Last weekend Melanie and I flew out to the Lucas Oil Speedway to do an autograph session for Lucas Oil. I grew up in Iowa going to a lot of dirt tracks and let me tell you I have never seen one as nice as the one Forrest has built in Wheatland, Mo. When Forrest and Charlotte Lucas do something they do it right. Granted this is a dirt track and all the pits are paved with every pit stall having water, air and electric hook ups. There are suites and a big concession stand plus a full bar. I was impressed. If you are in the area I recommend stopping by for some good racing.

We got up early and flew back to Indy so we didn’t get much done Sunday but lounging on the couch napping and watching some of the cup race. On Monday I spent the day at the shop finishing up the seat I had poured last week. Tuesday we headed out to ORP to do some testing. We have made a lot of changes in the cockpit and we also wanted to test some things on the car. It looked like a mini national event. It was our team plus Force, Kalitta, J.R. Todd, and Tony Pedregon’s teams all testing plus Matt Hines’ motorcycle team. We only made a couple of runs on Tuesday not getting the results we where looking for. We went out again on Wednesday to try again. You talk about a change in weather conditions, it was 86 and sunny on Tuesday and Wednesday was overcast and 59. We made four runs on Wednesday and really didn’t like the final results. I do like all the changes we made in the cockpit area though. I am so much tighter in the car now it is almost scary to think about how loose I was before.

I’ve been working with Bill Simpson and his company Impact! with new seat belts plus Bill turned me on to the guys at Bald Spot Sports who make molded seat inserts. Glenn and his guys have been great to work with and have a great product. I think they are going to make our cars much safer for the drivers. When we get my seat just how I like it, they take and laser scan it into the computer. Then they mill out my final seat from a block of multiple impact foam. They have my seat on file and if I need another one they can just fire up the computer and send me another one identical to the one I had. They have some great technology and we are already working on safety ideas for other areas of the car.

In our testing we feel there is something going on with our car that we can’t find so we headed back to the shop and on Thursday we started putting together a new car with a totally new clutch system. We are going to go back out to ORP this coming Tuesday and try it again. It has been a rough start to the season for our team, but Mike and the guys are determined to find the problem and make this a good year. I can’t thank them enough for all their hard work. We have made more test runs than just about anybody this season without the good results on race day and not one complaint from the crew about the work. I know that is what makes a good team and that first win this season will be a sweet one.

Thursday afternoon Melanie and I went out to the Speedway to watch a little practice. Our bank here in Indy had a hospitality tent for the day and invited us to come out and take part. We did that for awhile and then Melanie went over to Brickyard Crossing to play a round of golf with Lyn St. James. While they where golfing I met up with Chad Head. We hung out at the speedway with Chad letting me tag along with him while he worked. I got to stand out next to the scoring pylon while the cars came by a few feet away at over 220 mph. That gives it a little different perspective. I also went into race control where they are monitoring the entire race track at all times. That is a lot of area to watch and make sure things are going smoothly. Pretty cool view from the top of the Bogotá.

I’ve been trying to catch up on a few things today. Our office has been a mess since we got new office furniture a few weeks back. It seems like we are never home enough to get it all finished so I have spent the day trying to get my desk cleared. So far so good. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice weather around here so it will be an outside day getting the yard and house projects done. I wouldn’t mind going back out to the speedway to watch final qualifying, but I’m pretty sure Melanie has other ideas for me. Yeah, I can’t wait to pull weeds and clean the garage, honey!!

From the way it sounds we won’t be the only ones back out at ORP on Tuesday. I’ll try and do a blog in between runs to give you an update. Have a good weekend.

TJ