Well, the Summer Nationals at Topeka, Kan., is in the history books and I could not have been happier with our first race with our new engine builder. Richard Maskin, Jamie and I spent a lot of time sweating the details for every run we made down the quarter-mile this weekend. Other than Saturday morning’s pass, which, unfortunately for us happened to be the fastest session, we ran solidly in top of the field on every run. I often wonder why racecars don’t decide to break something in the hot, slow sessions instead of the fastest session of the weekend. It never fails!

Anyway, as it was, a small wire from the engine pickup broke causing the engine to miss just past the 60-foot clocks. It would have been nice if I could have just ignored it and perhaps it would have gone away, but fortunately, my body reacts long before my brain engages. If I feel a mishap in the engine, most of the time, I have let off of the gas, pushed the clutch in, and pulled over to the side of the track before I even realize what I have done. It really is a good thing, however, because I have actually prevented some major damage that would have been caused by driving a hurt engine too far. I guess I really do drive by the seat of my pants.

Because we missed that run, we dropped from the 7th to the 12th qualifying position and subsequently lost lane choice for the first round of eliminations. As they say, the rest is history but we still gave Mike Edwards a close race on Sunday afternoon.

For our team, there seems to be three segments of a race weekend; making four qualifying runs, racing eliminations, and finally making a plan for the next race. With Richard on our team, we have one more person to observe the runs, analyze the data, come up with solutions and help make a plan. And, that is exactly what we did as soon as we were finished racing on Sunday. After much discussion, Jamie, Richard and I decided that we needed to take our Wiley X GXP back to Jerry Haas Race Cars to get some new updates. Since Toni, Al, and I were planning on driving from Topeka to Chicago anyway, it only made sense to stop by St. Louis on the way there.

We arrived here at Jerry Haas’ shop yesterday evening, unloaded our Sunglass Machine and tucked it safely in Jerry’s shop for the night. Everyone was here before 7:30 a.m. this morning and we have been working on our GXP all day. It sure is nice to have all the guys at the shop available to fix, re-work and engineer new ideas to make our Pontiac faster. Between Richard, Jamie and I, we had quite a list of things to do and thanks to everyone at Jerry Haas Race Cars, it looks like we will be able to get the list completed before I leave out of here tomorrow. So far, everything is looking great.

Well, John from JHRC just came in and told me that the car is ready to load. Wow, it is only 4:00 p.m. and we have completed everything on our list. That is what I call efficient! I’m going to send this blog off and then help Toni and Al load the car. Tomorrow morning we will be heading towards the “windy city” where I am hoping for no wind and certainly no rain because I can’t wait to start racing on Friday. Thanks for checking in and I’ll update you again soon.