What a crazy week this has been. Toni and I didn’t get home until after 2 a.m. Monday morning and there was so much to do at the shop this week. Of course, it is that time of year for all of us. Looking ahead to six races in a row is enough to make any of us crazy.

I guess you have noticed I really haven’t been writing a lot about racing lately; frankly that is because there really hasn’t been anything positive to write about. Our team has been living in the world of Mr. Murphy lately – “anything that can go wrong will go wrong!” – need I say more?

Anyway, we had a great time in Englishtown even though we were still being plagued with crazy things happening. On the night run (which was THE run of qualifying) our GTO popped out of fifth gear and basically coasted across the finish line at a blistering 201.60 mph. Thankfully, I had enough momentum going to rally an ET of 6.635, which had us qualified in the No. 10 spot. Of course when the transmission pops out of gear, the engine revs too high and that doesn’t make for a happy engine. Poor Jake and Bret had to change every valve spring on the motor but we were lucky it didn’t hurt anything else.

Despite ourselves, we ended up qualifying 13th after all was said and done and though it wasn’t in the top half of the field I was excited to be able to finally race on Sunday. We were even more excited that Dave Northrop, our teammate, qualified No. 10 and seemed to have a good combination going into Sunday’s eliminations as well.

Though we weren’t the fastest racecar on Sunday, we were happy to have gotten our GTO to the semifinal round. Unfortunately, we were having some problems with our tune up so Bill Jenkins decided to switch the carburetors and headers from Dave Northrop’s car to our car for the semifinals. As you can see from the picture, it was quite a thrash and we needed help from Dave and Danny Northrop as well as everyone on our team to get ready in time. Though we didn’t make a very good run against Greg Anderson we certainly learned a great deal from that run and we are excited to be able to apply what we learned to this weekend.

While in Englishtown, my cousin Ned, his wife Brenda, and three of their children, Samantha, Colleen, and Stephanie came to the race for the entire weekend. I don’t think I have seen them since Jamie and Cynthy’s wedding so it was nice to be able to visit for a while. They have been coming to the track for at least 10 years and love watching the races. The good thing is they also understand how busy we are during the “heat of battle” and don’t mind that we sometimes can’t sit and talk for more that five minutes at a time. Anyway, it was great to see them again and hope they will be able to make the race in Maple Grove and bring my Aunt Doris with them.

Well, we drove here to Norwalk Thursday and have spent the day getting ready for Friday’s qualifying. It looks like the weather should be nice and relatively cool so that should mean some great racing. I will try to check in next week before we leave for Bristol and the Western Swing. Hope you are enjoying our blog!