Yeah, it’s been awhile so I will try to catch you up without writing a novel. Pomona wasn’t what we wanted so afterwards we made the trip to Vegas to do some testing. I have to say it was one of the most productive test sessions I’ve ever had. We pretty much fixed all the issues we had with the car in Pomona and got it to run better. With the added weight to Funny Cars this year it has caused the crew chiefs some headaches getting the cars to leave the starting line.

After testing Melanie and I drove to Phoenix and caught a flight home. It was more expensive to change our original plane tickets home so we just ended up buying new ones. I treated Melanie to Valentine’s dinner at the Chili’s in the Phoenix airport.

After being on the road for four weeks we got home to a ton of mail and things to get caught up on. I spent my off weekend watching the Daytona 500 on TV. My brother-in-law works for Penske and builds the cars for them so needless to say Mike was a happy camper after the race with a one two finish. I sent Ryan Newman a congratulatory text Monday morning and to my surprise got a reply back from him just before he was inducting the winning car into Daytona USA. He is a great down to earth guy and I was happy to see him win. My dad even got a reply email back from Ryan on Monday as well. As if he wasn’t busy enough he took the time to reply to us was pretty cool. Now we need to get him out to a drag race someday.



Phoenix was a much better weekend for the Monster team. I did start writing a blog on Friday when it was raining, but didn’t get it finished and now I’m not even sure what I did with it. My buddy Aaron Rowand who now plays for the San Francisco Giants had spring training in Scottsdale, Ariz., and gave me a call wanting to come out for the weekend. He ended up bringing half the Giants teammates with him over the weekend. They had a great time and we have a lot of new drag racing fans who play in the major leagues. Last year I visited him at spring training when he played for the Phillies and this year he visited me during the Giants spring training.

With the rain on Friday and only two runs to get qualified on Saturday, we sat the car up exactly like we ran it in testing at Vegas and it rain exactly like it did there. Right out of the box 4.81. Unfortunately Melanie didn’t make the field at Phoenix so we are both 1 for 2 on the year. We haven’t had to run each other yet, but this isn’t the way we wanted to do it. I was extremely pleased to go to the semi’s on Sunday and leave Phoenix on a much better note than we did Pomona. We elected not to test on Monday, but instead head back to Indy to start assembling our new Hadman f/c. Mel’s team tested Monday so we didn’t pull out towards home until late Monday night. We drove for a few hours then called it a night. We got up at six on Tuesday and started the long drive home. We trade off and on driving so it makes it a little easier. We wanted to get home pretty bad so late Tuesday night we decided to drive it straight through until we got their. Fortunately we didn’t run into any bad weather except in St. Louis where it was snowing pretty hard at 5:30 in the morning. It quit about 30 miles east of St. Louis so that was good. I got out in Effingham, IL to get fuel and told Melanie why didn’t we just drive to Gainesville. It was way cold with the wind blowing as I fueled up.

The guys worked all week putting the new car together and changing a bunch of stuff since we have a totally different car than what we have been running. It seemed like everything needed changed or massaged. I got a new seat poured by Bald Spot Sports guys.



On Saturday the Monster Supercross was in town so a bunch of us from my team and friends went to that. I like all racing and Supercross is one of my favorites. Last week Brad Hadman came to the shop to help with some final prep of the new car. He got the cockpit to my liking and helped the guys with brackets and the final fit of our body to his chassis. It was a tough week at the shop as Warrior on the team gave his notice and he is moving to the Schumacher team. Plus four of our guys got the flu and were unable to work most of the week. I tried to steer clear of them so I didn’t get sick. That’s the last thing I needed. We are testing in Valdosta, Ga., before Gainesville as well as Melanie’s team. We got a big snow storm on Friday night before we planned on leaving Saturday. Melanie and decided to wait until noon to leave Saturday so they had a chance to get the roads cleared. One of my best decisions ever since we talked to guys who left early Saturday and they said the roads were really bad. We had no problems at all and got into Valdosta about 1:30 in the morning. Then we had to set the clock ahead an hour, wow that hurt Sunday morning. It took longer to get our car done that expected since we had so many guys out sick so my team didn’t get out of the shop headed towards Valdosta until Sunday morning.

I spent Sunday watching Melanie and all the teams in Valdosta make runs. I went back and fourth between watching everyone and watching the NASCAR race on TV. I’ve never been so bored at the track in a long time just watching and walking around. I cleaned the motorhome and spent the day just hanging with the dogs. The Monster guys rolled into the track that evening and we were ready to test the new chassis on Monday. We made three runs yesterday shaking it down. As with anything totally different we had a few things to work through, but on our last run Monday night we ran our best numbers of the year to half track. Things look really good so far and I fit so much better in this car than the one we have been running.

We’ve made one more run this morning at Valdosta with exactly the same numbers as last night. Melanie’s team has made several runs as well testing a bunch of different stuff. If it doesn’t rain us out today I think we are going to make a couple of more runs before packing up and heading to Gainesville. I don’t think we will run the new car there since we ran so well with the other car in Phoenix. We’ll stay Monday after Gainesville and test this new one some more before making the final switch. We have to change all of our bodies and things so we have some spare stuff before trying to race it. Last thing we need is a problem and have to scramble because we don’t have enough spare stuff yet.

Well it is getting close to time to warm the car. I’ll do my best to keep the blog updated better. My buddy Adam Rhoades has been on me about my blog so I owe it to him I finally updated it. Ed Tyler on my team just told me about voice recognition software he has on his computer so I might have to check that out. I’m much better at talking than I am at typing. That might be the best thing that has ever happened to the blog.