ATOM - NHRA Blog Feed

Anniversaries and reunions

2009-10-21T23:15:00Z

In two weeks, my new house turns one year old! At this time last year, I was moving and preparing for the Las Vegas race. I will miss being on the track for this year’s Vegas race but plan to be at the track to support the event. I hate watching from the sidelines; however, I am working diligently to find a full-time sponsor for next race season. Considering all that, I am in great spirits and have some great prospects for next year.

We recently put together a great out of the box promotion with DVD rental company Redbox and their parent company Coinstar. It was a dinner and a movie and dessert promotion with Stouffer's and Edy's ice cream at Wal-Marts. The promotion went great and turned a lot of NHRA fans into new Redbox customers. We are in talks to continue this relationship through the 2010 season. It was also great to continue to work with the Cat dealers and Caterpillar Corporate allowing me to do so. It looks like things will really pick up for them next year!

I am also been working with Jeff Ashby and his recycling company. Jeff was the inventor of The Super Sandwich Bale. It works like this: separate recyclable items from Wal-Marts all over the country are put in big plastic bags that are then wired together in bales at each Wal-Mart store. Companies now instead of paying for the trash to be removed will make money back on their trash and recycling efforts. It is our goal to take this great green initiative to companies involved in racing and to fund my race team on trash!

This month, I traveled back home to Northwest Arkansas for my 20-year reunion and to spend time with my family. It was great to be home and spend time with great friends and family. My, how time flies! Was it really 20 years ago? When I got home my mom and dad couldn't believe it was my 20th they keep asking if it was not my 10th. The reunion committee had a great weekend planned out for us. It was also homecoming week for my high school and college football team the University of Arkansas. We were playing the Auburn Tigers who were undefeated and ranked in the top 20. My high school team didn't fare too well but my Hogs put it to Auburn. On Friday night we had a pre-party to the pre-reunion party on Saturday night. I guess any excuse to have another party lol. I got to hang with my three best buddies Ken Villines, Chad Campbell, Chris Dubbell and James Holley. We later meet at a local bar where a band was playing for us. That night was awesome because not only did we have our class there, but other classes joined us as well. The highlight of my night was spending time with my roommate from college and good friend Scott Richards and his wife Amy. Scott is in the Army reserves currently serving in Iraq and was on a one week leave. I wonder if he cheers for the Army car or me? I forgot to ask. J

The next day was our reunion at the Embassy Suites in a ballroom. The band Ultra Suede played '80s music of course and was awesome. I was flattered at how many people follow my racing career. I am pretty sure that I was the only single person with no children yet. Life on the road, what can I say J. I won an Academy Award for the one that hasn't changed or aged. Not a bad award to win! Speaking of the green initiative, we received recycled trophies so I got an old bowling trophy. Fitting, since my last bowling score was 55. Good thing I drive better than I bowl. Though I may not have aged, it was nice to be home and get some rest!

For anyone who hasn’t seen the Terry Fator show in Las Vegas, It is a must see! I really enjoyed the show and his impressions were amazing!

Well, I will sign off for now and look forward to seeing you all real soon.

Back on track, construction fun, and the man purse

2009-08-05T23:23:00Z

Hello to all! It's been so exciting getting to see everyone at the two races that I've attended. I have the best fan support and am always amazed by the amount of people who stop by during the races to chat and get autographs. My fans keep me strong and encourage me to persevere! I greatly miss being at each race but know that God has a plan for me. Let’s all pray that it is racing!

I have been fortunate to join a brilliant race team, Vandergriff Motorsports. Bob Sr., Bob Jr., and the team are such an incredible group of guys! Our first race together was in Chicago. When packing for the race, I felt a bit nervous, as I had never met the team. Arriving in Chicago under the gun, with new equipment, no testing, and never having worked together proved to be no challenge. The team’s experience and dedication put me at ease immediately, and I really feel that together we have the formula to win races. Our team’s average age is 41. I like the feel of a mature team. The crew chief Jim Dupuy is genius and knows how to win races!

In Chicago, sponsored by Patton Cat, we qualified 6th and lost in the second round on a holeshot but still essentially had low e.t. of the event. In Norwalk, sponsored by Michigan CAT, we qualified in the 4th spot and had solid runs on all our passes but lost first round to Cory Mac. We ran exactly what we wanted to run, just lost in a close drag race. A great start for our new team!

So the burning question seems to be… “When are you coming back full time?” I wish I could say tomorrow, but I don’t know that answer for certain as of yet. The economy and Caterpillar seem to be looking a little brighter, and I am hoping to have a full sponsorship for next year with a few more races this year. Go buy some Caterpillar stock!!! It is a bargain right now but is steadily climbing! Nemo and I will definitely see you all in Indy! Nemo? Who’s that? It is the name of my car. As most of you well know, I used to name my cars after the ladies in my life. The only problem with those names as learned from Mama Fuller and best friends Ali and Dave is what if the relationship doesn’t work out? So I have officially changed my Car Naming policy. I am going with cartoon characters from this point forward. I chose Nemo because he was taken out of his comfortable fish bowl to a far strange place and relied on his friends to help get him back. Nemo’s story parallels my life in a lot of ways! Thanks to all who keep the Nemo keepsakes coming. I have received stuffed animals, key chains, patches, and stickers. Look for Nemo in Indy!!

I continue to train with my best bud Dave Tomchec. I’ve been running, which I thought I would never be able to do again. It’s been grueling but well worth the challenge. We have been doing sprint workouts and hill inclines. Straight up! 60 yards! We are trying to gain speed, which helps with my overall health and reaction times. I’ve always said “Strong Body, Strong Mind.”

So my new house is coming along… Back to my construction roots. Growing up, I worked on my dad’s construction crews and built Wal-Marts all over America. Since the age of 13 years old, I would hit the road each summer and join his construction crew. Those years instilled drive and dedication, which paid off in my racing career. My largest undertaking was removing a window in my bedroom and installing French doors to directly access my pool. Nothing like a huge gaping hole in the wall with 120-degree heat. I have added built-in cabinets, but my favorite feature is the music!! I added speakers in every room and even in the backyard. Not sure if my neighbors are liking it but suits me just fine.

My travels took me to Santa Monica for the 4th of July with friends. We had a great time on the beach and did some power shopping in the Garment District! That is where I found the now famous man purse (Ed Hardy messenger bag). I posted it on my Facebook page and received great responses and much attention. I even contacted them for a possible sponsorship! The trip was relaxing and well deserved. We rented bikes and rode along the beach, ventured through Venice Beach, and I even worked out at Muscle Beach. I thought I was doing well by benching 300 until I looked over and the lady next to me had to be benching 400. Next time, I will bring my friend Lee Priest. He is one of the most popular body builders in the world. Had some of the best tacos ever at a local favorite called Titos Tacos. Not on my eating plan but Dave wasn’t there so I indulged.

Will close with a favorite quote of mine:

"I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious." — Vince Lombardi

Bowling, meetings, and a return to my roots

2009-05-17T23:41:00Z

I've had a lot of fun the last six weeks, starting with the race here in Vegas in April. I was dreading it because I wasn't racing, but I got over it and had lots of fun. The week started with a bowling tournament at the Cashman Center. It was a huge PBA bowling tournament that lasted a month to decide the winner. Some of the best bowlers in the world were there. It was all legit rules — you even had to pass tech with your bowling ball and no beer was allowed. I thought beer, bowling, and cigarettes came hand in hand. LOL! I've only bowled twice and both times there was some beer involved; at my brother, Tony's, bachelor party and once with Hillary at the Red Rock Lanes. It started out a disaster as I was throwing the ball too hard and it kept going in the gutter. The first game I rolled a 56, which turned out to be the worst score in the history of that tournament. Not bad for a former athlete and a five-sport letterman in high school. The second game, Rob Geiger and Jeff Wolf of the Las Vegas Review-Journal helped give me some pointers. They told me not to throw it so hard and just roll it down the middle. I broke 100, so I guess their tips worked.

I went out to the races at Vegas all three days and had a ton of fun. It's so different not racing. It actually gave me a new whole perspective of our sport and some improvements that I believe are needed like going back to quarter-mile racing. It just seemed the race was over way too quickly. I did decide that when I come back I'm definitely going to spend more time on the ropes and make specific times so my fans don't have to stand around and wait. Just hanging out also gave me a chance to really visit with my fans. There were a handful of people still wearing the old “Hot Rod” Fuller Caterpillar gear. The fans were also telling me the miss the rivalry between Tony Schumacher and me. I think he misses it too, but he wouldn't say so. I'm glad Shawn Langdon is doing well because, like I said five years ago, the best drivers come from Super Gas and Super Comp. I also got to hang out with both Bob Vandergriff Jr. and Kevin Poynter, two people I hope I get to work with real soon. I'm keeping all my options open to get back out there racing ASAP to mix things up. I miss it a lot.

On Tuesday after the Vegas race, I got to go home and see the family in Arkansas. Like always, I met up with a lot of friends whom we joke as the Arkansas Mafia. My best bud Chad Campbell picked me up at the airport, and we headed to the house I grew up in. I usually don't get a lot of family time, but this trip, I tried to spend more time with the folks.

Wednesday morning came early, and we had breakfast with a prospective sponsor. My marketing man Ryan Haas drove down from Kansas City. From there, we went to lunch with another sponsor that's in the food industry. We also had a meeting with Valvoline, a longtime sponsor and supporter of the Fuller family. We've been trying to do some business-to-business stuff with Valvoline for some time. After a day of meetings, we headed to BW3 for dinner and fun. It was great telling old stories and hearing how they get spun out of control, kinda like the four-pound fish that turns into a 20-pounder.

My last night home, my dad had a great idea to take the family bracket racing. We headed over to the track in Tulsa. It's the first drag strip I ever raced on. It's also the first place I got to see a nitro car run. They used to have the IHRA Springnationals there, and even John Force and “Snake” match raced there. I told John Force I would be faster than him, which actually came true, but I sure don't have 14 world championships. LOL It was so fun with the family. I got to drive my old Super Gas car, which I haven't raced five years. Once I got into her, it felt like I never left. It's my little bro's car now. It also was very cool to see my older brother Steve race. It was the first time my dad and all his sons raced at the same track in a long time. He was a proud papa!

Well I was pretty amazed that my bracket abilities are still there. I ended up making it to the quarterfinals, where I lost a close race. I tried to tighten up at the strip too close and gave up by .007 of a second. I had the reaction time advantage .012 to .036, and my car was running dead on, but it wasn't meant to be. You'll have that. The worst part is that my dad and brothers made the semi’s, so I blew the all-Fuller semifinals. Tony ended racing my older brother Steve, and Tony won. Tony ended up losing the final. It was a great showing for the family. One of the best parts was coming back to my roots. Like they say, never forget where you come from. I got to visit with a lot of fans and talk to a lot of kids. They have dreams and aspirations to race Top Fuel someday, and I told them that I was that same kid 22 years ago. I want to thank the Tulsa track and my buddies at Warren Cat and the fans for making me feel so welcome.

Keeping Busy

2009-03-24T19:56:00Z

It's been awhile since my last blog. I've been hard at work still trying to get back on track for 2009. I've gotten to do a lot of stuff that I don't think I could have ever accomplished if I was racing. After 18 years of wear and tear, this break from racing has given me the opportunity to get physically fit. I'm not talking about muscles, but I'm talking about spiritually and inner-physically. This break has taught me that maybe you must first hit the bottom to achieve success.

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts." — Sir Winston Churchill. There are a lot of people who don't like me because they say I'm a drama queen. LOL Well maybe, but I'm true and real. I wear my heart on my sleeve, plain and simple. As far as physically, it was nice to let my knee heal properly. Last year, I only had two months to heal from my ACL and cartilage surgery. Normal rehab takes six months. Well right now I feel the best I have ever felt.

I've had some fun the last three weeks, starting with NASCAR being in town. I had a great time networking and seeing my friends. I hung out with Slugger Labbe, a good friend of mine. You've heard us blog about Slugger in the past. He's the crew chief of the 71 car that David Gilliland drives. I also ran into Jim Parker with Caterpillar. I told him how hopeful I was that the market will turn and we'll get that Caterpillar Top Fuel dragster back on track. After the race I also got to hangout with some of the Caterpillar employees that I've worked with during the last two years. As you know, I love NASCAR, and it was good to see the local Las Vegas racer Kyle Busch win at his home track.

The next week, I went to Sonoma, Calif., to race in a charity go-kart race at Infineon Raceway. Before I got to Infineon, I stopped by to see my good friends at Peterson Cat. I had lunch with Eric Martin and Rich Hasper, both of them big supporters of NHRA. My time at Infineon was great. I also got to spend my time with my fans and help with such a good cause. The staff at Infineon is second to none, and I always enjoy my time every time I get to go there. My racing performance wasn't the greatest on the go-kart. Maybe I should stick to straight lines. All day my lap times were better than David Baca but also out of control. In the feature race, I was ahead and spun out and got stuck in the mud. Like I said, I should probably stick to drag racing.

After the race was over, I headed over to Lodi for a wedding. It was Justine and Shawn's big day. Justine is like a sister to me, and her whole family, the Jefferys, are not only a long-time sponsor of mine but also family, too. They had it at a beautiful winery called Wine and Roses. It's a hotel and wedding chapel, too. The services weren't until 5:30 p.m., so being at a winery and nothing to do all day made for a fun day. Let's just say I need a nap before I went to the ceremony. The ceremony was so nice it couldn't have gone any better. Shawn is a great man, and he's marrying into a great family.

This past weekend, I needed to blow off some steam, so I went to my favorite hangout, the Lounge at the Palms Casino. They had a band that plays called Zowie Bowie on Friday and Saturday nights. Their two singers are Zowie Bowie and Marley Taylor. They are a married couple that rocks! It's a great place to go dancing and have some fun. While there, I got to meet a longtime hero of mine, Vince Neil, the lead singer of Motley Crue. It was Vince's birthday, and they brought him up on the stage and had a birthday cake and the whole club sang happy birthday to him. When I was introduced to him he looked at me and said, “Why aren't you racing?” How cool is that! My favorite song of all time is by Motley Crue called Home Sweet Home. There's a verse that’s totally me: "You know that I've seen too many romantic dreams up in lights, fallin' off the silver screen. My heart’s like an open book for the whole world to read. Sometimes nothing keeps me together at the seams. I'm on my way, I'm on my way, Home sweet home."

I think I was listening to that song when my Lamborghini burned last year. LOL

That's all for now. Thanks again for all the support. Oh yeah, I included a picture of a fan at the Gainesville race. Him and his friends were wearing a T-shirt that ead "Hire Rod Fuller" … how cool is that.

Rod

Rod Fuller, tennis fan

2009-02-09T22:24:00Z

Over the last week, I've been home so much I became a tennis watcher. I've never sat down and watched a match, but not only have I done that but I've watched about every match at the Australian Open and even the doubles. I don't know the rules very well but it's great sport to follow. These guy's and girls are great athlete's to run around in the Australian heat for over three hours. It's incredible.

My favorite match was between the number one rated player, Rafael Nadal, and Fernando Verdasco, who's never even made it past a major championship quarter-final. They were playing in the semi-final round and no one gave Verdasco a chance. He was kind of an underdog, which I can relate to. Also he lives in Las Vegas like I do. He's from Spain but has been training here with Andre Agassi. Going into the fifth and deciding set, I was getting so nervous. At this stage no one deserves to lose. Well after five hours and fourteen minutes Rafael Nadal won on a double fault, kind of like a red light. It was just a test of two wills. It was about who wanted it the most. Then Nadal went on to beat Roger Federer, the second-rated player, in another great game. I have a question for you tennis pros. When the players are about to serve, the ball boys and girls throw them the balls. They take some and throw some back. What are they looking for in the ball? And do they get rid of them when they throw them back?

I spent the Super Bowl at the Palms casino. It was a slow game but ended up being great at the end. I felt sorry for Kurt Warner. He has a great story for those who don't know. He didn't get drafted out of college and ended up stocking shelves at a Hy-Vee grocery store. He played arena football until he finally got picked up by the St. Louis Rams where he won a Super Bowl and was voted MVP.

I watched the game with some Caterpillar executives who were in town for the World of Concrete convention at the Las Vegas Convention center. We had a great time people watching. Vegas is a great town for that. I think they were glad to be away from the frigid temperatures in Peoria, IL. It's nice to spend time with them on a non-racing weekend. I snapped a picture from the top of Moon Night Club. Our skyline is still changing rapidly. They are not only building casinos and condos, but shops and a fine art center. The project costs are projected to be over 11 billion dollars. It will create 50000 jobs to the area.

Speaking of jobs, I have had a couple offers from some friends of mine in Las Vegas. The first one is to be a car salesman at a really nice, high-end sports car dealership. The other offer is pretty interesting. I have a good friend that owns a repo business. He repos high-end cars like Lamborghinis, Ferrari's, etc. It's great pay and he also said you get chance to drive fast because people chase you. But the big kicker is that you get shot at too. Yikes not me. I'll keep working on getting a sponsor … lol.

Trying to make something happen

2009-01-31T17:14:00Z

First of all I would like thank everyone for all the e-mails of encouragement and ideas. I've read them all and it's given me an extra boost of confidence. I don't think I've talked on the phone this much ever in my life. All I do is talk on the phone and try to make something happen. I've worked on everything I could think of. I could not had asked for a tougher time to find a new sponsor and race team to sustain my rivalry with my good buddy Tony, but I'm up for it. LOL

If President Obama gets the $819 billion stimulus package passed -- yes, that's billion with a b -- it's time to start rebuilding our nation's infrastructure and get that Caterpillar equipment out there in full force to fix roads and bridges. Maybe I'll even get a job driving a D11 tractor. I think the biggest negative of this bad economy is all the negative stuff you here on the news every night. I feel once things get rolling again our economy will flourish. I've became a big Dave Ramsey fan on Fox business and I agree with his ideas. Dave believes that we the people are the economy. So if we are the economy, we can fix this problem. He believes you should list your debts smallest to largest. Pay minimum payments on everything but the little one. Attack the little one with a vengeance. When it's gone, attack the next one, and someday be debt free. Rich people ask how much? Broke people ask how much down and how much a month? Here's a great quote: The rich rule over the poor and the borrower is the slave to the lender. Proverbs 22:7

When I woke up this morning I went to my back yard and noticed that my patio table was destroyed and glass was everywhere. I could not figure out what happened. So I sent a picture and maybe you guys can help with this one. There was no debris and it was in a pain to clean up. The table didn't fall over; how bizarre.

I'm excited it's Super bowl week. This town is crazy during the Super Bowl. There are tons of great parties and the best part is going to the casino and watching the game or just to people watch. I don't bet, but it's sure fun watching the other people give their money away. The casinos have what they call prop bets and you can bet on anything you could think of that could happen in the Super Bowl. One I saw is who will score more points on Sunday, the Steelers or Lebron James. They have these huge screens that they show the game on and thousands of people are yelling for winning and losing bets. They don't really care about the game, just their bets. There are a few things that flourish in a touch economy, alcohol and gambling.

What I'm not excited about is next week and not racing at Pomona. I was glad that my old crew chiefs Rob Flynn and Mike Guger went 323 mph in testing with the Budweiser car. I'm cheering for Brandon now that he has that "Canadian Horsepower." I think it's going to be very top-heavy in Top fuel this year. I really don't think there's any true favorite because of all the turnover from last season. I'm sure Tony and Larry and Antron and Brandon all will do well. They all ran some really good times in testing. Let's just hope I'm racing by the end of the year to mix things up and hopefully play spoiler in the Countdown.

The latest ....

2009-01-23T17:39:00Z

Hi everyone, sorry it's been so long since I've blogged. A lot of you know what’s going on with me and some of you don't. Heck I don't even know for sure. What I can tell you, is that I found out a couple days before Christmas that my team owner had closed shop and parted ways with my sponsor, Caterpillar. The news came as a complete surprise. I had another year on my contract and had just finished the season stronger then anybody with two final round appearances in a row. We stopped my arch rival, Tony Schumacher, at the season finale and kept him from breaking all the records. The worst thing about this whole thing is that I'm in my prime, driving my best, and it all came to end abruptly.

I've always been a fighter and believe when you get bucked off the horse you dust yourself off and get back on. After hearing this shocking news, I immediately got on the phone and started making phone calls, not only to get answers but to try and maintain my good relationship with Caterpillar. It was tough because of the holidays and no one was working. It was probably the worst time for all this to happen. I couldn’t get any answers.

I tried to keep myself busy during the holidays. As I mentioned in my last blog, I just bought a new house so I immersed myself in cleaning and organizing. I never knew what an undertaking that would be, especially when you're an neat and clean freak like I am! Now is not a very good time to have a new house payment but I bought it when I though my future was a bit more stable. I got a good deal on it and it’s my dream home. It’s been so fun working on. The first week that I moved in, we had a big snow storm for three days . Yeah it’s Vegas. This town shut down which is pretty funny.

The highlight of my holidays was that I snuck off to San Francisco and met my best friend for a day and half. It was so spontaneous, but really fun. I needed it with as stressed out as I was. We had a fun day doing all the tourist stuff. Downtown San Fran was so beautiful with all the Christmas decorations. We also went to Angel Island next to the golden gate bridge. It was raining, of course, but we saw an amazing rainbow.

My New Years eve was pretty laid back. I live in probably one of the best cities for New Years Eve but once you've gone down to strip a couple of times with about a half million drunk tourists, it gets to be not so fun. Been there done that lol. I had a nice night at a friends’ house. We played games, ate food, and watched that crazy guy Robbie Madison jump his motorcycle at the Paris hotel in Vegas. I thought the jump down was the crazy part. I would have told them to pick me up with a helicopter up there!

I was glad that the new year was here so I could go to work on sponsorships to keep racing in 2009. I have been on the phone nonstop since the beginning of 09’. My first priority was to meet with the people of Caterpillar. We have developed a great relationship over the last couple of years. We have had a lot of success. We almost won a championship in our first year together. We doubled up in a memorable weekend at Vegas and won a lot of races. The best part, however, was the relationships I developed with the people who make the company a success. On the Caterpillar corporate end we got to work with great people like Jim Parker, Pat Lavery, Todd Goin ,and Stan Deatherage. We also got to work with all the great dealers across the country and their loyal Cat customers.

Thankfully, I got the chance to go to Peoria, Ill., to the Caterpillar headquarters in mid-January. I had the opportunity to meet with the Cat folks. I talked with them one-on-one and reassured them that I am 100 pwecent committed to building and improving their program with NHRA drag racing.

When I left Las Vegas, it was 70 degrees and when I arrived in Peoria its was -20 degrees with the wind chill. I was so cold. I was glad for the opportunity to go to Peoria but I was not glad about their weather. I’ll stick to my Vegas weather. I had a great dinner with the Cat guys while I was there. I stayed with the Lavery family. Pat, his wife, Leslie, their children, Christina, Matthew, Brandon, and their new cat Maia were great hosts. I was thankful for their hospitality. I had a great time up there. Let’s just hope the market turns around and you see Cat and me back in 2010.

I want to thank everyone for their kind words and encouragement during this time. My Arkansas posse is hard at work (Chad, Pat, Dick, Eric,) trying to find additional sponsorship on their end. Its just tough in this economy. I believe there are brighter skies on our horizon, especially with our new President.

It's been since 1992 that I haven't raced for a living. I hope I am racing soon, but like my best friend tells me, its in Gods hands and I'll be fine with or without racing. Thanks for everyone’s support and I'll give you my email so you guys can keep in touch. And I'll blog to keep you guys updated. Nitroracer_1@yahoo.com

Testing starts at Phoenix today and I live only five hours away. Maybe I’ll just drive down there and check things out to keep my name out there. I’ll definitely show up at Pomona. All the best.

Hot Rod

Movin' in

2008-12-13T00:34:00Z

Swinging for the fences

2008-11-10T22:30:00Z

Some tough days, but it's getting better

2008-10-17T01:33:00Z

Cat-tacular

2008-10-01T20:34:00Z

The Charlotte shuffle

2008-09-16T23:05:00Z

My other family

2008-09-08T19:41:00Z

First pitches, The Big Go, and "the one"

2008-09-05T23:01:00Z

A little time off

2008-08-21T19:25:00Z

In the game

2008-07-30T21:37:00Z

My favorite time of the year

2008-07-21T23:23:00Z

Chicago Cat attack!

2008-06-20T23:44:00Z

Much-needed R&R, The Police, and 12 hours of racing

2008-05-28T21:53:00Z

Mike Guger's Indy 500 adventure

2008-05-27T22:41:00Z

Getting married in Vegas (not me, my brother!)

2008-05-17T19:26:00Z

Memorable Madison moments

2008-05-08T16:23:00Z

How we roll

2008-04-26T17:13:00Z

The other day I was reading a drag racing message board and it made me laugh when they talked about a lot of the drivers not writing their own blogs and having ghost writers. For those of you who read my blog, there’s no way someone could come up with the stories that we write about.

Not the best of weeks ...

2008-04-17T04:12:00Z

It’s been quite awhile, but I’ve had some crazy stuff going on lately. That’s no excuse, so I’m going to try and update at least once a week. You fans need to keep me up to that promise.

Hoops, cool cars, and kudos to Gary

2008-03-25T17:19:00Z

Gainesville didn’t give us much to talk about. We qualified well for the first time this season, third. It was our best start since the fall Vegas race last October. It felt good to run well in qualifying. The track got us in the second round. We smoked the tires just like all the cars in that lane. We’ll move on and focus on Houston.

I do my own taxes, so I have to do my personal taxes and the taxes for Hot Rod Fuller, LLC. I didn’t leave the house much other than going to train my knee. The rest of the time I did my taxes. The highlight of the week was March Madness. I had two teams I was rooting for in the NCAAs. Living in Las Vegas, I pull for UNLV and my alma mater, Arkansas, of course. They were both No. 9 seeds. I got invited to go to Omaha for the first round game, but I was worn out and needed the time at home. So I had to watch on TV. I was proud of both my teams winning the first round. Unfortunately, they both ran into No. 1 seeds in the second round with UNLV playing Kansas and Arkansas against North Carolina. To me, those are the two best teams now. PT Dave reminded me to make sure I cheer for Villanova because the training staff at Villanova helped fix my knee when I had a problem with my meniscus in Reading last August. So now I’m pulling for Villanova. I really didn’t know until yesterday, but PT Dave told me that he called ’Nova coach Jay Wright, and he got me hooked up with their training staff when I was having all those knee problems during the Reading race, so go Wildcats. Saturday morning, my buddy Austin and I went to Pahrump, Nev. There’s a really cool road course called Spring Mountain. They had Lamborghini day. It was really cool. I’ve always like the Lambos. Lamborghini of Las Vegas brought out 15 exotic cars and was giving rides around the track. The track instructors were giving the rides, and I got to ride in a new LP640. I checked out the price tag, and it was $440,000. That’s out of my price range unless I start winning some races. I got in the car and the instructor said, “Prepared to be scared.” I laughed. I was calm during the ride, and he said most people hold on or have their heads down, and we were just having a normal conversation. It’s really funny to watch people drive the $200,000 personal vehicles off into the rocks and dirt when they go off course. They also had a Bugatti Veyron, which costs $1.4 million. Yesterday was my big knee checkup day. I’ve been nervous about it. I’m a perfectionist, and I want to be healed by now, but it’s been less than five months and the body doesn’t heal that quickly. I had an MRI done and the doctor looked at the x-rays and said everything looks fine. He said in a few more months the pain should be just about gone. Once I heard the news, I felt better both mentally and physically. I have to give a plug to one of my crew guys, Gary Pritchett. He’s my young buddy who just turned 21. He was racing in Bunny Burkett’s Top Alcohol Funny Car last weekend in a match race in Waynesboro, Va., and won the event, so congrats Gary! He’s a great young kid, and we’re really excited for him. He’s one win up on me this year. I’m off to Houston on Thursday. I’ll have my tax return sent off on Wednesday. We’re going to do our best and win for two people this weekend. R.J. Powers, David’s wife, her mother passed away recently, so we want to do well for the Powerses as Houston is their home race. Also, Mustang CAT is on the car again for the Houston race, and we want to go some rounds for our friends at Mustang. They got the ball rolling for us with CAT last spring. I’ll leave with some words of wisdom from my mom, Cathy. She said that if I want to meet “the one” I have to leave the house. LOL I’m excited to see momma Fuller and my pops, Bob, this weekend. Dad has won twice in Houston, and he’s racing in Super Comp and Super Gas. I can’t wait to have a double Fuller win at a national event. I keep wanting to end this blog, but more things keep popping into my head. Check out our new website at www.davidpowersmotorsports.com or www.hotrodfuller.com. Our new site is awesome — Holly did a great job on the site, so thanks for all the help Holly! Oh, and you can now buy CAT Racing/Hot Rod Fuller apparel online at www.nitromall.com from Main Gate. I’m done! See you in Houston, Hot Rod

Karting for charity

2008-03-14T23:16:00Z

I have a good excuse for not blogging for two weeks. My schedule has been crazy hectic. It started last Friday afternoon when I flew into Oakland to participate in a charity go-karting event at Infineon Raceway. I got in that afternoon, so I decided to make a surprise visit to Peterson CAT in San Leandro, which is close to the airport in Oaktown. When I walked in at Peterson, the receptionist said, “I know who you are.” I started laughing. She had a picture of our car at her desk. She called our main man at Peterson Rich Hasper. Rich was blown away that I was there. I had some spare time so they took me around the dealership to visit with the employees. During the tour, I think I met “the one,” Jennifer. LOL Then, Rich’s group took me to lunch at this really cool place right on the water. I was nervous about the karting deal because I haven’t driven a go-kart in some time, plus my knee had me worried. Cory Mac and Matt Guidera also were there and they’re both pretty good in the go-karts. My idea was to show up early and make some practice laps, but that didn’t happen. We had some media engagements with the Nor Cal press before it was play time on the track. I finally got on the track and it was “hella” cool. Like a typical drag racer, I went down the main stretch too fast, spun and set the record speed for going backwards on the karting track. I promised Rob Flynn I wouldn’t do anything dumb on the go-kart, but I guess I lied. Matt had low E.T. of practice and qualifying and he took me out and led me around the track and showed me line. After that, I dropped two seconds off my lap time and was competitive with the rest of the group. The most important part of the day was spending time with the fans. They contributed to the Speedway Children’s Charities to spend the day and race with us. It was nice to visit with everyone on a personal level in a casual environment away from the drag strip. It was a great event. We helped raise more than $14,000. Everyone was very happy with the experience. John Cardinale, Diana Brennan – a former “the one” – and the entire Infineon staff are awesome.

I flew home to Vegas on Saturday night and wasn’t feeling all so well. I started losing my voice, which wasn’t a good thing because I had a big week ahead with CAT. The Con Expo was in town and it’s held just once every three years, so it’s a really big deal. It’s one of the biggest trade shows in Las Vegas. Did it mention it’s a big deal? It was huge for me because it was basically my introduction to the entire corporate team from Caterpillar. It started off on Monday with an autograph session at the Caterpillar booth. We did a 20-minute Q&A also. That evening, I had a 22-minute speech to all the CAT employees at the event. There were more than 350 people there. We talked about working with CAT as a team. I barely had a voice, but we pulled off a good speech and pumped up a lot of people about our NHRA program. I signed autographs and did two speaking engagements each day. The emcee, Dan, was one of the guys in those funny Coors Light commercials with the NFL coaches. He’s a really funny dude. Everyone remembered him as the Coors Light commercial guy and I was the dragster guy. The highlight of the week was Motorsports Madness at Caesar’s Palace on Tuesday and Wednesday night. It was in a ball room and when you walked into the room it was like going through the tunnel into a NASCAR track. In the right of the room, our CAT dragster show car was on display and a booth for us to sign autographs. On the other side of the room was Dave Blaney and the No.22 CAT Toyota. It was a really fun time with video games and food and loud music. We signed autographs for two hours each night. It was a jammed packed three days. The excitement level for the Caterpillar drag racing team is at an all-time high. Even though I was under the weather, the Con Expo was an awesome experience. I can’t wait until 2011. Since it’s raining at Gainesville on Friday afternoon, we’re watching some cool videos on YouTube. My assistant crew chief Mike Guger is showing us some neat exotic cars on the internet. Now we’re watching a video on the SLR McLaren. I need to win a few more races to afford one of those bad boys, but I’d sure look good cruising The Strip in that. Ok, now we’re watching an Audi R8. It’s really cool too. It’s been a low key day with the rain. Antron and I did the Army Y.E.S. program this morning, and then it started raining. I haven’t found “the one” yet, but there will be plenty of candidates in Florida this weekend. I’ll keep you posted. Have a great weekend.

A streak ended, the Expo, and NASCAR Vegas-style

2008-03-05T00:53:00Z

Our win streak stopped at 17 rounds at Firebird. It was a good run, and we came out of the event happy even though we didn’t win the race. We had low e.t. of the event again. We haven’t gotten a win yet, but we know we have a fast race car. We just need to get a little more consistent on both qualifying and race day. After the race, we took a red-eye flight to Orlando, Fla., for the Matco Tools Expo. There were a bunch of us, including Antron, PR Ted, and Diana from our team. Also, Cory Mac, Tony Schumacher, and Jack Beckman were with us. It was a tough Monday. We hit the ground before 5 a.m., and we checked into the hotel, showered, and went straight to the event. We were tired at the end of the day, but it was a fun time. Our buddy from Matco, Tor (John Torok), took care of us the entire time we were at the Shingle Creek. The Expo was Monday and Tuesday, and we flew home on Wednesday morning. I had a good time hanging with Antron and all the Matco Tools folks. They are great supporters of our race team here at DPM.

AT Dave picked me up from the airport and took me straight to do my physical therapy. I was tired, so it wasn’t a fun training session. It was the one-year anniversary of when I hurt my ACL in Hawaii. There was no volleyball for me in Orlando this year. I was excited because it was NASCAR weekend in Vegas, and my buddy from LVMS, Jeff Motley, always hooks me up with a credential for the weekend. I went out to the track on Saturday for the Busch, err Nationwide race. I hung out in Jeff’s office and watched the race. The Cup race had a late start on Sunday, but I got there early, like 8 a.m. I had an all-access pass, so I hung out in the garage. I got to hang out with the Bill Davis Racing Caterpillar team. They were all very supportive of our program and said they’re big drag racing fans. I’m always amazed how many of the Cup guys really like drag racing. I also saw the Valvoline guys from Evernham’s team. After that, I got to go to the driver’s meeting. That was a cool experience. I ran into a group of CAT folks that were on a tour. Many of them were from Patten CAT near Chicago and we’ll see them again in Joliet this June. Then it was off to pre-race. Blue Man Group was playing. That’s were I first saw Dave Blaney, driver of the No. 22 CAT car. I was surprised because he knew who I was. I also talked to Patrick Carpentier. He really likes drag racing and also lives in Las Vegas. Kyle Busch and I chatted a little bit also. The last guy I got to meet was Carl Edwards. He told me he wants to drive a dragster. I said we can swap rides anytime, maybe at the Charlotte race. For me, the highlight of the day was meeting Bill Davis. He’s also from Arkansas. We talked a lot about Caterpillar and Arkansas, and he offered up the opportunity to watch the race from the pit box. That was an awesome place to watch the race and see all the strategy that really goes on during a Cup race. I was hanging out with crew chief “Slugger” Labbe during the race. I’ve been to about 20 NASCAR races, and that’s the first time I stayed until the finish. I was lucky to have a good parking pass to beat all the traffic. Not much has been going on since. I’m just working on the knee, and later this week I’m off to Sonoma to do a charity go-kart race at Infineon Raceway. I’m looking forward to that. I’m gonna sign off by saying hi to my friend Desiree from Phoenix. She was getting on me for not updating my blog enough. That’s all folks. Take care, Rod

A rainy day in Phoenix ...

2008-02-22T20:42:00Z

I’ve taken a longer break from the blog than I thought. Since it’s raining Friday afternoon at Phoenix, it’s a perfect time to update for the NHRA.com readers. Pomona was the usual Pomona for us. I can’t figure that place out. I need to find some sort of a lucky mojo for that track. After Pomona, I spent the week in Vegas with not a lot going on. The highlight was going to my usual hangout at The Palms. I took some friends from Arkansas, Justin Acri and his group, to The Playboy Club. Justin is a radio host on 103.7 The Buzz in Little Rock. It went great because there were 10 of us and a lot of them had never been to Las Vegas. Two of them were from Australia. They were blown away and had a great time. From there, we went to Moon, a nightclub on top of The Palms. The roof opens up and you looking at the sky some 70 stories high. Some of you may know, but I’m a big NASCAR fan. Watching NASCAR is one of my favorite pastimes cause I can lay on the couch, watch the race and take naps. I was cheering for Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch. I like those guys. I like Stewart’s personality and I like Busch’s driving style and he’s from Vegas. I like the CoT and it was a good race, especially at the end. The strategy was fun to watch. I was supposed to go to WWE at Thomas & Mack, but I ended up missing out.

I traveled to Phoenix on Monday. I had to get here early. We had a big CAT appearance at the Tinaja Hills Training facility near Tucson. The majority of the CAT dealers had a training session going on there. We brought our truck, trailer and race car to the event for a display. Dick and Neal from my crew came in early and Stan Deatherage from CAT corporate came to Tinaja. A lot of the people with the dealers never followed drag racing, but do now that CAT is a major sponsor. We had to answer a lot of questions about our sport and what we drag racers do. When we went to Peoria in December, we got to meet the trainers and they gave us the opportunity to drive some of the mining equipment while at Tinaja Hills. I got to use a 994, CAT’s largest wheel loader, and drive the 793, which is one of the biggest dump trucks that CAT makes. It’s actually the second largest behind the 797. The tires are 13 feet high. You can see Neal and Dick next to the tires. It’s like driving from the second story of your house. I could run over Tony Schumacher’s dragster and not even know it. LOL! I have attached some cool photos from our Tinaja Hills event. Two funny things happened on Tuesday at Tinaja. The trainers gave Neal a new nickname, Snuggles. Then, Dick dropped his cell phone and we couldn’t find the phone and later on we found out that Neal, or Snuggles, drove over the phone in the 994. Wednesday, we went to the press conference downtown. I was bummed because Kobe and Phil came into Morton’s where the presser was happening, but I didn’t get to see them. The NBA stole our thunder or should we say Shaq did. The local TV guys felt Shaq’s Suns debut was more important that our drag race. Oh well. Last night, I signed autographs at Gila River Casino and I got to sit next to my favorite Top Fuel driver, Hillary Will. Melanie and Alan Bradshaw also were there. It was a private setup for the casino VIPs. Now it’s raining and I’m talking to my good friend Eileen in the lounge. There’s a lot of pressure on us here because we’ve done so well here. We want to continue to do well and win and make it four straight wins at Phoenix. Nothing less than a win will satisfy us at Phoenix. 19 straight round wins would be pretty cool. Wish us good luck! That’s all for now.

Ready to roll

2008-02-05T15:34:00Z

Hey everyone. Testing went really well for both of our David Powers team. It actually went a lot better than I expected. We came into Phoenix with a new chassis and thought it would be a big variable to overcome. But Rob did a great job and got the car consistently down the track all week long. From the get-go this new car was awesome. We made a few checkout runs and they were both mid 4.50 runs. We came out Monday after a day of rain and not a lot of guys were making it down the track. We ran 4.53 at 332, which was an unbelievable pass at the time. It was the fastest I had ever gone in Top Fuel. Later that night, I told Flynn to go for it. All the guys were excited and I hit the throttle and I could tell it was on a great run. They don’t have the best lighting at Phoenix, so you’re running in the dark into the black hole and we ran 4.468 at 331 and set low E.T. of the test. Schumacher was right behind us and they ran a 4.48 and anytime you outrun the Army car, you’ve accomplished something. It was awesome to work with my new teammate, Antron Brown, at the track for the first time. There’s no reason he can’t contend for a championship too. They’ve got a bad ass team over there for Matco Tools. It’s going to be an awesome year for David Powers Motorsports. Antron says I need to learn the words to Ebony and Ivory so we can sing Karaoke. I’ve seen some predictions online and let me tell you, don’t underestimate that team. They’ll win races and make the Countdown.

We finished running on Tuesday and I got home on Wednesday. Trainer Dave was excited to put me through a rigorous training session. My knee held up well throughout testing. We’re ready to go at Pomona. Dave is stepping it up with the intensity. The workouts are getting tougher. We have to call him AT Dave, not PT Dave. He’s always telling us he’s an athletic trainer, not a personal trainer. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I went out to LVMS to work with the Jeffreys -- Ashley, Judy, and Justine -- with their Super Comp cars. Justine won the D7 race at Las Vegas last year and finished eighth in the world in Super Comp, so that was awesome for her. I helped them get dialed in. They had a successful test and they should be ready go some rounds at Pomona. We’ll have our annual pre-Pomona dinner at La Paloma on Wednesday night. The highlight of my weekend was to see Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony at The Palms. I’m a big Van Halen fan. The Pearl at The Palms is probably the best small venue to see a concert. Jim Baker, who works at The Palms, invited me to the show. He’s a big-time NHRA fan and serves as the sponsor liaison between The Palms and the Pedregons. We got to sit in a private box real close the stage and the Baker Babes were there (see the attached photo.) That’ll put a big smile on anyone’s face. After the concert, we went to The Mint. I got to meet George Maloof, one of the owners of The Palms. I saw Derek Jeter, but didn’t talk to him. I usually don’t stay out that late, but when I was driving home, the sun was starting to shine. Dave had me scheduled to train at 9 a.m. because he had a busy schedule. He could tell I was dragging, but we made it through it. He tortured me; it was a tough workout, maybe the hardest so far. I was pretty tired, so I blew off the Super Bowl parties and just hung out at home and watched the game on my couch. I didn’t care who won, but I guess I was pulling for the Pats because I wanted them to finish off what they started. It kind of reminded me of our season last year. I felt bad for some of those guys. Now, we’re getting ready for Pomona. We have a great race car and we’re ready for the Winternationals. Hope to see you at Pomona. Take care,
Rod

My thoughts are not here at the moment

2008-01-28T19:06:00Z

I want to send my condolences to Doug and Sonnie Herbert. This has to be the hardest thing in the world for them. A few years ago when my mom was really sick and we didn’t know if she was going to make it, both Doug and Sonnie offered the use of their jet to fly me from Pomona to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to be with mom and family. No words can describe what a kind gesture that was to our family and we haven’t forgotten it. Our NHRA community is a big family and we’re very tight and quick to rally support when things go wrong and we just want to send our best wishes along to the Herberts. We’re still at Phoenix testing and things indeed were somber over the weekend when the news of the tragedy spread on Saturday morning at the track. It’s definitely not the news we want to hear to begin the ’08 season. I’ll do a post-testing blog later this week. That’s all for now. All the best,
Hot Rod

Testing on my mind

2008-01-26T20:06:00Z

It’s Saturday morning at Phoenix and I have some time, so I wanted to update the blog. We can’t run until after 11 a.m. today, so I’m gonna do my second blog update this week. Wow! We got into Phoenix Thursday morning and a group of us from the team, including David Powers and Antron Brown, stopped to visit our sponsors from Caterpillar and Matco. Ryan Haas of Forward Sports Marketing was hosting a seminar to talk about the dealer involvement in the NHRA program and how to activate and be involved on our car. Things went very well and we had a group of CAT folks from across the country at the track. Thursday night, Stan from CAT, John Torok from Matco, Antron, Lee Beard, PR Ted, and I went to dinner at Sakana off of Elliott Road. Ted and Tor had sushi and the rest of us had the hibachi grill. It was excellent. They said it was some of the best sushi they ever had. If you’re a sushi fan and you’re in the Phoenix area, try Sakana. We didn’t do much at the track other than get setup and work out of all the first day bugs. We have to get everyone back in sync. Most of our crew is intact from last season, but we have a few guys in different positions, so they all have to get acclimated and get that chemistry back. We’ll be all good in a few days. What I really wanted to talk about in this blog was my troll. The troll came about when I got my first dragster in 1993, a Super Comp car. There was a movie called Demolition Man with Sly Stallone that I liked at the time. The little trolls were real popular and my mom gave me the troll and I thought Demolition Man would be a cool name for him because he was going to help me demolish the competition. He's been in my cars ever since. When I drove Top Fuel in 1995 for the Montana Express car, I was running Connie Kalitta in the first round at Gainesville and we had a motor explosion and caught on fire real bad in the cockpit and I remember seeing the troll and he was shaking and I was trying to get the flame off him and control the car at the same time. He’s been on fire, I would guess, at least a dozen times. He hasn’t aged well. He’s missing one eyeball and most of his hair. Everyone told me to just leave him. I thought some Scalp Med might help him, but he’s still without the big hair other trolls have and his eye. I even thought about retiring him if we won the championship. We didn’t and my troll is still in the dragster with me. Last week, Antron’s wife, Billie Jo, hooked up my troll with a custom firesuit. She used the scraps from my Impact! Racing suit and now my troll has a fireproof suit. He has a cool yellow and black CAT suit just like mine. Now, me and Demolition Man are ready for a championship run in 2008. Oh, I’ll leave off with a funny story. PR Ted and I went to the LA Fitness near our hotel on Chandler Blvd. I was doing cardio and the rubber ear piece from the headphones on my iPod got stuck in my left ear. It felt really strange and started to get uncomfortable, so we cut the workout short and went to the CVS across the street so I could buy a pair of tweezers. We got in the rental car and PR Ted played doctor and pulled the ear piece out and I was back to normal, thankfully. He joked, “I’m not a doctor, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.” And that’s actually where we are staying. That’s all for now. We’re about to warm up and make our first run. Take care,
Hot Rod

Time to test the car, and my knee

2008-01-24T02:57:00Z

Today is the last day before I leave for testing in Phoenix. Friday will be 11 weeks from my surgery date and I had some more physical therapy this morning. I sure feel better about my rehab then I did a week ago. I was nervous last week. PT Dave worked me hard and I was sore and there was some pain after our training sessions. We were both disappointed, but leaving physical therapy today it seems like everything is coming together. I’m 15 pounds lighter then I was before my surgery. My knee doesn’t hurt. Instead of being nervous, now I’m ready to go. Dave could tell I’m in race mode. I have my confidence back and that’s critical. I can’t wait to fire up the CAT dragster this Friday. It's good to know the car is on the way. My guys left the shop in Brownsburg this morning. I watched the playoffs last weekend and wasn’t really rooting for anyone. I guess I kind of was rooting for the Patriots. What they have is special and it reminded me of our season last year. We deserved to win the title and so do they. I’m tired of hearing about the ’72 Dolphins too. To me, they're a bunch of bitter, old men. Get over yourselves. The Patriots are a bad-ass football team. I know our buddy Jeff from Milton CAT in Massachusetts will be rooting hard next Sunday. I was going for Brett Farve in the Packers/Giants game. He just seems like such a cool guy. We’re about the same age and I say you’re only as old as you feel. He’s proven that he’s as good as guys much younger then him. It just wasn't his day. I’m not a big Giants fan, so I’ll be rooting for the Pats. I hope it’s a good game. It was an awesome game during the last weekend of the regular season from Giants Stadium, so hopefully we have another close game on Feb. 3. The Pats seem to win close Super Bowls, so I’m picking them on a late field goal. I get into Phoenix tomorrow morning and will attend a CAT dealer meeting that afternoon with Antron. That should be fun. There’s an LA Fitness near our hotel in Chandler and Antron and PR Ted will join me at the gym. We’ll have a group of folks from a lot of different CAT dealers from across the country at the track on Friday and we’re excited to show them a good time at the track on Friday. For many of them, it will be their maiden voyage at the drag races. I hope Mother Nature cooperates. I got an e-mail from Diane, who is the assistant to Michael Anthony, the former bassist of Van Halen. He’s a big race fan and will be hanging out at Pomona. I know Michael is buddies with Ron Capps and Larry Dixon, but we’re excited to have him visit the CAT pit at the Winternationals. Diane said she reads the blog so “Hi Diane!” She sent me some of Michael’s Mad Anthony Hot Sauce. You can find it online at: www.madanthonycafe.com. That’s all for now. Hopefully we’ll see some of you guys at FIR this weekend. Take care,
Hot Rod

First showcar appearance a big hit

2008-01-15T20:45:00Z

There’s been a lot going on, so I’m back to blogging on a fairly regular basis. Last Thursday morning we left the shop in Indy for our first show car visit at Linn State Technical College in Linn, Mo. I rode in the white Toyota Tundra with Cameron Beer of Forward Sports Marketing and his brother Joe, who was our CDL driver for the event. About an hour into the trip I was surprised that my phone wasn’t ringing. I thought I had accidentally left it in the rental car at the airport at Indy. I called the rental car company and it wasn’t there, so I called PR Ted and he said Antron found my phone in the black Sequoia. I left in there while returning my rental car. So I had to get PR Ted to overnight my phone to Linn State for morning delivery on Friday. It was weird not having access to my phone, but it was kind of nice not having any calls for 24 hours too. My phone always rings non-stop, so it was a nice break for a day. On the way to Linn State, we stopped at Fabick CAT and I met with Rose Dierker. I rode the rest of the way with Rose. She was one of the crucial players in us getting CAT and pushing the technician recruiting program. Fabick sponsored us twice last year in both St. Louis and Joliet. They were the only dealer to be on the car twice. On the way, she asked if we could stop in this little town named Union, Mo. Her grandson and a bunch of friends and family met us at a McDonald’s, so I got to sign autographs and meet with them. From there, it was on to Linn. We got there before 6 p.m. and got to see the beautiful Carla MacDaniel, who works at Linn State. She showed us around the brand new facility they just opened at the school, which is where the display was scheduled for on Friday. We got the car unloaded and setup for the appearance on Friday. Then, we all packed up and headed to Jefferson City, where we were staying for the night. We met up with Stan Deatherage of CAT in Jeff City and the group of us went to dinner at a nice steak restaurant near our hotel. We all had a fun time. I had been battling a cold and couldn’t stop coughing, so they talked me into doing a shot of Jack Daniels. I’m not a drinker. They also had me do a “Hot Toddie” too. It has a mixture of stuff in it. So, I did two shots, which is really, really rare for me. They stopped a Walgreens and got me some Vick’s Vapor Rub on the way back to the hotel. I actually woke up on Friday morning and felt great and wasn’t coughing. I guess I learned how to beat a cold -- booze and Vick’s. As soon as we got to Linn State, there were about 60 people waiting to see us and the car. It was a great day to help promote Linn State and Fabick and Dean Machinery. Linn State is the “Think Big” educational partner for both Fabick and Dean. It was a great opportunity to tell the kids about what they can learn at Linn State and how I got started. I spoke to about six different groups of at least 100 kids. They were nearly 300 kids interested in attending Linn State, which gave them some great leads for prospective students. Overall, it was an awesome event and great beginning for our show car program. The show car next heads to the Matco Tools Expo in Orlando at the end of February. There will be no volleyball for me this year. Linn State even promoted our visit in the media and we had some NHRA fans show up to see the new CAT dragster and get autographs. A couple fans, Denny Slusser and his daughter Savannah, stopped by to see us. Denny works at a place called Carved In Stone and they made me this awesome dragster with my name in marble. It will look nice in my house. Thanks guys! We always enjoy interacting with the students, fans and instructors. Friday evening after the appearance, I left with Ryan Haas, our marketing guy, for Kansas City for the NHRA Division 5 banquet. It was at the Sheraton near the stadiums where the Chiefs and Royals play. That night I just relaxed and ordered room service and got to bed early. I got up Saturday morning and did my PT at the hotel gym. Then I took a nap and watched the Seattle vs. Green Bay game. During the game, my family showed up from Arkansas and Tony flew in from Vegas, so we hung out before the banquet. It was an awesome experience to have my dad winning the Super Comp title. They recognized us at the banquet with me being a D5 boy. All the kids coming up and wanting autographs and pictures were really cool. It was good to see the D5 director Rob Park and Glen Cromwell from NHRA in Glendora, and a lot of friends from the race track. After the banquet, we all chit-chatted until about 12:30 a.m. I flew home to Vegas the next morning. That’s about all I got, but Antron just jumped on the phone with me and says he’s decided to call me “Ivory.” He says we’re Ebony and Ivory like that old song from Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. AB is a funny guy and we’re glad he’s on our team. That’s all for now. Take care,
Hot Rod

An exciting week

2008-01-08T22:44:00Z

Hey everyone. I’m doing this blog update from our team’s race shop in Brownsburg, Ind. I got into Indy late last night. I was dreading this trip because it was nearly zero here a week ago, so I spent two days in Vegas trying to find a warm coat. I found a nice black coat at Nordstrom. So, I’m flying to Indy and the pilot said it was 42 degrees when we took off from Vegas and 65 degrees in Indy. I’m all ready for the cold and it’s warmer than at home. It must be some freak weather, because this is unusual from what they tell me. It’s been raining all day and supposed to get cold again, so maybe I’ll get to wear my jacket. This is a real exciting week for me. Today, we had a sponsor summit/meeting with both Caterpillar and Matco Tools at our shop. It was a really good brainstorming experience about our Cat technician recruiting program. I got to spend some time with my guys in the shop, which is always important. This photo is of me and Aline Rice from Holt Cat in San Antonio. We have a new mechanic on the team and his name is Gage Fairchild and he’s from Spokane, Wash. So, we want to welcome Gage to the Cat team. I also got to see my new race car. She looks pretty racey. I haven’t got to name her yet. My current ride is Britney. Hopefully we don’t have to send her to racing rehab just yet! I’ll come up with a name soon for the new car. I have a unique way of naming my race cars (LOL).

Tomorrow is race shop day for me. I have to make sure my new firesuit from Impact! Racing fits. I have to get in the car for the first time after my knee surgery and make sure everything feels right. I have to take my guys to lunch for the first time in 2008 and maybe to go sushi with PR Ted for dinner. I haven’t been to Tegry Bistro yet and I hear it’s really good. All the other racers like TJ, Melanie and Dixon go there. I have to keep up my PT so Dave Tomchek doesn’t get on me for slacking on my knee. This other photo is me next to the rear door on our hauler. It looks a little different than our white trailer last year. Much better if you ask me. Our new trailer and race car looks awesome. We leave for our show car visit at Linn State Technical College on Thursday afternoon. I’m excited to see Carla McDaniel and all of our friends at Linn State for a few days. Linn State was the first Cat Think Big partner that we worked with last year. I’ll be speaking in front of a group of 3,500 students, teacher and parents. I don’t think I’ve ever spoke to a group that large. I’ll feel like a presidential candidate on the campaign trail. My dad’s championship banquet for Division 5 is on Saturday in Kansas City. I’m excited. It’s a big night for my dad and our family. I’ll get to see Mama Fuller again too. I’ll be sure to take some pictures for the next blog. It’ll be cool to see my pops win the Super Comp crown. Take care, Hot Rod

An awesome Christmas

2008-01-04T21:57:00Z

Happy New Year. I’m ready to go racing, how about you? It’s been a boring off season for, but the holidays were good. The highlight of my winter vacation was getting to go home to Arkansas for Christmas. I sold a vehicle to a friend of mine in Arkansas, so I drove from Las Vegas to Arkansas, all 1,280 miles. It was a nice, long trip. It’s been since my Sportsman days since I’ve driven that long. It was a harder driver than I thought it would be. My knee would stiffen up, so I had to stop a lot and stretch up. I had to make sure to keep up my knee rehab for PT Dave, so as soon as I got to Rogers, Ark., I went straight to the gym before even going home. I want to get my knee back to 100-percent and be healthy for 24 races this season.

It was really nice to be home. I got home on Dec. 22 and hadn’t done much shopping, so I waited to the last minute like always. It was crazy busy and jampacked at the mall, but we got it done. It was just nice to spend a lot of time with my parents and Tony and his fiancé were there and my older brother Steve. On Christmas Eve, a bunch of family came over and we had our traditional Texas Hold ‘Em poker game. I’m not a card player at all, but it ended up with my dad, Tony, and me in the final three. My dad, Bob, won the Fuller family poker tourney. It also was cool to see my nephews. It’s kind of funny because my nephews are all over six feet tall and they’re not even 20 years old. I guess the short genes in the Fuller family skipped a generation. Christmas was awesome. It was one of the best ever for me. My mom is in good health and good spirits. Growing up, Christmas is about presents, but as you get older it isn’t about that. It’s about giving and being with the family and that made it nice this year. I didn’t need a gift to have a good Christmas. Just to have my family healthy and spend time with them was awesome. Two days after Christmas on Dec. 27, my longtime buddy Chad Campbell -- we’ve known each other since we were little kids; Chad runs me ragged when I’m home in Rogers – took me to see the mayor of Rogers. I didn’t know I was going to see the mayor, so I was dressed real casual in jeans. It was a big surprise and Mayer Womack gave me the Rogers Award of Excellence, which is basically the key to the city. That’s a great honor. You can never imagine earning that growing up. It’s was an awesome experience. They had me speak to all the city employees and I talked about what an honor it is to represent Rogers. I might live in Vegas, but I’m an Arkansas boy. I got home on Dec. 30 and took it easy. Vegas is a crazy city all the time, but it’s really crazy at New Year’s. I didn’t want to deal with crowds with my knee healing, so for the first time in a long time I just stayed home and watched TV on New Year’s Eve. I watched that motorcycle guy make that jump on ESPN. It was a cool event. I had tickets to go, but it was really cold and I didn’t want to go out in 30-degree temps. The best seat was on my couch at home. My schedule is about to heat up. I have some CAT meetings in Indy early next week. We are going to have a show car program this year, so I have to go to Missouri for a show car appearance at Linn State Tech College next Thursday and Friday. I’m excited about the new show car. Indy was really cold this week, but it’s warming up from what I hear. That’s all for now. Take care. Hot Rod

The CAT trip

2007-12-19T19:42:00Z

I’m sure you saw the story on NHRA.com about our trip to CAT. Well, this is a more detailed version of last week’s visit to Peoria. I was pretty nervous about going because the doctors and my personal trainer Dave didn’t want me to travel, but we had to do it. This was very important to our team. They were concerned about the weather and me slipping and falling on the ice and snow. I was close to being off the crutches, but they felt it would be good to stay on them to help brace me when walking. Dave gave me a list of things to do with my rehab on the road and for the most part I did ok. I was delayed when trying to fly into Peoria on Dec. 9. I felt bad because Pat Lavery, one of the execs from Caterpillar, was scheduled to pick me up from the airport that evening. I finally got in around 1 a.m. on Dec. 10 and we had to get up at 6 a.m. that morning. The first stop was at the CAT Tech Center. They pulled our entire truck and trailer inside and they had a cool video playing and we signed at least 500 autographs that morning. We also had to give a speech on safety in drag racing. From there we went to the “proving grounds” at the Edwards Demo Center. As a driver, we get to do a lot of fun things, but it was great that my guys got to operate all sorts of CAT equipment. They had a really good time doing that. It’s good when the crew guys get to share in some of the fun stuff. By the way the weather was terrible. It was cold and rainy the entire time. Maybe I’m just used to Las Vegas weather and it was typical midwest winter weather, but for me, the weather was lousy. That brings us to Tuesday. We started the day at the SS Plant where they build the big CAT tractors like the D11s. I got like the presidential tour. They had a golf cart for me while most of the group had to walk. It’s a big facility, too. That was good for my knee. It was an amazing tour to see how they put the machinery together. Rob Flynn and I thought of some ways to help improve our race team by watching how they assemble the tractors. They have what they call a “dog house” and a “hog house” with all the needed parts and pieces for that section of the assembly line.

Then it was off to the corporate headquarters in downtown Peoria. Mother Nature didn’t cooperate and it was cold and rainy. My guys had to set up the awning and unload the car in the rain. Once it was set up, everything was fine. We signed autographs and showed off the car all afternoon. Pat Lavery’s wife, Leslie, brought their two sons, Brandon and Matthew, to visit after school. They read the blog all the time and are huge drag racing fans so hi Brandon and Matthew. I know we’ll see them at the track a few times next season. Before the display, we had a nice lunch with a group of the CAT execs. Stan Deatherage, Rachel Potts and Sharon Miller all did a great job coordinating the event and making the entire trip smooth for us. I also got to shop at the CAT Merchandise Store in Peoria, so I have lots of new clothing. We had a nice team dinner at Jonah’s, a seafood restaurant near the hotel and called it a night. A small group of us went to Mossville on Wednesday and an even smaller group to Decatur on Thursday. Mossville is the largest office building in the state of Illinois. CAT turned it from a manufacturing facility to offices. We gave a short speech and displayed the car inside. It was so cool how many CAT employees are really excited about our sport. I bet we have the largest cheering section at Joliet in June. Our last visit was at Decatur. It was with my crew guys Dick Jackson and Neal Carmichael. They build the large trucks in Decatur. Some folks from the Decatur plant took us to dinner at Bizou on Wednesday night. The owner Mike Comerford recognized us and is a big drag racing fan. We signed autographs from 6:45-11 a.m. on Thursday morning at the Decatur plant and then we loaded up and drove back to Brownsburg. I got to ride in the semi truck back to Indy. It was like being a sportsmen racer again driving the big truck. When in Indy Allan Bolante at the Comfort Suites has what he calls the “Rod Fuller Suite.” It has a whirlpool in the room. Allan is a great guy and it’s a really nice hotel. If you need a nice play to stay in Indy, call Allan. That night, Steve Elliott, our new chef, and I went to dinner at Boulder Creek. We bumped into PR Ted who was dining with Snake and Larry Dixon. We joined up with those guys and it was a cool opportunity to pick the brain of two of the greats of our sport. I learned a lot from those guys. I tried to buy Snake dinner, but he wouldn’t let me. That was really neat. I never thought I’d be sitting and having dinner with Snake. He’s the coolest. I wanted to sleep in on Friday, but PR Ted woke me up because I was late for a photo shoot at the shop. We had my new firesuit and dragster all ready and needed to take some photos for Caterpillar. The new car looks awesome. It doesn’t look like the Army car anymore, which is a good thing. Last year our cars looked too similar. The new colors look great and I think the fans will really like it. That evening we had our company holiday party at the new shop. The Powerses did a great job of decorating our shop and Steve cooked up tons of great food. It was a really fun time. CAT brought some presents for our race team and gave me an awesome night portrait of our dragster. I’ll definitely hang it in my house. They were expecting some snow on Saturday and I got out at 7 a.m. I was lucky because Indy had lots of snow last weekend and Vegas didn’t. I got out before all the flights got cancelled. When I got home, I went straight to physical therapy. We struggled on the first day, but did fine on Sunday at PT. So, rehab is going well. I’m off to Arkansas this weekend to spend Christmas with my family. I leave on Saturday morning and can’t wait to get home and see my folks. Happy Holidays to everyone. We’ll talk to you in ’08. Hot Rod

Congratulations, dad

2007-12-08T18:49:00Z

My last blog was about football, now I’m going to talk about my dad. For those of you who don’t know, I come from a racing family. My mom wanted to have Hot Rod Fuller on my birth certificate, but she settled on Rod with my dad. I grew up in a racing family. Both my dad, Bob, and brother, Tony, race in the Super categories and they’re both very good racers. My dad won the Division 5 championship in Super Comp for the second or third time in his career and I’m so very proud of him. We did have one champ in the Fuller household in 2007. What makes it special is that he won in my old car. I built that car from ground up. I gave that car to my dad when I went Top Fuel racing and that car means a lot to me and to see him win and do well with that car is just really an awesome feeling. I believe that car helped me get to Top Fuel. I think winning a Super Comp championship is as hard as winning the Top Fuel title because you have to win so many rounds and races. Sometimes you have to win seven or eight rounds, not just four. I’m lucky to have a family that raised me right and have a great racing mentor like my pops. A lot of people don’t realize that on Sunday morning before race day we talk racing strategy and he gets me pumped up to win rounds. Momma Fuller expects the best from us and she wants us to do well. We all joke that you don’t want to disappoint Momma Fuller. I think all of the racing Fuller’s did her proud in 2007. I’m excited to fly home to Arkansas for Christmas and spend time with the family back home. I don’t get home as often as I should. I’m off to Peoria for a week on Sunday and I’m nervous because I haven’t been out of the house much and I’m not 100-percent. It will be my first flight since the knee surgery. Again, rehab is going well. We’re excited about meeting all the employees and people at CAT’s corporate office next week. We’re going to debut our ’08 paint scheme in Peoria and it looks really cool. They just sent me some pictures from the shop in Indy and I’ll post some stuff on the blog next week after the unveiling. I just hope it’s not too snowy and cold. I’m from Vegas and we don’t do well with snow. Have a great weekend.

A quick update

2007-12-06T22:15:00Z

Hello again. Just a quick knee update because I don’t want to dwell on it. Again, thanks to everyone for all the kind notes and e-mails. I’m driving myself crazy because I can’t do anything or go anywhere. I’d like to go to dinner or enjoy the Vegas nightlife, but I can’t. My rehab is going well, so that’s good, but I’m bored. I’m going to talk about my beloved Arkansas Razorback football program during this blog and why No. 5 Darren McFadden should win the Heisman Trophy. I’ve been bummed about Arkansas football because we can’t find a coach. All these coaching candidates seem to be using the Hogs to get big pay raises elsewhere like the Wake Forest coach did today. I’m glad Houston Nutt is gone. He was mediocre. He was a good coach, but will never win a championship. It’s just like racing. If I didn’t feel I could win a championship with my team, I’d want a different crew chief. The three guys I want to see coaching the Razorbacks are either Bobby Petrino of the Atlanta Falcons, Chris Peterson at Boise State, or Tommy Tuberville at Auburn. I hope we get a good coach and the voters realize that Darren McFadden is the best college football player in the country. You take him away from the team and they have nothing. He’s the only option Arkansas has this year. He had an awesome game against South Carolina and even played QB when the Hogs won at LSU. Tebow and Florida are an awesome team. He has an awesome supporting crew around him with loads of talent. A lot of experts say Tebow won’t even make the NFL and McFadden will be a top five pick. Tebow is a product of his system at UF. Get it right and give the Heisman to No. 5. voters! I’ll have another blog about my dad in a few days. Take care.

On the road to recovery

2007-11-14T22:30:00Z

I’m back to blogging! Is blogging even a real word? Okay, I guess I’ll pick up from last Friday and the knee surgery. Most of you read the Geiger Counter so you know a bit about the procedure I underwent last week. We went into the outpatient center in Summerlin, Nev., Friday morning and the doctor walked me through the procedure first. He didn’t know how bad it would be until he was into the surgery. For me it was easy…I just got put to sleep. I do remember waking up after the surgery and really just wanting to go back to sleep. The doctors made me wake up and I don’t remember a lot of what they said other than the knee was more damaged than they first thought. I was pretty drugged up, which is funny for a guy that doesn’t drink or smoke. My friend Candice drove me home after the surgery. I was feeling pretty nauseous but made it home. My brother Tony and his gal Apple were there to help out. They all helped me get into bed and I pretty much slept the entire night. I woke up Saturday morning and felt great but didn’t realize the medicine hadn’t worn off yet. Later that day, I started having some chills and pretty serious pain. They have me on OxyContin and that helps a lot. I spent most of the weekend either in bed or on the couch. My trainer Dave Tomcheck, from UNLV, says one day in bed requires two days of physical therapy to get me back healthy, so he got me up and moving as soon as I could. We walked around the block on Sunday. I’ll be on crutches for six weeks. My goal is to be off the crutches when I have to visit Caterpillar in Peoria, Ill., on Dec. 10. The important thing is not to hurt my donor graft. They used a ligament from a cadaver during the surgery. My old ACL was too severely damaged to repair. They treated me like a professional athlete, which is pretty cool. Some big time NFL players like Carson Palmer and Willis McGahee went through similar procedures. Last night was my first night out of the house. We went to the UNLV/Dixie State game at Thomas & Mack Center. The Runnin’ Rebels looked good. Dave is the trainer for the UNLV hoops team and got us really good tickets. Dave is the second from the left in the photo. My knee was pretty swollen when I got home, so I used a cold compression pack before bed. Dave is on his way over (Wednesday) for some mild physical therapy. I feel like I can be more active, but you can only do so much. I still can’t put my own pants or shoes on yet. I guess that’s just part of the recovery program. I want to really thank all the fans for their outpouring of support. All the e-mails are awesome. The NHRA fans are so loyal and dedicated. It really does mean a lot and I can’t wait to be back at the race track in January.

Off for a new knee

2007-11-09T22:39:00Z

So, I’m not going to do a full blog because I don’t have a lot of time. In fact, I’m about to head out to have my knee surgery. We haven’t updated the blog since before the Vegas race and what a roller coaster ride it’s been for our CAT team over the past few weeks. From the high of the double-up in Las Vegas to the low of being knocked off at Pomona. With that said, it was an awesome year for our race team. We’ll get into all that later. For those of you who don’t remember back to February – maybe you were hibernating or something – but I severely injured my knee playing volleyball at the Matco Tools Expo in Hawaii. I tore my ACL and competed in 21 races with a bum knee. We’ll it’s time to get it fixed. I have my outpatient surgery today and will update my progress next week. Have a good weekend. Hot Rod

Ready to roll in my hometown

2007-10-24T22:04:00Z

I’m back to being in a blog slump, so it’s time to end that. It’s the Wednesday before the Las Vegas race and I’m doing a votech school visit at the College of Southern Nevada for Matco Tools. I just did one session and spoke to about 70 students and we have an afternoon group coming to see us in a bit. We also posed next to a CAT C15 engine in the diesel program for a blog photo. Last weekend was an awesome weekend for the Fuller family. My dad was racing in Valdosta, Ga., in Super Comp and he was in second place in Division 5 and Gary Stinnett was in the lead and my dad made it to the quarterfinals and won the D5 Super Comp championship. He won it in the car I used to race Super Comp in, which is really cool. Here is a photo with my parents from Topeka in June. My dad won the Topeka national event last year. The funny thing to me is that people think I’m a great bracket racer, but since I’ve been a kid, we had a thing called “King of the Household” and right now dad is King of the Household in Rogers, Ark. It’s tough being from a family of racers. I need to get the title back this weekend! I really haven’t done much lately, but my best buddy in town, Shawn Malek, had a birthday party for their brother-in-law and it was a '70s theme party. I had a great time. They know how to do it up. There were nearly 100 people there and we had a great time. They thought I had been way too uptight, so it was good for me to get out and relax before the Countdown starts up again this weekend. Also, I got rid of the VW Thing and I’m now driving this cool Caddy. What do you all think? I had to run down to California on Monday and didn’t realize what I was getting into. I don’t watch much TV and I ended up getting stuck for 10 hours due to the wildfires. It was a mess. Usually when you see things on TV you don’t realize how bad it is, but I was there and it was really bad. The freeways were shut down and I finally made it home on Tuesday. I had to drive about seven hours out of the way to get to Vegas through Arizona and up I-95. It’s all good because I made it back in time for the race. This is a busy week for me, so it was important to be home and rest. We’ve been on the go doing press and sponsor work. I’ve already lost one race this weekend. Kevin West, the sportscaster on Channel 3 here in Vegas, beat me in a tricycle race for the newscast. He sort of cheated. I was pedaling, but he was using his feet. I did holeshot him though! We’ve got a radio media tour Thursday and then the NHRA press conference at the Golden Nugget. After that, it’s time to get in race mode and go after that double-up in the Technicoat Shootout and the race win on Sunday at The Strip. I want nothing more than to win at my home track. We’ll see how it goes. Take care, Hot Rod

Massages are great

2007-10-05T21:41:00Z

Hi again. Two blogs in one week, wow! I had a nice, relaxing week off at home in Vegas. The highlight of the weekend was on Saturday when I did a charity event for Speedway Children’s Charities at LVMS. They had a car show at the local show and I signed autographs and talked to a lot of fans. It was a beautiful day and we had a good time. I watched football all day on Sunday. I’m a Bears fan and they’re not doing very well so far. I’m also a Chargers fan, I like L.T., and they’re doing lousy too. Ladainian had a good game against the Chiefs though. I like the Raiders too. My PR guy, Ted, is a big Raiders fan and he says it’s blasphemy to cheer for both the Raiders and Chargers. I like Daunte Culpepper’s touchdown dance. I think I’m going to do that when I when the race this weekend. Most people laugh at me, but I went to the Green Valley Ranch Casino in Henderson, it’s one of the nicer local casinos, and had a “me” day. They have a really nice gym and spa. I got there about 7:30 a.m. and worked out. After my workout, I used one of their private shower rooms. They have a nice, big shower with four heads on it. It’s very relaxing. Then, I had a 90-minute massage. It was great. My guys make fun of me, but they really don’t know what they’re missing. I read a lot of books about the medieval times and the knights used to get massage before a battle. Massages are the best. I wish I got them more often. After that, I laid out at the pool for about three hours. My batteries are charged and ready to go for Richmond. This is a huge race and we need to be on our game. I flew on a red-eye flight on Tuesday night to Richmond. It had been some time since I took a red eye. I thought I could sleep, but didn’t sleep much at all. I was tired all day on Wednesday. I rested during the day and did some cardio that afternoon. PR Ted and I went to downtown Richmond and ate dinner at The Tobacco Company. The food was great, but the best part was riding up some really old elevator. It’s a neat town. It’s cool being in the area where our nation was born. There’s a lot of American history in this area. Thursday I came to the track for a little bit to see my guys. We had a meet-and-greet at Carter Machinery in Mechanicsville, Va. Ryan Haas, our marketing guy, took me there. Carter is the local CAT dealer and the only CAT dealer owned by Caterpillar. There’s a CAT Did You Know? for you! I’ve attached a few pics from our visit to Cater. We did our typical team-bonding dinner on Thursday night. We tried to go to Hooter’s, but it was too packed. I guess everyone wanted to see Brandon Bernstein at his Bud appearance. We ended up at some local Mexican joint. We had a lot of fun and laughed a lot. Our spirits are good for the Richmond race this weekend. We’re ready to warm up the Caterpillar dragster, so I’ll sign off. Have a good weekend. Oh for all you Nitromaters, I’m glad to read that I’m the favorite Top Fuel driver for so many fans. And, I haven’t seen Hillary Will yet this weekend, but I’ll make sure she knows you all say hi! Hot Rod

Accident prone

2007-10-02T20:12:00Z

Hi all. After Memphis, I flew home to Northwest Arkansas and I got to spend some quality time with my mom. My dad and brother were out on a construction job. It was really nice to spend time in the home I grew up in. I had a great time, but I need to spend some money and buy a better bed. My old bed is really uncomfortable and I really don’t like sleeping in it. While at home, my best friend Chad Campbell likes to run me ragged. My first morning at home, Chad picked me up and we went over to Crossland Construction and put together an associate deal for the Dallas race. I knew of the Crosslands growing up and it was nice to have some support from a local company from where I grew up. As some of you may know, we have been trying to get a drag strip in Northwest Arkansas. We’re getting really close to finalizing some plans. For those that don’t know the area, I think it would be a fan-favorite spot. It’s a beautiful place in the Ozarks and there are a lot of fun things to do. I think it would be one of the spots people look forward to attending. Ryan Haas, our marketing guy, picked me up Thursday morning and we were off to Dallas. I’ve never been accident prone until this year. On the drive to the Dallas race, I walked into a gas station and I slipped and fell on the floor. As I’m on the floor, some lady put a "Slippery When Wet" sign next to me. It really bothered my knee for a bit. Ryan was outside waiting for me and looked at me and knew I slipped on the floor because he almost fell too. It seems like I’m getting hurt a lot these days. Thankfully, only three more races and I’ll have a few months to heal. That afternoon, we had a busy day. We went to the Motorplex, to Holt CAT’s location in Dallas, and to the Dallas Stars game. It was a fun day. The folks at Holt were very enthusiastic about sponsoring our car for the weekend. Peter Holt’s father was one of the men that started Caterpillar many moons ago. We spent nearly two hours at the dealership. After that, we went to the Dallas Stars game. We did an autograph session at American Airlines Center with a group of other drivers including my favorite Top Fuel driver Hillary Will. They had a few suites for all the NHRA teams. We used it as a team bonding event. It was great. I’m not much into hockey, but I like the fighting. Rob Flynn was explaining to me that all the young guys are trying to make a name for themselves in the pre-season. Rob is a big hockey guy being from Canada, so I can learn the game from him. After that, we went to one of my favorite restaurants on the tour, Three Forks. The chef and owner, Chris Vogeli, came out and talked with us. They have a Winner’s Circle photo of us from Englishtown last season on the wall and the food was spectacular like always. It’s pretty cool being on the Three Forks wall of fame with some real-life celebrities. We were pretty good at Dallas, but not stellar. We had the monster match-up in the first round with Tony Schumacher and the Army car. It was the typical deal that if you didn’t make a good run on Friday night, you weren’t qualified well and they missed that run and ended up 13th. We had a tough, tough draw, but got by them. We didn’t make a great run, but managed to win. It was great to beat them as they’re the best, but as quickly as we earned the points lead back, we lost it when we fell to Larry Dixon in the second round. It’s tough in this Countdown. We have to have a good showing at Richmond to make the Countdown to One. I’m biased, but I still like the old system where we’d have a 120-point lead. I hadn’t been home in Las Vegas in more than two weeks and I haven’t left my house much since being home, other than to go to the gym or see the personal trainer. I’m off to Richmond in a few days. Have a great week. Hot Rod

Going home

2007-09-25T23:59:00Z

Let me try to get everyone caught up with what I've been doing. Our new CAT deal has me plenty busy and I love it. They're going to be such a great partner for us. Before I left for Memphis, I got to do something really cool. I was invited out to Las Vegas Motor Speedway where they were filming Pinks All Out – which will be televised the week of Thanksgiving – and my little brother, Tony was trying to qualify for the show. What people don’t realize is that they pick a group of cars that have similar ETs, not the fastest cars. Tony’s car, a ’69 Camaro, was too fast. It’s a Super Street car that ran 9.50s. They picked a class that was running 10.60s. But it was cool to be out there and meet a lot of fans. There were some exhibition runs and Jr. Dragsters and it was cool to hang out with everyone. I really dig hanging out with the NHRA fans. I met the guys from Pinks and did a few interviews for the show. I’ll be excited to watch. PR Ted and Zak Elcock at NHRA had some pre-event press work before Memphis lined up. It’s my hometown track, so we did a lot of press in Little Rock and the media luncheon in Memphis. The coolest thing that happened was I had a meeting with Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe on Wednesday before the race. When I got there, Dick Trammell, who set up the meeting, and the governor’s aides walked me into his office and we chit-chatted for about 45 minutes. He was proud that our team is doing so well this season and he’s a big racing fan. Our goal is to get him to the track some day. We have some interest in opening a drag strip in Arkansas and he wants to help, so that’s really neat. My high school best friend, Chad Campbell, was there and took some pictures, but somehow he lost the camera on the plane flight back to Northwest Arkansas. He had just returned from a vacation and lost all those pictures too, so he was pretty bummed about that. We spent the rest of the day doing press work in Little Rock. We ate at a cool restaurant called The Flying Fish with Steve Rogers of the Democrat-Gazette newspaper. It had been a long time since I had some good fried food. The catfish and shrimp was good! Later that night, we drove back to Memphis and had dinner at PF Changs near our hotel. A crew guy, Mikey, from Larry Dixon’s team ate with us. We did the NHRA press conference at Folk’s Folly the next afternoon and from there we took a few hours off and did some cardio. Ted and I both like to work out and stay in shape. We have a lot of guys on our team that like staying in shape with Baze and the guys on his team that ride bikes. It’s important to look and feel well. That night we met up with Whit and went to a Matco Tools dinner with Russ Holland, the local Matco district manager in Memphis. We got to hang out with the Matco distributors for a few hours. It’s nice to get to talk and hang out away from the track in a relaxed environment. After that, we had some fun and went to Beale Street. We dropped off Baze because he’s an old family man (Just kidding Baze!)and we drove around Memphis for a few hours. We met up with Hillary Will, my favorite Top Fuel driver, and had dinner at Rendezvous. We had some ribs; they were just ok. I wasn’t that impressed and the waiter didn’t like me. He was mean, but my company was good. Finally, we got to race. Memphis is a special place to me because it was the first place I ran Top Fuel back in 1995 and I got my first win there in 2005. We didn’t qualify great this year, eighth, and seemed to have some gremlins all weekend. That was the first bad weekend for us and its unfortunate it happened during the Countdown. It could have been a lot worse. We were lucky Schumacher and Dixon went out early as well. We decided to test on Monday after struggling during the weekend. Over the weekend, we were tight as a group, but we got back to joking around and having fun during the Monday Nationals. The car made some progress and we hope that leads to a strong finish to the season. I’ll do another blog entry in a few days and talk about my time in Arkansas and our Dallas trip. Take care, Hot Rod

Welcoming CAT and dealing with the Countdown

2007-09-06T16:54:00Z

It’s nice to be home in Las Vegas and get away from drag racing for a few days. Sometimes you just need a little "you" time. It’ll be good to refresh before Memphis and Dallas. I’m going to stay on the road and spend some time at home in Arkansas before the Dallas race. The last time we blogged was Friday at Reading. That was a good day because we outran the Army car and got the pole at Maple Grove. It was our fourth pole of the year. Unfortunately, we had to wait three extra days to get the race completed. We came up short in the final round. Other than not leaving with the trophy, check, and winner’s circle photos, there was nothing to gain as we had locked up the top seed in the Countdown. That was a great accomplishment for our race team. We’ve been competing without a major sponsor and on a shoestring budget. We haven’t done any testing other than in January and we have a consistently good race car. Rob Flynn has been awesome and my new crew is a great bunch. We have great team chemistry and they’re a cool group to be around. Losing 184 points wasn’t fun, but it’s the hand we’ve been dealt, so we’ll deal with it and race and do our best to win this thing. Somebody has to beat that Army car and why not us? The weekend before Indy I hung out at home with some friends of mine. Maybe you saw on the ESPN2 that I bought a new car. NHRA.com blog readers know I sold my Viper earlier this year and it was time to buy a new car. I ended up with a ’72 VW Thing. It’s in great shape and I think it’s really cool. I can’t wait to bring it to the track at Vegas in October. It’s not fast like the Viper, but it’s still neat. Last week was a good week for our team. We announced our deal with Caterpillar. Yes, it is a multi-year deal. We’ve been getting that question a lot. We’ll be flying the CAT colors for the rest of ’07 as well! So, the Great White is finally put to rest. Caterpillar is one of the five most recognizable brands worldwide, so we’re very proud to be the team to represent CAT in NHRA drag racing. They’re a great group of people and we look forward to growing our relationship with them while helping all the CAT dealers in their search for technicians. The Indy race went ok for us. We won the Full Throttle award and qualified sixth and went to the semis for the 13th time this year. We were a victim of the one-lane track. We donated our Full Throttle earnings to the Adam Hiller Recovery Fund as did the Vance & Hines Harley team. We want to thank everyone for all the support for Adam. We raised more than $10,000 last weekend to help in his recovery efforts. The support from the entire NHRA community was awesome, so thanks to everyone. The entire Harley group has been awesome to work with. We’re working on opening a Paypal account for online donations, so please be patient with us for that. We will put out a press release before Memphis. Not being atop the standings isn’t fun. We would still have a 140-point lead, that’s seven rounds of racing and our car is still very consistent. We’ll be there in the end. We were third after Pomona in February and won Phoenix, so that’s our goal in the second season. I’ve done very well at Memphis, so we’re excited about heading back to MMP, where I got my first Top Fuel win in 2005. We’ll see how things play out. Have a good weekend. Hot Rod

Brainerd-to-Reading...it's non-stop fun

2007-08-17T18:51:00Z

Hey everyone. I got to Brainerd on Thursday afternoon and met up with Whit’s crew and went to dinner with those guys. It was nice to spend some time with them because most of them were on my crew last season and even in 2005. Friday was a bad and good day. I made a mistake on our first qualifying run and lifted. The car was slipping the clutch because it was hot out and it felt funny to me, so I lifted by mistake. It was slipping the clutch and felt strange and I made a mistake and felt really bad for my guys. I made sure to apologize to my team after the run. We went up there in the second session and qualified No. 1 and the car ran great. I was riding back in the Sequoia and the stands were packed after the run and I was amazed at all the fans that were cheering for us. It gave me goose bumps. We did get booed by two fans wearing Tony Schumacher shirts, but the majority of the fans cheered us on. You can’t please them all I guess. Alan Reinhart got ahold of me after the run and said he wanted to take me to the Zoo since I was the fastest man on the property as he put it. We spent more than an hour out there and had a lot of fun. That was my maiden voyage to the Zoo. I stick to my schedule, so we went back to the hotel pretty early because I need my beauty sleep. We were trying some new stuff Saturday because we’re in for the Countdown. A lot of people ask why we’re testing, but we learned some stuff and ended up in the No. 7 spot. I did my normal ritual and jammed out of the track to beat the crowd after our second run and had dinner with Amy Lammers of Butler CAT and her husband Matt. During dinner, I got a call from PR Ted and he informed me I needed to come to the Zoo because a lot of drivers were there and David Powers was there and the fans were asking about me, so I took the Lammers with me. I was really glad I went because it put me in touch with the fans. I got to meet a lot of people and take pictures and sign autographs and I’m glad that I went out there Saturday night. I’ll make sure I go out to the Zoo every year. It’s definitely a fun time. There isn’t much to say about Sunday. The highlight of the day was to spend some time with my mom. My dad was racing Super Gas and Super Comp at BIR. His Sunday lasted as long as mine so we had a lot of time to spend with each other. I slept in at Brainerd Monday and spent most of the day at the airport. NWA had delays in Minneapolis and I just barely made my flight from Brainerd. I didn’t get into Philly into 12:30 a.m. and drove 90 minutes to our hotel in Wyomissing. I did nothing on Tuesday. I didn’t feel well, so I just laid around to get ready for Wednesday, our big day this week. Ransome CAT is sponsoring us for the weekend and we had our car on display at the dealership in Bensalem, Pa. It was great because they gave us a tour of the dealer and I got to drive an articulated dump truck and use an excavator. That was awesome. If this driving stuff doesn’t work out, then maybe I can operate CAT equipment. Hopefully they’ll let me drive a bulldozer some day. That would be really cool. It’s Friday after in Reading and Rob Flynn just said it’s time to warm the car, so I’ll close with that. I’ll talk to everybody next week. Have a great weekend.

Goodwill visits are always fun in Vegas

2007-08-10T22:58:00Z

Hey everyone. It’s Friday at Brainerd. Let’s get caught up on the past week. I got invited to my buddy Mike Black’s house last Friday. He’s part of the Black family that started all the casinos in Mesquite, Nevada; he and his three brothers. Mike has 10 children ranging from 3 to 26-years-old. I had a lot of fun. The adults were playing a drinking game called “Edward 40 Hands.” Since I’m not a big drinker, they let me slide. The rest of the weekend I took it easy. I watched NASCAR on Sunday. It was a boring race with Kurt Busch dominating. It was just nice to have a weekend off. It had been a long time. I got a lot of chores down around the house. Since PR Ted and I went on our shopping spree at Nordstrom in Seattle, I had no closet space. I cleaned out my closet and took a ton of clothes to the Goodwill store in Las Vegas. I couldn’t take any pants because I doubt anyone could fit in them with my short legs. It’s who I am. That’s what God gave me. All you can do is laugh about it. I went to Mandalay Bay on Tuesday with my buddy Shawn. He's my best friend in Vegas. He’s the guy that started Scalp Med. You’ve all seen my infomercial. We went to lunch at Burger Bar, but ended up staying until like 9 p.m. There were hotties everywhere! It was a fun time. Wednesday was get-ready day. I’m going to be on the road for almost three weeks with Brainerd, Reading and Indy testing, so I did laundry and packed that day. I was pretty excited to sign autographs at the Bullring at LVMS. That’s the paved oval for late models and sprint cars and legends. John Force also was there. I was blown away. I got there and there was a big line of folks waiting on us. I thought all these people were there to see John Force, but a lot said they were there to see me being I’m from Las Vegas. It was really cool to be there. I learned a lot by watching John and how he interacts with the fans. It just amazes me how someone so famous has no ego. He made me feel welcome and we very complimentary of me the entire time. He’s an awesome person. He’ll always be a hero of mine. It’s always exciting to come to BIR The people are different here. What I mean is that they have really good time. They party hard and love their drag racing. They’re really hospitable folks. I’ve already gotten a ton of offers to come to “the Zoo.” I’ll make an appearance, but I stay focused on racing and don’t stay out late. My mom says I need to loosen up a little bit. Maybe this weekend I will. We had a strong race here last August and barley lost to Tony Schumacher in the semis. I don’t see any reason that we shouldn’t be able to continue what we’ve been doing. We want to seal the No. 1 spot in the Countdown. We need to leave here with a 139-point lead. That’s our plan.

What a swing

2007-08-03T21:09:00Z

I’m sorry I haven’t blogged in some time. I’ve been really tired. The six-race stretch just took a lot out of me. I got home from Sonoma on Wednesday. The first thing I did was go through a mountain full of bills and laundry. I went to the local Blockbuster and rented a few movies and didn’t leave my house for a day. I slept for like 12 hours on Wednesday night and finally went to work out Thursday. I had a lunch appointment with Jim Baker at The Palms yesterday. You see Jim at the races with the Pedregons. We had a lunch at the Mexican restaurant and it’s right next to the pool, so we got to enjoy the scenery too. A buddy of mine from Florida was in town for a shoe convention and we went to a concert of a band called Cross Canadian Ragweed. They were playing at The Southpoint. I had never heard of them, but it was great. We hung out afterwards and gambled and made some new friends. They want to come to the drag races and watch what we do. We talked about the similarities of being in a band and driving a race car. It was pretty awesome to be able to hang out with them. We couldn’t have asked for any more on those six races. We increased our point-lead and earned the most points of any Top Fuel team. I felt that if we could come out in the top four, we’d be doing well, so to come out first and with a bigger lead than before was awesome. Plus to give Caterpillar its first victory in drag racing was very cool. Denver was awesome for our entire David Powers team. And thanks to Phil Burgess at National DRAGSTER for giving us the cover. We like the "CAT Attack." What else happened on the Western Swing? At Seattle, it rained a lot, so PR Ted and I happened to stop at the Nordstrom’s at Southcentre Mall. The Anniversary sale was going on so we did some shopping. We bought so much stuff, I shipped it to Vegas and he sent his on the hauler back to Indy. Shopping is fun. Sonoma is always cool. I get to see the Jeffrey’s from Western Stabilization. We’ve had a longtime friendship. It was another great race. I’ve never seen so many fans at Sonoma. The Infineon Raceway folks do a great job, and it was cool to have Peterson CAT on the car. When I left Vegas for the Western Swing, it was 118 and it’s been right around 100 this week, so it’s cooled off. That’s good. It even dips into the 80s at night. That’s about it for now. I’ll check in next week before Brainerd. I have some fun stuff planned for the weekend, so we’ll have some cool stuff to blog about next week. Hot Rod

Chugging right along

2007-07-10T20:47:00Z

We got to Bristol Wednesday afternoon. Actually, they dropped me off in Knoxville and I got a rental car there because I was flying out of Knoxville Monday morning. We stayed at one of my favorite hotels, The Carnegie. It has really nice workout facilities, so I made sure to ride the exercise bike often. On Thursday night, I went and had a massage. The gal had studied sports therapy in college and my knee felt great afterwards. It gave me a lot of confidence for the weekend. Zak, from NHRA, took me to Knoxville for a media tour on Thursday for most of the day. We did two radio stations and three TV stations. It was just me, and it was neat to go into a market that’s very racing friendly. They love their Tennessee Vols and I didn’t want to let it be known that I was a Razorback since Arkansas is a rival of UT. I was really impressed with the track at Bristol. I talked to my dad Friday morning and he had been down the track a few times in the sportsmen classes. He said the track was great and it was. Our first qualifying session amazed a lot of people. There was hardly any tire smoke and it set the tone for the weekend. The crowd on Friday blew me away, it was Standing Room Only. Bruton put on one heck of a fireworks show on Friday night. That was the second straight week we had a cool fireworks show to end Friday’s qualifying. We qualified fourth for the second time this year. That’s our lowest of the season and that’s not so bad now is it? Our average qualifying is 2.25! We’re in a bit of a test mode and we’re trying some things to get ready for the Countdown. In order to do that, we have to try some new things. People think we’re struggling, were fine, but we’re just trying some things. I think that showed on Sunday until the semis. I keep on beating myself up about going out in the semis or losing in the semis, but we’re still No. 1 in the points and didn’t really lose any ground. I’d rather have a championship ring than a bunch of trophies on our shelf. Bob Vandergriff is a good friend of mine. I was really hoping he’d break through and win. It’s soon to come for them. I got up early Monday morning and drove to Knoxville, flew to Charlotte, and then home to Vegas. It’s the first time I’ve been home in nearly three weeks. I’m going to get things in order before heading out on the road again. I’m off to get my hair cut. I fly into Denver Thursday afternoon. I look forward to seeing all you great fans on the Western Swing. Take care, Hot Rod

Happy Fourth of July everyone

2007-07-04T17:07:00Z

In the words of our team owner David Powers, “I’m going to be forthright with you NHRA.com blog readers.” I’m sorry it’s taken so long to update. I’m riding along to Bristol in our black Tundra as I type.

Over the past three weeks, I’ve sold my yellow Viper on e-Bay. I got a call from e-Bay Motors and they said it was the highest viewed car in the history of e-Bay motors. I guess it helped to have ESPN2 talk about it on the TV show. A gentlemen from Colorado Springs, Colo., bought the car. It went for $75,000. I was sad to see it go. I miss my car. It was my dream car. But, it’s in good hands. He flew in to Las Vegas and drove it back home. He e-mailed some pictures from his trip home. I spent the rest of my time at home getting ready for the six-week swing. I sent Rocco and Ozzie off to their mom, Tammy Lawrence, for the summer. I’m going to be away from home for most of June and July and she’ll take good care of them. I flew to Norwalk right after Englishtown and was excited about getting to Norwalk after our meet-and-greet display at Matco Tools. That was cool to see the Matco headquarters in Stow, Ohio. I got the full tour and met a lot of nice folks that don’t have the chance to come to the track. I also got to hang out with some other Matco-sponsored drivers, like Angelle Sampey and Marty Nothstein, whom I don’t see on a regular basis. Bazemore and I also did a nice media tour in Toledo, Ohio. We visited three TV stations on Thursday afternoon to help promote the race. We also spoke with Matt Markey of the Toledo Blade during our drive. It was a great weekend. I met a lot of nice people at Norwalk. At Englishtown, I brought out some new T-shirts. They’re for sale at the PiranaZ trailer. They have a cool Vegas theme to them. You also can get them online at the PiranaZ website. It’s neat to sign your own T-shirt. At the track, we got our third pole of the season and our first track record with our 4.533. We had the track record at Englishtown for about 10 minutes until Shoe topped our Friday night run. He’s been showing us up lately, but we extended our points lead. As many of you know, I hurt my knee back in February playing volleyball at a Matco Tools function in Hawaii. Things were fine and it didn’t bother me until Sunday. I re-aggravated the injury 15 minutes before the second round. Thanks to the fans that helped pick me up after falling. Instead of going to Bristol for the press conference, I drove to Indy with Lee Beard and PR Ted. They got me into to see Dr. Lintner, who is a very good knee specialist. I’ll need some surgery, but I can’t have it until after the season. I’ll be fine to drive. I’m excited about Bristol. We’ve been to the final round the past two years at Bristol and I won my first race at Memphis in ‘05. We do well in Tennessee. We got the pole in Memphis last year too and didn’t get to race because we had to shut off at the line. I’m going to do a media tour in Knoxville tomorrow with Zak of the NHRA. Remember, we need more peanut M&Ms for my cylinder head guy Dick Jackson. Thanks for reading.

Running strong feels so good

2007-06-13T16:56:00Z

I know I need to get better about blogging more often. Things have just been really busy with our back-to-back races along with pounding the pavement to help find a sponsor for our first-place race team. We went straight from Topeka to Arkansas on Sunday night after the race. My best friend from high school, Chad Campbell, came up Sunday morning with some potential sponsors from Northwest Arkansas. I was bummed that we lost first round and gave up the points lead, but we got to spend some quality time with those folks at the race. We wouldn’t have been able to do that had we been racing so I guess we made the best of going out early. Chad set-up a Hooter’s meet-and-greet one night for me. I have attached a picture with some of the Hooter’s girls from Fayetteville. The main reason I went home was to meet with some potential sponsors. That went well. The good thing about going back home is I get to spend some times with my parents. The coolest thing I did was work on my brother’s Super Street Camaro. We spent about three hours working on the car. I had to cancel dinner plans that night. We knew his car was prepared and all ready to go for Joliet. It was like the good old days working on our family’s Sportsman cars. I flew into Chicago Thursday and went to dinner with some of the folks from Fabick CAT and CAT Global Petroleum. I was excited when I saw the forecast for the weekend. There was no chance of rain, which was a change because the other two times we ran the CAT car, Houston and St. Louis, it rained. We knew the weather conditions for Friday were great and Rob Flynn and I talked and thought we could set a personal best. That was important with all the CAT folks being at the race. We ran the 4.464 and our incremental numbers were really strong and right along with Tony Schumacher. It dropped a hole at 4.2-seconds into the run, too. It really makes you feel good when we’re unsponsored and we’re down a few guys on the crew and we continue to run well. On Sunday, I had a great feeling about the day. I was really confident and felt we had the car to beat. The round I was most nervous about was running Hillary Will in the second round. The Kalitta cars have been running better and she’s a great young racer. The whole race, I saw her car and wasn’t sure who won until I saw the win light pop up. I was excited. I’m a fierce competitor that doesn’t have feelings on the track, and then there’s the personal side that I have. Hillary is one of the few drivers I’m friends with in Top Fuel. I mainly just stay in our camp and don’t socialize much. It’s hard for her to lose that way. It’s happened to me before and to every driver out there. There are a lot of factors in cutting a good light and sometimes it’s more than the driver. We come from the same backgrounds as Sportsman racers. She’s there for the right reasons and I know how hungry she is. She’ll win a race really soon. We lost in the final round to Larry Dixon. We were too aggressive. We’re just an aggressive team. We race like Alan Johnson and Tony Schumacher race. They go for it and don’t leave anything on the table. We were just too aggressive and it got us. We could have probably run a 4.57 like all day and won the round, but we didn’t. We got our points lead back and all in all it was a great weekend. To qualify second, set a career-best E.T., go to the finals, and get the lead back, it’s all good. We had a team dinner at Outback on Sunday night. It was fun until Freddy on Whit’s car and PR Ted put a shot of Jack Daniels into my Coke. I’m not much of a drinker. I flew home to Las Vegas on Monday and spent all of Tuesday doing sponsor calls. It was a productive day. Now, I’m off to the gym. Take care and remember those Peanut M&Ms for my cylinder head guy Dick Jackson at E-Town and Norwalk.

Sleepless in Las Vegas

2007-05-29T20:55:00Z

I haven’t had much to talk about with there being no races for the last three weeks. I doubt anyone is really interested me landscaping my backyard or cleaning my house or gearing up for eight races in nine weeks. I’m a pretty boring guy. I’m not married to a fellow racer like TJ and Melanie. I don’t own a successful company like Mike Ashley. I’m just single guy living the single life in Las Vegas. I have been busy dating a lot. A lot of people have been asking about my dating life. In the future, I might do a blog on that topic. These blogs are about our personal lives, so maybe I’ll delve into that soon. For a teaser, it’s interesting being a race car driver that lives in Las Vegas and dating. However, finding Ms. Right is as elusive as winning the U.S. Nationals. I was runner-up at Indy in Super Gas. I lost by three-thousandths of-a-second to Sheldon Gecker. Finding the right gal seems just as tough. Maybe I need to go on The Bachelor. We’re not used to having three weeks off like this. It’s nice to be in a routine of eating right and exercising. I’ve got to spend time with my friends. My friends have seen me more this month than all year long. I made a few stops to my favorite place, Green Valley Ranch. I hung out there all day yesterday and had a nice relaxing day. It’s like recharging your batteries before going out on the long journey. This next stretch can make or break your season. I’m really excited about it. When I was a sportsman racer, we raced weekly. When you get into a groove, I seem to do a lot better. It gives you a chance to get into the zone and get on a roll. We’re going to Topeka, Chicago, Englishtown, and Bristol and I’ve had success at those places. So, I’m fired up about this stretch. I fly to Topeka on Thursday. We’re looking for another solid showing and to keep our points lead. I’m excited because we have a lot of folks coming from Arkansas to support us. We need to put on a great show for them. The weather forecast looks good and we like that. If you come out to the track, remember those peanut M&Ms for my cylinder head guy Dick Jackson. His birthday is on June 9, so that can be an early present. Take care, Rod

Cats and CATs

2007-05-16T18:35:00Z

Well by now you probably know more about my cats Rocco and Ozzie than you really care to know but we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from the kitty cat blog, so I’m glad you all enjoyed it. I apologize for not updating the blog over the last two weeks. It was busy after the St. Louis race as we went directly to Chicago for an event with the folks at Caterpillar and the CAT dealer groups. We had a great two days hanging out in Rosemont, Ill. It was an awesome weekend with the folks from Fabick CAT at the St. Louis race. Tim, Renee, and Rose were great to deal with and we thank them for all the great support. Also our friends at Linn State Technical College, thanks as well. We got our second straight pole and finally won a round starting from the No. 1 spot. It was a crazy race in the semis and a tough one to lose, but we got the points lead back with the Fabick CAT colors on the car, so that was neat. I also got to drive the motor grader simulator at the race and did pretty well. That was cool. I guess if this racing thing doesn’t work, I can go work for a CAT dealer. I flew home to Las Vegas last Wednesday and have been just laying low. Last Friday night I hung out with some friends and we went bowling at Red Rock Resort. I was all prepared to head out early Monday morning to fly to Bristol and do some press work for the race. Ron Capps and I were scheduled to do a press conference Tuesday and a media tour in Knoxville Wednesday, but that was put on hold after the race was postponed Sunday afternoon. I thought about enjoying the extra week off at home in Vegas, but we have bigger issues, like finding our team a primary sponsor so we don’t have to run the “Great White Shark” any longer. David has been great in supporting our effort, but it shouldn’t fall on his shoulders. We have the No. 1 car in the class and offer a great value. We’re hoping to have some results soon and get some color on the car. Wish us luck! Take care, "Hot Rod"

Yes, I'm a cat person

2007-05-02T15:48:00Z

Well, I’ve been getting a lot of requests to blog about my two cats, Rocco and Ozzie, so here goes. Rocco was born in 2003, so he’s four. Ozzie was born in 2004; he’ll be three in August. They are full-blooded Bengal cats. People always ask, what is a Bengal? Well, they are a breed of cat that tends to be on the wild side. They’re about as close to a wild pet as you can get. They have different mannerisms from normal domesticated cats. They love water, which is strange. If I’m in the shower, they try and get in the shower. Most cats hate water. They also don’t have pet dandruff. They have hair, not fur. Rocco is what’s called a marble pattern. Ozzie is spotted. Ozzie has spots, and Rocco has lines. Ozzie is gray, and Rocco is brown. They’re lean and muscular. That’s another reason I like them. They’re real particular in what they eat. I feed them an all-natural cat food, and they love chicken. If I’m eating chicken, they go crazy. They want to eat too, but I don’t like to feed them off my plate. When I got Ozzie, we went to the breeder, and he was the runt of the litter. The breeder thought I wouldn’t want him. I’m sort of the runt, so I picked him. I took to him quickly. He’s doing great now. He’s grown up. He weighs about 13 pounds. Rocco is a lot bigger. He weighs 18 pounds. Ozzie has a spot where he sleeps near my trophies. He guards my trophies when I’m on the road. They’re very active and playful. They like to get rough with me. I end up with a lot of scratches. I can put a sock over my arm and make hand gestures, and they’ll come attack my arm. I have a railing in my house, and they’ll get on the railing, which is 18 feet high, and they walk and fight on that railing. They’ve never fallen, or if they have, I haven’t seen it. It scares me, though. That would be a long drop. They’re like my children. I don’t have kids, but I have Rocco and Ozzie. I worry about them when I’m on the road. I have a pet sitter who checks on them and plays with them. When I was racing Sportsman, I would take them to the track, and they’d sit on the dash of the motorhome and people-watch. A lot of people don’t expect me to like cats. Cats are really self-sufficient. I travel a lot and don’t really have to worry about them like you would a dog. They’re great companions. My friends warm up to them quickly even if they don’t like cats. They’re good to come home to. It’s time to go pump some iron. I travel to St. Louis on Thursday. We need to pick it up and try and get our lead back. I’m fired up to have CAT back on the car. Brandon is hot. I think "Baze" and the Matco team are due for some round-wins too. Oh, by the way, my cylinder-head guy, Dick Jackson, loves peanut M&Ms, so if you happen to be in the grocery store, think of us! 8-)

A part of something special

2007-04-24T19:44:00Z

I took a few days off after the Las Vegas race. I was worn out. But, I was back at the track over the weekend because the Division 7 race was in town and my little brother Tony, and my sponsors from Western Stabilization, Ashley and Justine Jeffrey, also were racing. I helped the Jeffreys build two Super Comp cars at the beginning of the season. At the Las Vegas race, Justine’s car wasn’t running right so I went to the track Thursday morning to help work on the car. There was a test-session at the track that day. I got to the track and the car had a miss. The first thing we did was change the transmission converter. We thought would solve the problem but it did the same thing, so it was back to the drawing board. We worked until 7 p.m. Thursday night. We couldn’t get it fixed. We basically changed everything on the car. I woke up Friday morning and went back out to the track. The only thing left to do was to do some re-wiring. We had changed fuel system, transmission, ignition, coil, distributor, wires, plugs and went through the entire engine and couldn’t figure it out. We were discouraged, but I didn’t want to quit. We went though and re-wired it and it sounded so much better when we fired it up. She went out and on the first lap it ran perfect. It was my birthday Friday and it was neat being at the track. People thought it was funny I was under the car working. I love the sportsmen racers and I’ll always be one at heart. That won’t change because I’m running Top Fuel now. At the end of the day, they had birthday cake and ice cream for me. Friday night my brother organized a group of us to go to the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay. My favorite 80s cover band, The Spazmatics, were playing. The band didn’t start playing until 11:30, so we were there until about 3 a.m. Then we went to the Ivan Kane’s Forty Deuce. That was a good time. Saturday I caught some sleep for a few hours and spent the day at a buddy’s pool and watched the Cup race from Phoenix. I went back out to the track for the race on Sunday. Both Tony and the Jeffreys did well. Ashley fell in the third round and he had a perfect reaction time. Tony went to the third round in Super Gas and the fourth round in Super Comp. Justine won her first race in the car we worked on for two days. That was awesome! It was really cool. To go out there and watch her win was great. They’re family to me. The Las Vegas points race is one of the toughest of the year. There were 160 Super Comp cars. I get excited when I win, but when she won, it gave me goose bumps. It was special to help them win a race. That was a dream day for them and it was neat to be a part of that. She did an awesome job in the car. Congrats Justine!

Hometown race kept me very busy

2007-04-18T20:42:00Z

Being a hometown event, the Las Vegas race always makes for a hectic week. It started on Sunday, April 8, which was Easter, when I continued my tradition of going in-studio with Claudine Grant of FOX 5 in Las Vegas. We like to pump up the race and try and get people excited about the weekend at The Strip at LVMS. I had a few radio interviews on Monday. They were taped and run multiple times in California and Nevada. We did a lot of press work last week. I had been gone a lot, so I spent the day getting caught up on all the things I missed when I was gone. I had to get ahead of the game since I was busy with the race week. I had a low-key day on Tuesday. I got my hair cut, worked out, and pretty much just laid low. I needed some rest for Wednesday. Wednesday morning, I met Jeff Motley from Las Vegas Motor Speedway and we were in-studio with four different radio stations. That’s always fun to do. I’m getting used to doing that and having a good time with it. It’s cool to get so much airtime and PR before an event. Being the points leader heading into our home race, we had a lot to talk about. Then I met PR Ted for the NHRA press conference. The NHRA had the media luncheon at Ruth’s Chris and we talked with Jeff Wolf of the Review-Journal and all the local TV stations. A lot of people were asking about our sponsor situation and I told them we have a lot of good things in the works. Things are looking positive for our team. Then, we went in-studio with Kevin West of the local NBC affiliate. Kevin is a really cool guy. We did a long sit-down interview. That night, I had dinner with the Jefferys, my longtime sponsors from Western Stabilization. We went to the seafood buffet at the Rio. It’s a great buffet. I highly recommend it. I got up early Thursday morning and went to Area 108, the alternative rock station in Vegas, and did an interview with Gonzo Greg. After that, I went to the track and got my stuff in order and visited with the guys. I handed out some fliers to all the sportsmen racers to promote our autograph session at the Silverton Hotel & Casino. Our team had a really nice time staying at the Silverton. It’s a nice place. I went home to freshen up for our Silverton appearance. We had a 90-minute signing. It was nice to see the fans and have both of our race teams support us. It was nice and laid back. We got to really chat with the fans. That was cool. Then it was off to the New York, New York for another autograph session. We got there right about 7 p.m. and the line was crazy. We signed for about two hours and the people just kept coming. That’s awesome to see that kind of support. I went home to get some rest because we finally got to race on Friday. I was really excited Friday morning. It was my home track, so I had a lot of ticket requests. I had PR Ted help me with getting all the tickets organized. I felt the conditions for the weekend were good for our team and our tune-up. We went out there and were seventh quick after the first session. We wanted to make a good baseline run. It was a real conservative run. We came back that night and ran 4.498. That put us third. We were really happy with that because we knew it was going to warm up on Saturday. On Saturday things played out how we thought. We were going for it on the first pass, but we smoked the tires. We wanted to see what the track would hold. We were looking for a mid-4.50 on the last run and ran 4.53. We tried a new setup and it worked well. Whit Bazemore and the Matco team ran 4.498 also, so that was big for the team. We were confident heading into Sunday with our cars qualified third and fourth. Usually after our final qualifying run, I head back to the hotel and go to bed early, but things were different this time. We had a promotion with the Silverton and I was a guest of the Gin Blossoms. A group of my close friends met us and a lot of the team members showed up. My little brother Tony showed up too. It was awesome. The Silverton really took care of us. What was really cool was seeing my picture on the big marquee board out in front of the hotel. I never expected that. That was awesome! After the concert we went to a bar in the hotel to sign autographs. We had a lot of fans show up. I felt like the promotion was a big success. I was in bed by 11:30 p.m. so I still got a good night’s rest. I woke up about 5 a.m. and was really anxious for the race. I got to the track around 6:30, which is earlier than I wanted to. I needed to get my fuel done and get organized because I had to do NHRA Raceday with Dave Rieff and Mike Dunn. That was really cool to be on live and see all the fans. I thought it was our day. We had a good bracket. We had the match-up of the day with Larry Dixon in the second round. I was nervous about that race. When we got by them I thought it was our race, but we fell to Bob Vandergriff in the semis. I was bummed we lost. I was happy for him because we’re good buddies, but you never want to lose. I want to win at Las Vegas so much. I want to win that race more than Indy. Overall, I can’t complain. We increased the points lead. We feel good about things. Sunday night, our team went to dinner at Buca Di Beppo. We had a good time. I was glad the weekend was over because I needed some rest. People have been asking about my cats and new sunglasses, so I’ll blog on those two subjects next time.

A busy week back home in Arkansas

2007-04-10T22:12:00Z

It’s been a hectic week going to Arkansas and home to Las Vegas. After the Houston race, I flew home to Rogers, Arkansas, on Monday morning. I got back to the hotel about midnight and had to leave at 3 a.m. for a 6 a.m. flight. Our hotel was a good 45 minutes from the airport which is north of Houston. My childhood best friend, Chad Campbell, picked me up at the airport. Chad is sort of like my PR person in Northwest Arkansas. He handed me an itinerary for the week as soon as I got in the car. I wanted to go home and see my mom, so that’s the first thing we did. I saw my dad over the weekend at the Houston race and he had to go away on a business trip. It’s always neat to go to your old room. It’s like it hasn’t changed in 20 years. I have the bulk of my racing trophies at home in Arkansas, so I took some pics. With my dad and brother Tony, we have like 100 trophies. That night, a group of us had plans to go watch the NCAA championship game with some old high school and college friends. It was great. I’ve been hunting sponsorship to help our race team. The primary reason for the visit was the meet with potential sponsors. We had a breakfast meeting with a gentleman named Dick Trammel on Tuesday morning. He was one of the founders of Arvest Banking Group. Our family has been banking with them forever. He’s a good family friend and wanted to have a meeting to bounce ideas about sponsorship. Then, we went to a seminar at Morgan Stanley. David Darst was the speaker and we met with him after his presentation. He told us that he was a big drag racing fan and being from New York City, he would go to Englishtown. It was cool because he was asking me questions. Later that afternoon, I got to meet with the Mayor of Rogers, Steve Womack. His dad owns a TV station that used to broadcast our high school football games. Wednesday morning, I did some in-studio radio appearances. We hit one station in Rogers and two in Fayetteville, where I went to college. We did a sports station, The Fan, and the big controversy was that Arkansas had hired Dana Altman as its new basketball coach, but he quit less than a day later. It was fun to be on the air back in my old stomping grounds. That night, I had an appearance at the new Pig Trail Harley-Davidson in Rogers. They had bands, food, music, bikes and a lot of really cool people. I spent Thursday morning with my mom. I felt bad because I had been running around so much and didn’t really spend a lot of time with her. That afternoon we had lunch with an agency called CJRW. They were impressed by us and the sport. We felt like we accomplished a lot during the week. The best part of the week was my appearance at the local Valvoline Instant Oil Change in Rogers. My old high school buddy Michael Hudson owns it. They had been running radio ads for the appearance. I was really nervous because the weather was really bad that day. It got really cold out, like 30 degrees with snow. I was surprised that a few hundred people showed up. We had a TV station and the Mayor was there. It was really fun. I met a girl who runs Jr. Dragsters and she knew I raced and I was one of the reasons that she started racing. She said I gave her inspiration. That was really neat to hear. It made my trip. By the end of Thursday, I was worn out. I flew to Las Vegas Friday morning. I didn’t get to see my mom enough, but she understood. Otherwise, the trip was a good shot in the arm. There are a lot of folks that support us. That was really cool to see. I’ll talk about the weekend at home and the CART race next time.

There's a lot going on these days

2007-04-03T18:28:00Z

Sorry it’s taken nearly two weeks for me to update the blog. I haven’t had much to say with Eric’s passing. It really took the wind out of all of us. I haven’t been the same. Despite the tragedy, I was excited to get to Houston because it was a big race for us. Getting to the track helped take your mind off it it. We had the support of Caterpillar and Mustang Cat. PR Ted and I went to dinner with two of the corporate folks from Caterpillar on Thursday night. We ate at the Kemah Boardwalk, which is a popular place in the area. You never know what to expect going to meet with a new sponsor, but we hit it off well. They were younger and we all just clicked. That relieved a lot of stress because I knew they would be easy to work with. Being David’s home race, there was extra pressure on us and you want to do well for them. I got to go to David Powers Homes for the first time. It was nice to thank everyone for the support. Working for David, they watch us on ESPN2 and follow the team. It was a meaningful visit. The weather was suspect for the weekend, but our first qualifying run was awesome. We blew through the clutch on the night run, but Whit got the pole and we were third. That was cool. We hoped to step up to No. 1 again on Saturday, but we woke up and it was pouring rain. It was frustrating because we couldn’t do what we needed to do for the CAT folks and eventually the day was canceled. We thought Sunday would be ok, but we got more rain. I felt bad for the fans because they endured the rain and had to deal with the mud pit that was Houston Raceway Park. That place really needs some paving. The sun finally started to peek through and Whit and I were on separate sides of the bracket. We went up there and the track was green and we smoked the tires. We know we have a 4.40 car, but we just missed it. I hadn’t lost in the first round since last August at Memphis and we were shut off at the line because of a leak. The last time we lost in the first round in competition was at Denver last July. That’s not a bad run of going rounds. We were fortunate that a few other cars went out early. My goal was to leave Houston with the points lead and we did that. We didn’t earn it, but we got lucky and we’ll take it. I really wanted to be the points leader going into my home race at Vegas. I got to see my buddy Stevie Ray at the race this past weekend. Stevie used to wrestle on the WCW circuit years ago. I met him through Lee Beard. He’s a monster of a man. We took a few pictures together on Sunday afternoon. My team went to dinner with the CAT folks at Chili’s on Sunday night. We had a really good time. Other than PR Ted getting one of our Tundras stuck in the muddy parking lot, it wasn’t all that bad. I left early Monday morning to Rogers, Ark. It’s always good to go home. I’ve got a busy week in Arkansas. I’ll tell you about it in the next blog. One thing I will say is that I’ll be at the Valvoline Instant Oil Change in Rogers from 5-7 p.m. on Thursday evening. If you’re an NHRA fan in the area, come say hello and get an oil change. I’ll update in a few days.

Laying low

2007-03-22T15:18:00Z

I really haven’t been in much of a mood to do anything following testing on Monday at Gainesville. I know Eric Medlen pretty well and we’re colleagues. We sometimes think we’re invincible. I was in our Sequoia when it happened and didn’t see it. At that point you just pray. When something like that happens, you don’t want to be at the racetrack. None of use wanted to test anymore. Our main concern was Eric’s health. Gainesville was a tough race for me. My knee bothered me. Driving the car wasn’t a problem, but all the time on my feet and the walking bothered me. It was good to qualify second again and do well. We’ve gone to the semis at six of the last seven races. We had low E.T. of eliminations. We’re still No. 1 in the points. We still have our momentum going into Houston, which is David’s home race. It's all good, at least for our team. I was blown away with the crowd at Gainesville. It was packed all three days. It’s great to see such a passionate crowd, and it’s great to see people take notice of our race team. That’s really cool for this little “mom and pop” team. We made two test runs Monday and finished with a 4.51. I flew home that night. I’ve been doing a lot of sponsor stuff this week working with one of our marketing guys. I’m really focusing on my knee and helping the team find a sponsor. I canceled all my plans for the weekend. I’m just going to lay low and get healthy. I’ll check in next week.

NASCAR weekend

2007-03-14T14:47:00Z

I was really excited about going to the NASCAR race at LVMS over the weekend. I’m a big NASCAR fan. I love watching and keeping up with stock car racing. A lot of drag racers don’t like NASCAR. I love both. I left my house early Saturday morning. Even though it’s just Busch day, it’s still packed. I left about 6 a.m. I had a 9:30 a.m. press conference that Las Vegas Motor Speedway invited me to attend. Ashley Force was also there. I’m sure you read about it on NHRA.com already. I got to park in the infield and they gave me the royal treatment all weekend long. I was amazed by the revamped facility. The first place I went to was the Neon Garage. It’s an area where the fans have access to see the cars and drivers. It’s not like drag racing because they can’t talk to the drivers or crew members, but it sort of allows them into the pits. The new winner’s circle also is there. Then I made my way to the media center. I was blown away. It’s four levels. My buddy, Jeff Motley, who does the PR for LVMS, has an office on the start/finish line. He gave me a tour of the media center. From there, it was time to meet with the press folks. They had us sitting on a small stage and they fired way at Ashley and me. I was happy because they asked me questions too. I didn’t get upstaged. I’m used to flying under the radar. They asked a lot about why I like NASCAR. There were probably a good 60 reporters there. We’re not used to that. After that, Richard Petty came in. I got to meet and talk to him. He used to drag race for a short while, so that was really neat to meet him. I had a “hot pass” and went to the garages. That’s a ticket to go anywhere. I went by and visited the pit area of my Valvoline teammate Scott Riggs. Jim Rocco showed me around and gave me a behind-the-scenes tour. I was amazed by how the Cup mechanics love drag racing. They follow our sport. That’s really cool! They asked a lot of questions. It was cool be in that pit because I felt at home. It’s so much different working out of a garage as opposed to the trailer like we do in drag racing. I went back to the media center and hung out and had lunch. I met one of the reporters from NASCAR. Her name is Claire B. Lang. She does a NASCAR show on XM Radio. I used to listen to her on XM when I drove my own rig. She was excited to hear that. She wants me to go on her show. I’ll be glad to do it. I also saw my buddies Jeff Wolf and Brian Hilderbrand from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Las Vegas Sun. I chatted with them a bunch. And, I ran into Mike Lentz. He used to work for NHRA. He’s in charge of security for NASCAR. I ran around with him before the Busch race and he introduced me to a lot of drivers. I had a nice conversation with Tony Stewart. With Mike, it was like rolling with the chief of police. I could go almost anywhere. Mike said he misses drag racing, which was cool to hear. I stayed for the Busch race and went to dinner with the Valvoline folks. By then, it was getting late. It took like two hours to get out of the track on Saturday. I was tired, so I wanted that extra hour of sleep. You have to really get there early on Sunday for a Cup race. With daylight’s savings time, I got up before 5 a.m. to go to the Cup race. I needed to be there early to meet people. I left my house at 6 a.m. and about five miles from the track the traffic was a mess. Usually, it’s a 35-minute drive. This took an hour and 35 minutes. I was amazed how many people get there early and how festive it is. I watched how they shuttle folks back-and-forth with helicopters. It’s a whole new world at NASCAR. I met with Jordan Bressler, my sponsor coordinator at Valvoline, on Sunday morning. He was impressed with how good our race team is doing. I was surprised by how many people knew drag racing and my name. A lot of NASCAR fans do watch NHRA drag racing. Of course, they all asked why I was limping. I got invited to go to the press conferences on Sunday morning. The first presser was with Bill Goldberg, the former wrestler, promoting Bullrun. He talked about how much he liked drag racing. That was cool. I got to meet him. He says he’ll come to the track some day. Mark Wahlberg also was there promoting his new movie Shooter. I went to the pre-race ceremonies. I got to see the Blue Man Group. Robin Leach was the emcee. I was surprised by how small the NASCAR drivers are. People think I look bigger on TV and it was the same with those guys. There was a neat fly-over by the Thunderbirds. That was cool. It’s amazing with 150,000 people there. You just feel the excitement. The Cup drivers are so laid back. It’s different I guess. I guess being in the car for just five seconds is different. I have to really get pumped up and in my zone. I have a passionate pre-run routine. They have miles and miles to get warmed up. It was neat being the fan. I was on the other side of the table. I had a great weekend. So, thanks to all the folks at LVMS for taking care of me.

Bubble Boy!

2007-03-07T21:56:00Z

We need to call this blog “Bubble Boy.” I’m now like the boy in the bubble. I can’t do anything fun. Yes, I injured my knee playing volleyball in Hawaii. It happened Friday afternoon with the folks from Matco Tools. They had district managers from each of the five regions playing different games and I was a good sport and joined in. I was having a blast. I went up to hit the ball, I was in the middle, I hit it hard and someone bumped into me and when I landed I came down funny on my knee. I heard a pop and I knew I was hurt. There were a lot of people around and everyone got really quiet. They were concerned and called hotel security. They took me to my room in a wheelchair. I talked to some of the folks from our team and they said I need to go to the hospital and have it looked at. So, Diana Hurst of our team took me to the hospital late Friday afternoon. When we got there, they said it was a four-hour wait. The nurse asked what I did and I told her, so they took us in right away. That was nice of them. They took x-rays and felt I pulled or tore something. They couldn’t tell much, but recommended I see a specialist when I got back to Las Vegas. I had to spend all day Saturday in Hawaii, but in my room. I didn’t get to surf or swim with the dolphins. Maybe that’s a good thing I didn’t surf. Who knows what would have happened to me? You don’t realized what it’s like to be handicapped until you get injured. It was really hard to travel. I had a lot of nice people helping me. I wasn’t in first class, so that five-hour plane flight was rough. I couldn’t stretch my leg, but the flight attendants did their best to make my flight comfortable. I relaxed on Sunday and got ready for the doctor Monday. Bazemore joked that he hired one of the Matco guys to take me out like the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan skating episode. I can tell you, it’s not true! I finally got to the doctor Monday and they did an MRI. They discovered I tore my meniscus and some cartilage. They could do surgery or let it heal. They didn’t want me to go under the knife because we have to race next week. So, I came back the next day and went through some mild rehab exercises. I passed that test, so that plan is to take it easy and get some mobility in my legs. I won’t be able to do my pre-race routine or jump off the roll cage after we win, but it won’t keep me from racing. I could drive right now. I’m bummed because it’s NASCAR week in Las Vegas and I’m a big NASCAR fan. I was looking forward to going to the track and hanging out. I’m close with Jeff Motley and Chris Blair of Las Vegas Motor Speedway and they’re setting up some PR stuff for me to do on Saturday afternoon. I’ll definitely be there. It’s hard being on crutches. It makes all the little things hard. I need to grocery shop, but getting around is tough. It really makes you appreciate being able-bodied. We really do take things for granted. I’ll take it easy the rest of the week. I’ll do rehab every other day and every day next week until I fly to Florida Thursday morning. Despite the injury, I had a great time in Hawaii at the Matco Tools Expo. It was great to meet all the Matco distributors and employees. Vicky Perrin was really helpful to our entire team, and John Torok always takes good care of us. It was great to meet Matco Tools president Tom Willis. It also was great for me and Baze to bond. We’ll do another blog after NASCAR this weekend and I’ll be good as new for Gainesville.

Aloha means hello

2007-03-04T17:36:00Z

I got to Hawaii on Tuesday after a seven hour flight from Phoenix to Honolulu. I checked into the hotel and went straight to the Matco Tools Expo for the afternoon autograph session with Whit, Ron Capps, Antron Brown, Clay Millican, Craig Treble, and sport compact racer Jason Hunt. It was hard to go because from the back entrance of the Sheraton Waikiki, the ocean and pool are just a few feet away. It’s so tempting to just wander off and enjoy Hawaii, but I was good. It was great to see all the Matco folks. Everyone was excited with us winning Phoenix just a few days earlier. I was surprised how many Matco distributors knew who I was. Tuesday night, I had sushi with Bazemore and John Torok of Matco Tools. John is the Motorsports Marketing Manager at Matco. We refer to him as “Tor.” I woke up Wednesday morning and went back to the Expo. We had a break from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. so Baze and I went to the ocean. It was good for us to bond and get to know each other better. Let me tell you, he’s a really cool guy. Baze is really mellow. He was my wing man and introduced me to a bunch of pretty girls since I’m sort of shy and the single guy. Later that night, we took a group of Matco folks to dinner at John Dominis. It’s a great seafood restaurant in Honolulu. It’s important to take the sponsors out every so often. We had a great time and some really good seafood. Thursday was our first off day. I got up and worked out. Then I met Ted and Baze at the pool and we went to Hanauma Bay. It’s a nature preserve where lots of people go snorkeling to see the marine life. It’s a beautiful place. We didn’t snorkel, but went in the ocean and hung out. We drove back and had a late lunch with John Torok at Duke’s. Then, we had the Matco Tools send-off dinner/luau at the hotel. We topped off the evening by going to John Wolfe’s suite on the 31st floor. He was the No. 1 Matco Tools distributor in the country. People thought it was cool that the No. 1 distributor and driver were hanging out. We had a toast to our success. It’s cool being in Hawaii. We’re still in the U.S., but it’s sort of like we’re in another country. It’s so distant and tropical. It’s my first time here. I’ll come back in a heartbeat, but to a more remote and not so built-up area. Waikiki is very commercialized. I have a couple more days left before going home to Las Vegas on Sunday. I need to go see Rocco and Ozzy. I’m still going to surf and I want to swim with the dolphins as well. I’ll update early next week. Have a good weekend.

Felling great!

2007-02-28T15:36:00Z

After our win this weekend I’ve gotten a ton of phone calls about doing a new blog entry, so here we go. I’m actually in Hawaii for the Matco Tools Expo, but let’s go back and recap the weekend of racing at Phoenix. I was nervous that I jinxed myself because I didn’t get to attend the Fan Fest on Wednesday. I wanted things to be just like last year. My flight in Las Vegas was delayed, but it didn’t end up having a negative affect. Then, we thought we could run the monostrut. NHRA gave us the go-ahead, but we had some new chassis guidelines to abide by where we have to change the upper tube thickness on the frame rails of the back half of the car. We didn’t want to make that drastic change at the race track. It needs to go to Hadman’s and be placed on the chassis jig and get done properly. Safety is important and it needs to be done right. I’m excited about the monostrut because it’s new and looks really cool, plus being the first to run this new-style mono at a national event intrigues me. And nobody has won with it. Don Garlits ran it, but didn’t win. I want to be the first driver to win with it on. On the other hand, we didn’t want to upset the balance of the car. We were the No. 2 qualifier at Pomona and went to the semis and you don’t want to change things when you’re doing well, which proved to be true. The Phoenix race was awesome from the start. We were set up for a 4.49 on Friday and it just took off. It surprised all of us with that 4.471, including Rob Flynn. That’s when we came up with the term “Canadian Power.” I knew then, we were going to win the race. I just had a feeling. I could tell, during my days as a sportsmen racer, when I was going to have a good day. It seemed like things were aligned for us. I woke up Sunday morning and looked at the clock and it was 5:52 a.m. That’s my competition number. That 4.46 in the first round set the tone for the day. I know Brandon Bernstein came behind us and ran quicker, but we showed the track was good. A lot of good cars like Larry Dixon's and J.R. Todd's smoked the tires. Between qualifying and that run, we ran three 4.40s, and a total of five. It also dropped two cylinders on that run and it didn’t hit the rev limiter. I knew I was on the same side of the ladder as Whit Bazemore. It was like a dual final round. It was great for our race team and David Powers Motorsports to have a car in the final round. It was a win-win for all of us. Now, we have to meet Whit in the finals soon. Why not at Gainesville? The coolest news after the semis was that I had taken over the POWERade points lead. That’s a dream for me. Even if it’s just for one race, I’m the No. 1 Top Fuel driver in the world. The other weird thing was that we were racing Melanie in the final round again. Everything was the same. We were in the same lane. We ran the final at nearly the same time. I was nervous going into the final round. I’ve had some success against her and she has a great team. Richard Hogan was my first Top Fuel crew chief with Powers. It’s hard to beat someone twice. She did an awesome job in pedaling to win the second round. I had an awesome car. It was on! As soon as I hit the throttle, I had a good feeling. I saw the win light come on and it was celebration time. It was special because it was a first win for a lot of my crew guys, and our first win as a new team. It helps you bond when you win, and we have pretty much have an all-new crew. We’ve jelled so quickly. It meant a lot to all of us. After we beat Whit, my old crew guys came over to make sure our car was prepared properly and that helped a bunch. We have a great team here. I’m so proud of Rob Flynn. I’ve known he’s a great crew chief but he flies under the radar. Well, now I think he’s proven he’s a top crew chief. We’re fortunate to have two top-tier crew chiefs in our camp. Lee and Rob work so well together. I’d give anything to have Flynn as my crew chief for the rest of my career. I feel that strongly about him. I spent a lot of time with the fans in the winner’s circle. I like letting the fans see and hold the “Wally” and talk with them. I have a tradition; I like to walk with the trophy after a win. I don’t ride back with the team. I like to savor the moment and reflect on it. I’m very appreciative of what we’ve achieved. After the race, we went to Outback for dinner and had a good time. It was neat to have both teams there. It was nice to celebrate with the entire team. We got a little rowdy, but it was a lot of fun. We didn’t get kicked out, so I guess we didn't get too far out of line. I went to the track Monday, but we ended up not testing after how the car ran. I helped the guys load up. I answered a lot of phone calls and did some interviews. I went to dinner with my longtime sponsors, the Jeffrey family of Western Stabilization, and then I flew to Hawaii. I’m going to learn how to surf, and I don’t even know how to swim. We’ll see what happens.

It's party time

2007-02-19T05:14:00Z

I drove home from Pomona on Monday afternoon. It’s about a four-hour drive to Las Vegas. I pretty much relaxed and just got caught up on Tuesday. I paid bills and did paperwork and had a nice day at home. I did go to the gym. I’m a gym rat and like to stay in good shape. I’ve been doing a lot more cardio like I mentioned in the first blog.

The rest of the week, I spent a lot of time on the telephone working with sponsors and my PR guy, Ted, and doing team-related stuff. It’s been an exciting week in Las Vegas because of the NBA All Star Game is at the Thomas & Mack Center here in Las Vegas. There are all kinds of celebs and famous people in town. Not that there aren’t normally lots of celebs here, but it is crazy here this weekend. I went to the Foundation Room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel with a buddy of mine, Don Dail, on Friday night. I’m not a big NBA fan, so I don’t know a lot of NBA players. I saw a lot of guys, but don’t know any names. I was definitely the shortest guy there. It was a high dollar deal, $1,000 for two bottles. I stayed out a little too late and had another wild party to go to on Saturday morning around 11 a.m. This time, at Peter Pan Pizza in North Las Vegas. It was the seventh birthday party for Austin Blair. He’s the son of Chris Blair, who runs the drag strip and dirt track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Chris is a good buddy of mine. When I got there, we all had tokens and played video games. A lot of kids wanted me to go on this dance game with them. That was really funny to see. I’m glad ESPN2 wasn’t there shooting video. Then we ate pizza and hung out. I’m going to lay low today and watch the Daytona 500. I’ll spend the day with my two cats, Rocco and Ozzy. I’m a big NASCAR fan. I love watching it. I want to drive the Petty cars at LVMS someday. Tony Stewart is my pick to win. I like him and Ryan Newman a lot. Newman reminds me a lot of myself. I’ll go to Phoenix on Wednesday for the Fan Fest at the Arizona Mills Mall. I hope a lot of Arizona drag racing fans stop by on Wednesday evening. I did the Fan Fest last year and won the race, so I hope history repeats itself! I’m going to be gone for almost weeks attending the Phoenix race and Matco Tools Expo in Hawaii. I’ve never been to Hawaii, so I’m really stoked about that. It will be neat to meet all the Matco Tools distributors. We’ll talk more about that next time. I hope everyone had a good weekend.

Off to a great start!

2007-02-14T21:09:00Z

Hey everyone. I’m excited to join the NHRA.com bloggers. I read them a lot, so it’s cool to have my own blog. I can’t believe how fast the off season went and that the first race of the 2007 season is over with. It seems like we were just standing on the stage at the award’s banquet in Palm Springs. In my first blog entry, I’ll touch on my off season and then dig into testing and the Winternationals. Some of you know I had surgery in the off season. When I was boxing and fighting in mixed martial arts, I had my nose broken many times and needed to fix my sinuses. It wasn’t cosmetic; I needed to improve my breathing passages. So I had that done on December 5 and it put me out for two weeks. The worst part about it was that it messed up my equilibrium for awhile. Before, I was sneezing and coughing a lot and now I have more energy and feel great. No more sneezing and I sleep great. So, I’m glad I had the surgery. My main focus during the off season was to change my body. I had stocky build and lifted weights a lot. I needed to become leaner and faster. At 5-foot-4, 187 pounds is a lot of weight to carry. I felt like it was dragging me down. I wasn’t fat, but I had to lose some muscle mass, which is hard to do because muscle weighs more than fat. I changed my diet and increased my cardio. I cut my protein intake in half and ate more carbs. I was eating eight times a day to keep my metabolism going all the time. The main thing was the cardio. Between cardio and weight lifting, I was doing three hours of exercising a day. I had to change my entire weight lifting routine from the norm. I used to lift with heavy weights and low reps, but now I’m lifting lighter weights and higher reps and doing a lot of cardio. I feel so much better and I’ve lost 15 pounds. I think it will help make me a better driver. My mom and dad came to Las Vegas over the holidays to spend some time with me and my brother Tony. It was nice to have them with us for nearly six weeks. I don’t get back to Arkansas as often as I should, so I really enjoyed seeing the parents. It was good to spend the holidays with them. In fact, it was the best Christmas and holiday season I’ve had in a long time. Tony and I showered them with gifts. It was like they were the little kids and we were Santa. So, back to racing.

We went to testing at Phoenix and were there for six days. My goal was to get to know my new crew guys, and to work out the monostrut rear wing. I took my guys to Rosa’s for Mexican dinner the first night we were there. We got to bond and cut up with each other. I wanted them to get to know me. I’m a light, fun guy and I want to include them in what I do. The monostrut was really exciting because being the first at anything is neat. The mono has been run in the past, but not in this configuration. Until you get it on the car, you don’t know what to expect. I always wanted to be a fighter pilot and it’s sort of the same thing. The first pass, I went to half track. David Powers and the team were excited. On our last run at testing, we ran 4.490. It felt very stable. I was impressed how well the car ran even with the extra weight. I was excited to run it at Pomona, but it wasn’t OK’d for the Winternationals. It got painted after testing and we’re ready to put it on the car. It will look really cool on the Valvoline dragster. I was really excited going into Pomona until we found out about the mono and that put our backs against the wall. Almost our entire testing was with the monostrut. On Wednesday, Ashley, Judy, and Justine Jeffrey of Western Stabilization took our team to La Paloma for dinner. That was fun. They are a longtime sponsor of mine, so it’s great to spend time with them. Rob Flynn was confident we could run a 4.4 and he was right. I would have been happy for a low 4.5, but it ran 4.49 on Thursday and that set the tone for the weekend. I got out of the car on Saturday after our first 4.48 and the ESPN guys came to me. I didn’t know what it ran and they said we were No. 1, at least for awhile. The crew guys got to the top end and were all excited. It was great. To do it at Pomona is awesome. It’s not only the first race, but one of our biggest on the schedule. We’re trying to impress some sponsors and I think we did a pretty good job of that all weekend long. I woke up on Sunday and was excited, but it was raining. That makes you nervous when you might not get to run. Then, you have to get back into race mode after waiting around. I was excited to get on the track. I watched Whit win a pedal-fest and Tony Schumacher smoke the tires, so that’s in your head. The track changed after the rain. Our car was about to spin the tires, but I pedaled it and Doug Herbert was way ahead. You can’t give up and he had problems and we won the round. Then it got really exciting because we were racing our teammate, and that put a David Powers Motorsports car into the semifinals no matter what. It was a great start for us. I’m third and Whit is sixth. If we can win at Phoenix again, like we did last year, we can takeover that top spot. Things are good!