Well, even though this past weekend was an off week for NHRA racing, our team headed back to my hometown up in Rhode Island, for the 11th annual John Force Racing Day at our dealership. It’s something that my family started doing a while ago and we always get a great turnout from fans –usually thousands of people out to the dealership, with hundreds of cars in the car show and then John, myself, and my grandfather do autograph sessions for the fans.

But this year, because of the hurricane and bad weather, we ended up having some really terrible weather come up through the New England area, and of course; the rain came on Saturday, which was the day of our event. It was predicted to be a lot worse than it really was, but it forced us to move our event inside. Even though it was the first time the event was inside, we still had a great turnout, and were still able to have the bands play, people were able to buy t-shirts, get autographs, and also saw my Motorcraft and Quick Lane team put together our race car.

We ended up having a little bit better weather toward the middle of the event, which brought out more people. The reason we do this event each year is for the local food bank. Admission to the event is for everyone to bring in non-perishable food, and then we transport it over to the food bank.

After it was done, John Force and I did some photos for Ford Racing. They’ve got a pretty exciting driver campaign coming out soon which has us driving different production cars and then writing about them. You’ll have to stay tuned for more information once that launches and we’ll post it here and on our website once it’s up and running.

Once we were done with our pictures, we took John back to the airport, and he was able to get out before the weather came back later that evening. Later, I ended up having the guys on the team and their families that were in town over to my house for some pool, pizza, and fun. It was nice to be able to have them there with the rest of my family and just hang out with them. Those guys work so hard for me at the track, so it was nice to relax with them away from the track.

Sunday afternoon we all headed over to our house in Jamestown for lunch. Man, we had so much food and a lot of people to feed as the team, my family, and my family’s friends all were able to spend a beautiful day out by the water. I was supposed to take my team fishing that morning, but we had some technical issues with the boat, so instead we ended up eating more food than we probably should have, and then playing tennis. In high school, I was really involved with our tennis team, so I challenged some of my guys to some games at the courts. It was a lot of fun. Alan Reinhart, who was our MC for the event on Saturday, was my partner in tennis on Sunday. We’ve concluded that we’re great pool partners and also tennis partners.

Sunday night, the guys ended up leaving so that they could start their trek to North Carolina. They wanted to get through New York that night so they wouldn’t have to battle with traffic in the morning.

I’m so excited to get to the track this weekend, but before I get there, I’m in Detroit today through Friday morning for product meetings at Ford. That’s one of the things that I’m really proud about, which is sitting on the Ford’s product committee. I’m really excited about what they’ve got planned for the future, and once those meetings are done, it’s off the track.

I do have to take a minute and give a special shout-out here to Connie, Doug and the Kalitta team as they are graciously letting me join them on their trip from Detroit down to Charlotte, so I wanted to say a big THANK YOU to their team for helping me out with a ride.

This weekend is really going to be fun at the new track in Charlotte. We just announced that we broke ground for our race shop just five minutes from the race track. I’m so excited to have a home base for our team and shop and really getting this team ready for the future. We’re planning on the shop being done by Feb. 2009, just in time for the start of the Full Throttle season. We’ll be able to have some great equipment and it’s a pretty central location that will get my guys home a lot more next year than this year. I’m just really proud of what we’ve got going in that city and excited to see the shop once it’s completed.

Not only do we have a new shop coming, we’ve got a new track to race at this weekend, and honestly to me, a new season for the rest of the year. While we didn’t make the top 10, we’re internally resetting our points and measuring our success against the rest of the field in the top 10 for the rest of the season. We’ve been working so hard, it’s just our number hasn’t been pulled yet this year. But hey, we’re learning new things all of the time, and I told my guys, we’ve got a great team, a great tune-up, and the performance will come. Also this weekend, we’re going to be debuting a new tow vehicle for our team. I’ll get back on here once I have some photos of the new car to share with everyone.

If you’re in Charlotte this weekend, stop by our pits and then head over to our Motorcraft and Quick Lane display area and win some cool stuff just by playing some games.

We’ll see you in Charlotte.