The first part of this blog entry is for our good buddy Doug Naschke in Sacramento. Doug was at the Phoenix race in February when we won and e-mailed a question about testing and what happens during testing. So, here goes.

Testing is really laid back, especially this year. Mike Green has an agenda of things he wants to try over the course of the two days. We want to test things that we normally wouldn’t run during a race because we don’t know how they’ll react. You can’t risk a bad run during a national event. We’ll make the first run test pass with our normal setup to get a baseline for the track and to see how the car is running. After that, we start working in the different things that Mike wants to try like with the clutch or fuel system.

Normally, when trying something new, we’ll only run to 1,000 feet. People ask why we don’t make a full passes? Well, the last 300 feet of track is where a lot of engine damage happens. You might have damage at 1,000 foot, but not catastrophic damage. We only try one new thing at a time because it’s hard to see results when you try multiple things on the car. It’s a drawback of drag racing because of the service and maintenance time. The most runs you can make in a day is five. A lot of times, what we find in testing, we won’t just put on the car and run during a race. One pass doesn’t prove something. We’ll test something multiple times before we incorporate that into the standard tune-up.

After testing, Mike evaluates what he learned and goes over it for several days, comparing data and seeing what happened with the changes he made throughout testing. We decided to swap chassis before the U.S. Nationals. The car we’ve been running we call “old faithful,” and there comes a time where a car begins to fatigue. It’s the car that won at Phoenix and Brainerd and ran 4.67 at Joliet, but it has 162 runs on it. I felt that the car wasn’t driving as good as it did in the past. We brought it back to the shop and put it on the scales yesterday and didn’t like what we saw, so we decided to change chassis. The only drawback is that we’d have liked to have tested the new car, but at least we won’t go into Indy with a worn-out race car. It will basically just be a new chassis. We’ll swap the clutch and fuel system from the old faithful.

I feel confident because we have two night runs to fire a shot during qualifying. New race cars always drive better, so that excites me. We’ve already made four or five runs on this car, so it’s not like it’s a brand new car that’s hasn’t seen the track.

Indy is such a big race, so the guys will clean and detail more than normal. It’s the most prestigious race on our schedule, so we make sure things are spotless. All the rigs will be waxed and detailed, and the trailers will get cleaned and re-organized again. That, along with extra detail on the race car. There’s a different attitude about Indy. Everyone is just more focused. I’m sure plenty of guys will spend time at the shop working this weekend.

Okay, back to the blog. Because of Indy testing, I didn’t get a whole lot accomplished this week. We spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday at the track. I was at the track at 7:30 Wednesday morning for a live TV interview with the local FOX affiliate, WXIN Channel 59. I tried to get caught up yesterday. After standing around for a few days at the track, I decided I needed a new pair of sneakers. Last night, we did some shopping at the Metropolis mall in Plainfield.

I spent this morning sending e-mails and making phone calls, just trying to get ahead because next week will be busy. I took the guys to lunch at Hooter’s on 38th St. today. I wanted to thank them for our win at Brainerd and make-up for my red light at Memphis. It was the thrill of victory and agony of defeat lunch. I like hanging out with my guys. We have a really close-knit group. It’s the best crew I’ve ever worked with.

Hopefully, we can relax a bit this weekend. We’ve got the McDonald’s promo tomorrow afternoon. If you’re in Indy, please stop by and say hello. Check www.nhra.com for all the details. I’ll watch the Bristol Cup race tomorrow evening, and we’re going to take Gavin and Christine (the Kiwis) sight-seeing in Indy and show them some places other than O’Reilly Raceway Park. Also, happy 57th birthday to PR Ted’s dad, Andy. He’s a big supporter of our race team and always visits at Las Vegas and Pomona.