to be in good shape going into my match on Friday. Now I always seem to mention when I play well, so it is only fair to report that I got my butt kicked in our Team Play match. We played "away" at another course, which automatically puts you at a disadvantage, but the guy I played ended up playing great and I just didn't have much for him. That's the way golf is, but in the end it is a lot of fun and I love the competition. Anything that I do, I want to win, so I will just put in some more practice and learn from my mistakes, just like in racing or in life.

To end the blog I would just like to express my condolences and those from everybody involved at Kalitta Motorsports to the family and friends of the lady that was tragically killed at the races last week. I know that the smartest minds in drag racing are working hard as we speak to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again.

We had a pretty exciting and fun week during the 50th NHRA Winternationals so I will get you up to speed on that. We started off last Wednesday night by having a BBQ at our place for the DHL Funny Car crew. It started a little later than normal as we had a lot of little things left to do on the car before Thursday. It was fun nonetheless, and I BBQ'd up about 12 lbs of tri-tip to go along with all the appetizers that Windy had laid out. The guys must have been pretty hungry from the 14-plus hour day, and by the end of it all, there wasn't too much left! We all had a good time and had a few drinks and cigars.

We were all looking forward to our first lap on Thursday because of how well we had tested. Our DHL Funny Car left the line hard and was well on the way to a 4.10 run when all of a sudden it smoked the tires for no reason just before half-track. Further inspection found a mechanical malfunction that caused this to happen. One of those 5 cent parts that costs you the run stories (although there aren't really any 5 cent parts found on our race car anymore these days). Thursday night we were invited to a private 40th birthday party for Del Worsham. The party was hosted at a great Mexican restaurant that they had rented just for the party, and what a party it was. There were a lot of the old CSK guys that had worked for Del as well as a mix of drivers, crew chiefs, and crew members that are out there today. The food, music, and atmosphere were great and Windy and I had a fantastic time.

Usually on Friday morning before qualifying AJ and I go and play a round of golf over at my club. I had seen AJ the night before at Del's party and because we are a little spoiled with the weather living in California and he had played a lot of golf recently, he decided to pass on the 40 degree morning temps as well as a pretty drenched as of late golf course. My other golf buddy Aaron Brooks wanted to play though and because he is from Indy, the fact that you could even play golf in February was enough reason for him to want to play. We met at 7.30 a.m., and to tell you the truth it wasn't that cold. It took AB a few holes to knock the rust off, and by the end of the round, we both were playing better and the temp was well up into the 60s. After having a couple of bad holes, my luck turned around and I ended up shooting a 75. I was hoping that luck was going to transfer into the race car, but it wasn't meant to be as we ended up overpowering the track on Friday night. We ended up going out for dinner with a good friend of mine from Texas, Fred Spell. Fred worked on one of the first cars I drove back in the Paul Smith days. His dad, Fred Sr., was heavily involved in the sport of drag racing back in the day and specialized in superchargers among many other things. Any ways, Fred decided to surprise his dad by bringing him out for the Winternationals and Sr. had a great time reminiscing with all the guys he used to race with.

Saturday was now upon us and things were starting to look too familiar to what happened to our DHL team at the Finals last year. It really looked like that as well as when we just tried to slide it down there to run a 4-teen anything and it smoked the tires just before half-track, just like it did last year on Q3. This time I just stayed in it for awhile smoking the tires to try and at least get a better e.t. It ran a 4.44, which when all the dust settled after Q4 would have kept us in the 16th spot and probably would have worked out better for us on race day. Wish that crystal ball would have been working! Now we are going into our last qualifier with a time that we really think won't hold. Fortunately for us and unfortunately for a few of the other teams, a few cars got shut off and some just idled down the track, so before we even had to run, we knew we were in. Our DHL car was on the way to a nice 4.17 when just at about 800 feet, it dropped 5 cylinders all at one time. Let me tell you from a driver's perspective that the engine sounds really BAD when it does this! The car ended up running a 4.20 at only 280 mph, putting us in the number 15 spot and earning us a first-round match-up with my buddy Del. Not the way we wanted to start the season!

Race day was finally here and we were pumped up for first round. Our DHL Funny Car and Del's Al-Anabi car treated the fans to the closest race of the day with Del getting the win by two-thousandths of a second or about a foot. The good thing was that when Jon O. and Nicky looked at the computer after the run, it looked more normal. We had a few glitches come up over the weekend and I think they are all fixed now.

Grubby's car ran strong all weekend as well, and the car looks spectacular. Candy red with the Kalitta and Bounty Hunter logos on there in gold leaf. His car also had a glitch come up in the first round and the shutoff system got activated. Doug's Technicoat-sponsored dragster on the other hand was flat out hauling the mail. After getting his "lucky" round-win out of the way in round 1, Jim O. stepped up the performance of the car to make it right to the final. That earned him a date with Larry Dixon and his Al-Anabi dragster. It was a great final round with Larry just edging out Doug for the win.

I think that you are going to see a lot of Kalitta/Al-Anabi finals this year, and next race we are going try and meet Del in the final instead of the first round!

Talk to you after Phoenix!

I cannot believe that the 50th NHRA Winternationals are almost here. For me the off season went by pretty fast, at least up until we were done testing about a month ago. These last 30 or so days though have seemed like they were in SLOW motion. I guess it's because I know how fast and consistent our DHL Funny Car was in testing and I can't wait for us to get out there and start ripping off some great runs and getting some round wins. I am also super excited for my teammate's Doug Kalitta and David Grubnic. Doug's car was flat out hauling some you know what and with Connie tuning Grubby's car you never know what's going to happen! Remember a couple of years ago they laid down a 4.42 in the quarter-mile!
 
With all the changes we have made to our team, I have nothing but the upmost confidence in Jon O, Nicky and my crew that we are going to have the best year ever with a Kalitta Funny Car and a solid Top 10 finish. I know it's a little early to be this optimistic but I have been around this sport for a long time and this is definitely the most confident I have ever felt!
 
I was going to give you a little update on our home life the last week or so but really, I am too wound up to give you the old what we ate for dinner, where we went, and how we spent Super Bowl Sunday. Who cares?  The races start in two days!!
 
Be there or be square!