Man, was Houston an up and down weekend for our team. It was the first time in three races that we were able to make qualifying runs on Friday, so we were really excited because it was going to be a full race weekend. Like I’ve said before for any team, the more runs that you can make down the track, the more data that you’re able to gather and work off of, and for us as a first-year team together, it’s even more important.

We were really confident in our four qualifying runs, all of which would have qualified us for the race. Well, that is besides the second run on Friday night when I ended up taking out a cone with the rear of my car. When I got out of the car and someone said that I hit the cone, I walked around the car telling them that I didn’t because I remember down the run when I passed the cones. Then, when my team came to the top end with the tow car and got out, I told them I hadn’t hit a cone and they told me there was no doubt, so, even though it was a good time, it didn’t count towards the race.



Going into Sunday’s race, the weather was changing just about every minute. One minute it was cool with a lot of clouds, and then the sun would peek out and really heat things up. I headed up to driver intros in the morning and spent some time talking with John Force and Jack Beckman. After we got introduced, I headed back to our pit to meet the team and to lineup for the race.

In the first round we ran against Tony Bartone. I was really confident when I staged the car, and then once the green light came out, we smoked the tires. I tried to get through the run and recover, but it continued to smoke the tires. We didn’t make it to the second round, and it was really disappointing. We hadn’t smoked the tires all weekend, and on top of that, Bartone also had some difficulties getting down the track, so I couldn’t believe that we weren’t able to put together a run good enough to advance.

I guess that’s racing though. What I said to someone after the race was that 1,000 things need to go right and only one thing has to go wrong to have a bad run. It’s just a tough pill to swallow because our team has really been working hard and we had a solid weekend up until that point.

To get some more time on the track, my team and I stayed Monday to test in Houston and get some more data to head into Las Vegas with in a couple weeks. I’m headed to the airport to fly to Indianapolis for a meeting, and then on to Rhode Island and back home tomorrow afternoon.