It’s the biggest race for everyone in the sport of NHRA this weekend. This is my first weekend here in Indy with my Motorcraft/Quick Lane Shelby Mustang Funny Car, after being here with my alcohol car the past two seasons. During those two appearances here, I made it to the final rounds each year. So this is a big race, at a track that I’m familiar with, and we’re here with a very special design on my car.

Ford, Motorcraft, and Quick Lane put together a contest with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which allowed kids with type 1 diabetes to enter a race car design that could end up on my Mustang. We got 307 designs, and were able to raise $84,542 for research for type 1 diabetes. We were able to have the six-year-old winning designer, Sam Millard and his family from Texas join us for an unveiling of the car and with us out at the track on Friday.

My family and I got in on Wednesday and I headed over to Impact Racing where they were putting the final touches on my special JDRF fire suit for the weekend. The design was inspired by Sam’s car design, and we’re actually going to be auctioning off the fire suit, and a special helmet from this weekend, starting Tuesday after the race.

Later that night, my family and I were able to have dinner with Sam Millard and his parents Bart and Shannon. And, for any Christian rock fans out there, Bart is the lead singer of MercyMe. Probably their most known song is “I Can Only Imagine”. Check out Bart’s blog at http://mercyme.org/blog/ and check out their music. We met them at the Hard Rock with Geoff Smith from Ford and some of the people that helped organize the event. It was nice to be able to get to know their family and get ready for Thursday’s unveiling.

Thursday morning was the day. It was the day that we’ve been working on for a long time. It was finally time to unveil our JDRF car to Sam and his family, and the rest of the public. There were so many people that helped make this event possible, that to finally see Sam’s face when they pulled that silk off of the race car, was just priceless. It was a great event for everyone to see.

We were able to do another cool thing Thursday night at our hospitality trailer. We had Ford Racing there with us, and all of the John Force Racing drivers, and we had a lot of the sportsmen racers out for dinner. It was a really neat thing to have them all with us for a nice meal to kick off the weekend.

On Friday, it was the first day to run, and the first and only day for Sam and his family at the race track. Sam, Bart, and mom Shannon were able to ride in our tow Expedition up to the starting line and down to the top end. While we started off on a pretty great run, we ended up smoking the tires after about 500 feet. With it being Indy, we weren’t too worried about it since we have four more qualifying runs for the race.

Now it’s on to Saturday. We’re getting ready to make our first pass of the day and then we’ve got another one later tonight. Even after last night’s run, tonight’s run will probably be the one where you’re going to see the quickest times of the weekend.

To see the rest of the photos of our JDRF unveiling check out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ford_jdrf

To see a video of the unveiling, go to: http://www.youtube.com/fordjdrf