Well, by now you all know how Gainesville turned out. Gary told me that Matt Smith posted his blog almost immediately, and gave me the look that said I better do the same. He’s pretty good about keeping me on schedule. Not only that, but I will confess right here and now, I rarely go on the internet to surf or go into chat rooms to dish. Gary and Doug, again, are the ones that keep me informed about what’s being said on the World Wide Web.

As far as the race goes, Team GEICO Motorcycle is ecstatic. It boggles my mind sometimes how we have so many struggles during qualifying and then turn it all around on Race Day. Doug and Debbie, the team owners, are from Florida, so we always have a pit full of friends and family for this race. Many of them arrive on Sunday, and this year, due to our poor showing in qualifying, Debbie confessed that she almost called her friends and told them not to come out on Sunday. She’s normally more optimistic than that, however, with the GEICO Motorcycle, Mac Tools Suzuki laddered against the No. 1 rider that weekend, Angelle, who also happened to have set the national record that weekend; Debbie’s outlook on first round was a little gloomy.

Gary, on the other hand, was very optimistic. As I commented to the NHRA Media staff, Gary had a revelation on Saturday night and was able to hit the tune-up and give us a competitive bike for Sunday. Due to qualifying gremlins, we had to run last year’s motor on Sunday. I wasn’t too upset about that because it happens to be one of my favorite motors. All our motors are excellent; but you know how you have that favorite pair of shoes? This motor is like that for me. Gary doesn’t really understand that because it’s not our fastest motor, but, right now, with our win in Gainesville, he’s not debating that with me too much.

Missing the great racing conditions on Friday night and Saturday morning, I was very pleased that we finally ran in the sixes on Sunday. We’ve done it before and knew that we had the power to do it again. It’s really amazing, if you think about it; there were 13 bikes out of the 16 on the ladder that were in the sixes after Sunday’s conclusion. Steve Johnson on the Snap-on Suzuki and myself waited until Sunday, to do it.

I have to tell you, I was pretty comfortable in the staging lanes before the final round. I knew that Matt Smith had a very large performance advantage on us but I was focused on doing my job and giving the team a good pass. As long as I did that, whatever the outcome was, we could say we gave it our best. There was one moment when I was sitting in the water box, that I thought to myself the sun is directly on the Christmas Tree, so do your thing. Other than that is was a normal race.

Debbie confessed to me in the winner’s circle that she had thought about telling her friends not to come today. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, she said that through tears of joy.