I was reading my new issue of Golf magazine and came across this quote from Rory Sabbatini. I had to laugh! If you don't know who Rory is, he is a younger golfer from South Africa. Now, he is a little outspoken but he does have the game to back it up. After I finished laughing, I started thinking.

When I first started to race Funny Cars with Paul Smith back in 1995, we were definitely the underdogs. Here was a savvy tuner with a six-year-old car, a small amount of parts, and a driver with a handful of runs under his belt. Did that stop us? No. We consistently qualified and beat up on the mega teams regularly. We even ended up winning a national event back in 1996 beating the likes of Dean Skuza, Al Hofmann, Del Worsham and Tony Pedregon. Life was good and the confidence level was high. Over the years, I drove for a few other teams but just qualifying was a major accomplishment. Looking back, not driving for a big major-sponsored team probably got me into this mindset. Driving for Del in 2007 was a major step up to my goal and the car ran great, but we still didn't have the budget or war chest of parts that a Schumacher or Force team had. In my mind as well, 2007 was probably the toughest year in Funny Car as we had more than 20 touring cars and a few more that would come out to race and all had run 4.70s at one time. We did extremely well that year and even qualified No. 1 at the year’s two biggest races, Indy and the World Finals.

This off season I have had a lot of time think and reading Rory's quote got me a little fired up. I am now driving for probably the biggest legend and team owner in the sport, Connie Kalitta. Between Connie, Scott, and Doug, they have not only set records and won too many races to count, but they have won world championships. Only a handful of people in the world can say that! We have at our disposal a state-of-the-art race shop, complete with blower and clutch dynos, flow benches, a CNC machine, and a full machine shop with the world famous Jim Becker at the helm. We have one of the biggest sponsors in DHL Global. In case you didn't know, other than in the U.S., DHL towers way above any other shipping company in the world! Our associate sponsors are second to none as well.

Look at Bob and Glen, the Technicoat Cowboys. In this economy, they stepped up to the plate recently and signed on with Kalitta Motorsports for five more years; unbelievable! Of course we still have Toyota, K2M, Red Line Oil, Rick Fischer, Mac Tools as well as many others. We have Connie, Jon O, Nick Boninfante, James Riola and lots of help from Jim “O” as well in tuning the Funny Car as well as one of the best crews in the sport. Everybody that works from Kalitta Motorsports from the ladies in the office to the PR and marketing people are first class. I can say that I am truly honored to be Doug Kalitta's teammate as well as to be driving Scott's car. Last but not least, I was picked to drive the car from a stout list of other drivers because they knew I could drive a Funny Car. If that doesn't give you confidence, nothing will!

So what I am trying to say is that mediocrity is now no longer in my vocabulary. I don't expect just to qualify anymore, I expect to win, and if we don't win a race, we will come back to the next one stronger than ever. We have all the tools we need to get the job done. We are going to be testing in West Palm Beach next weekend and then in Phoenix the week after. We will win races and we will contend for the championship.

Stay tuned...

Jeff (no more lollipops) Arend