The 2001 Winston

"What a strange weekend that was at The Winston. Between the power The pit crew of the Viagra car

outages and the rain, I'm amazed we finally got it all finished. We were pretty lucky to have an early draw to qualify on Friday so it wasn't dark yet when I went out. Jeff Burton was the last car to go out and he said it was really tough to see.

I guess we were lucky that it didn't rain more than it did Saturday night. The sky got pretty dark during the Winston Open. There were some pretty good bolts of lightening around us. I don't think I would have been too excited to be sitting in the metal grandstand. I was really surprised when NASCAR allowed the teams to get their backup cars out to race. I guess it was the fair thing to do since the track was pretty slick when we started the race. I saw the guys ahead of me starting to slide and I did a little too.

Our car was good in The Winston, but it was tough to keep up with some of those guys. I could catch them in the corners, but I lost them on the straightaways. I think we would have had a top-five finish if not for the problem we had on the last pit stop before the final 10-lap segment. Somehow when they finished changing tires on the right side of the car and dropped the jack, the airhose got caught under the right-front tire. By the time the guys figured out it was under the wheel and not just caught on the skirting, they already had the left side in the air. We had to drop the jack and roll the car back a bit to get the airhose out from under it. That is how we went into the pits in fifth place, and came out 17th. It was pretty disappointing, but at least we still have our car in one piece to take to the 600 this weekend.

I'll be flying back up to Charlotte on Thursday morning to sign autographs with my son Matt at the Grand Opening of JR's Garage in Mooresville, N.C. That should be fun since Matt loves to sign autographs. He even has his own hero cards with him and his quarter-midget.

I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend. There will be plenty of racing to watch on television. I always enjoy watching the Indy 500 all afternoon on Sunday since our race does not start until 5:45 p.m. I think every race car driver dreams of winning the Indy 500, even if they don't race open-wheel cars. Although, I don't envy Tony Stewart trying to do both in the same day."