Well, I was going to wait until I had something real exciting to blog about, like a round-win or something, but that hasn’t happened yet. Our DHL Toyota has been making small strides in performance, and our qualifying position has been moving up the ladder in the right direction. Our team has made a lot of changes and spent a lot of our sponsor’s money lately in order to get us to that next level. Sometimes though, it is like a two step forward and one step backward deal for a bit. With Englishtown coming up this week, I was hoping that we were going to be a little further ahead than where we are with our tune-up, but sometimes with a Funny Car, it doesn’t take much to turn a 4.20 run into a 4.10 run.

Topeka went pretty well for us, and for a change we were able to get all four qualifiers in as well as race day without even smelling any rain. Unfortunately, it was also one of the few times we ran in conditions where the track temp was high so it took all the teams a few laps to start getting a handle on how to slow them down. We then had to race “Fast Jack” in the first round and, while our DHL team made a good lap and I had a good light, it was still a couple of hundredths too slow for that elusive round-win.

We were all excited about going to race at Route 66 in Chicago because of the cool weather forecast. Again though we were thrown a little curve ball on the first qualifier as there were almost no good runs. Then you get into “defense” mode because you want to make sure that you get down the track to qualify. We ran okay on Friday but still a good tenth or more away from the low guys. Saturday we had great conditions and we managed to improve a bit, but again we didn’t really gain too much on the field. We then had to race John Force in the first round.

Let me tell you a little story here… Back in 1996, I had a match race back in Canada at my home track. All my friends were there, of course, and there were four Funny Cars there: Force, Chuck Etchells, Tom Hoover, and I was driving Paul Smith’s car. To make a long story short, I beat Force there and even took the low e.t. track record away from him. We won the match race and since then John has beat me like a drum. I don’t think he has ever forgiven me! Big surprise, he whooped me again in the first round.

We had Scott’s two sons, Corey and Colin, with us for the Chicago race. Colin, who is only 9, is like a mini-Scott in looks, build, and character. He had us all cracking up! He did a great job washing parts, cleaning the bottom of the body, and cleaning the money out of the Oberhofers’s and Nicky’s wallet. Apparently, the jobs that he did almost pay more than driving the Funny Car! He was up to $10 a minute last time I checked. Nicky offered him a check, but in true Scott fashion, he came back with “I only take cash!” Priceless.

Corey helped out servicing the cylinder heads, blowers, and whatever else needed to be done and was a big asset to the team. We all enjoyed them being there and helping out and somehow I just know how proud Scott would be of his two sons. Our entire team has a tough weekend coming up here in a few days at the Englishtown race. Our whole Kalitta team is going to have a lot of friends and family there, and we are all going to do our best to remember Scott for the great father and competitor that he was and to share a lot of laughs while we all tell our “Scott/ Eddie” stories.

Take care and thanks for reading!