Now, we’re in Brainerd, which is a race track that I’ve never been at. To start the weekend off, we had softball practice at 9 a.m. on Friday for the drivers that will be playing next Thursday in Reading for the DRAW charity.

I’m on Gary Scelzi’s Superchargers team, along with Greg Anderson, Ron Capps, Doug Foley, Dave Grubnic, Matt Guidera, Doug Herbert, Allen Johnson, Morgan Lucas, Cory McClenathan, J.R. Todd, Hillary Will, and Del Worsham. Friday’s practice was my first time playing softball, and it went pretty well. In high school, the only other thing I did sports-wise besides racing was tennis. I was top seed on my team for a while.

After practice at the field, I headed out to the track. Brainerd is really an important weekend for our team. We’re currently 11^th in the points, just 42 behind Jack Beckman in 10^th. I did an interview this past week with the Brainerd Dispatch, and the reporter asked me if I was under a lot of pressure. I told him not any more than normal. It might be different if our team wasn’t a contender every time down the track, but we are. We’ve been right there every run; we just haven’t had the luck go our way on Sunday.

I really feel that our team is going to take a big turn this weekend. We’ve had a week off to recharge, and I’ve got a great group of guys working for me. Chris and the guys have been working so hard, and I know that our time is coming.

We just got done with our first qualifying run of the weekend. We ran a 4.771 ET our first run. The tires smoked during the run. There were a lot of clouds during the early afternoon, and then when it was our turn to run, the sun came out and started to heat up the track. Our next run is a six tonight, and those will be the best conditions of the weekend, so stay tuned. …