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!