Okay guys, so you have no idea how stressed out I was before Denver. Yes, I had raced at Denver before, but never on my own stuff. I have always ridden for someone, so I never had to make the tune-up calls. All I had to do was ride. And since I had never won a round at Denver, you can imagine how crazy things were leading up to Friday’s qualifying.

I asked around for some setup info, and while sometimes a few of us in the pits will share information, no one was willing to help. So, I went to Dad. We looked at some of my bike graphs and compared them to what he knew in Pro Stock, and came up with a few different tune-ups. So off we were.

I left last Monday and since I own my own team it is a lot cheaper to drive up, so me and my guys piled into the truck and hit the road. It was actually a pretty nice drive up. We got to Denver on Thursday and went to the track to unload. Still stressing about how things were going to go down the next day during qualifying I had to force myself to relax and just hang out with the guys.

The next day was the first round of qualifying and I was praying I could run a decent number. Not knowing what to expect I fired her up and off I was. I ended up pretty good and sat in the third position going into Friday night, which Friday night sessions are sessions that you never want to miss. It is the one session that you need, really bad. We changed a few things and ended up No. 1. I was psyched and blown away at the same time.

The next morning we ran even faster, so we were definitely pumped going into raceday. I broke the crank in the fourth session, so we had a lot of work to do in order to be ready for Sunday.

Everyone hates first round, probably more than any other round. No one wants to lose that round and it’s always more pressure when you are sitting on top. I just knew I had to be green. I ran against Mike Berry and he went red. We got lucky, real lucky. We broke a piston and my bike literally did not go anywhere.

We were in a mad thrash before second round to change motors. We barely made it to the line. We had to run Eddie Krawiec and those Harleys rule up there. We ended up running pretty well for the first pass on that motor, so we knew which way to go in the semis. We had Chip and Chip had been the fastest bike all day. Chip is also my former teammate and we both get up to race each other, whether it is raceday or qualifying. We are both always trying to win. We actually bet a $1 every time we race. We ended up leaving the line somewhat together and got by him for the win. I think his bike bogged a bit, so that might have helped us out.

So here we were off to the finals, which by the way was my sixth final this year and I have only been able to win one race out of all of those final rounds. Needless to say I needed this one bad. I needed to reassure myself that we could win. I knew Angelle was fast and she had been great on the Tree all day. I knew that if I was green I would have a chance as long as something didn’t go wrong with the bike.

She ended up going red and we won. Holy crap, we won! We went into Denver not knowing what to expect or really what tune-up to make. We came out on top and I have to thank my dad for that. I couldn’t have done it without him.

I couldn’t be more excited right now. We extended our points lead and we can’t wait to get back at it in Sonoma.