It all started off last Wednesday when we had the
grand opening for the New Smyrna Quarter Midget Raceway.
That is the track we built in the infield of New Smyrna
Speedway. A bunch of Winston Cup drivers came out to sign
autographs which really helped draw a huge crowd. That
meant a lot to me that those guys would take time from
their busy schedules to do this for the kids. My son Matt
raced and finished second in his race. I was so excited
about how well the grand opening went that I could hardly
sleep that night.NASCAR had a media day on Thursday morning, and then we had a Budweiser luncheon that afternoon where we drew our starting positions for Sunday's race. I drew the fourth starting position for the Budweiser Shootout. I was thrilled with that since I usually end up drawing one of the last spots. Last year I actually sat on the pole, but I was shuffled out of the draft pretty quickly.
We began practice on Friday and I was pretty disappointed with how that went. My Daytona 500 car was just not that fast when we practiced for qualifying. Although, I was pleased with our qualifying effort on Saturday. We really pulled a rabbit out of a hat to turn a lap that was much faster than we had ever practiced. After qualifying it was pretty obvious to see that the Dodges are going to be really tough. I do think our car will draft well in the race.
Sunday brought our first race of Speedweeks. I was very happy that we had such a safe race in the Budweiser Shootout. We didn't even have one caution flag the entire race. All of the drivers were pretty patient and didn't try anything crazy. I hope they do the same thing in our next two races here. I would have liked to have finished better than eighth, but I am optimistic about the fact that we were able to run up front for part of the race. We won't be running the same car in the Daytona 500, but hopefully it will be just as good, if not better, than the Shootout car was.
The next three days are pretty uneventful at the track. We
have about an hour of practice each day and that is it. I
have quite a few other things planned away from the track
since I don't have to be there as much for a few days.I hope everyone is enjoying watching racing again. It feels good to be back at the track. It will feel even better to be back at a track where we don't run restictor plates. I've never been a big fan of them, but I don't know any other way to slow us down enough.
As always, thanks for your support and keep your fingers crossed for Thursday. We can still get a pretty good starting spot for the 500 if we have a good race in the Gatorade 125's.
