Whooo Hooo!!! After a long off season, it is finally time to get back on the track and get dirty!

The butterflies started pumping about the time I put the car on the trailer to head to the track. It has been a while since I felt the adrenaline flowing like that in a long time. What a good feeling!

Anyway, Jerry and I got to the track at about 6:15pm, unloaded and said hi to friends that we haven't seen since last year. We had plenty of time to get settled in and ready for the first night of racing. Looking around, the infield was a mudhole due to the rain that we have been getting, but the track looked pretty dry. Jerry set up the car for dry-slick right off the bat. OK, we are ready!

During the drivers meeting the usual rules and some new procedures were explained. Nothing really new other than the cars will be entering the track on turn one instead of turn two like last year.

During hot laps, I didn't like what I saw. There was basically no water put on the track and it was so dusty that I couldn't see a thing going into the corners. On top of that, it was so dry-slick that the car was all over the place, especially coming out of the corners. After our hot laps, the track officials put a little more water on the track and during the Street Stock hot laps, the track was a little better. Another little shot of water was put down and the 360 Sprint Cars had hot laps and the dust was gone. It was still very dry and slick, but at least I will be able to see during the race. That is a plus!

The starting positions for the first race of the year is determined by drawing a number. The rest of the year, starting positions are determined by your nightly point average. I didn't draw a very good number, starting inside row 3 for the first heat...against some pretty tough drivers. Let's see what happens.

All is good for the first lap. Nobody gets real aggressive and causes a pile up in the first corner of the first race of the year. They waited until the end of the first lap. I am running in fifth and I see Chad Graves (41) and Justin Selkin (111) get together coming out of 4. Chad gets into Justin and causes the #111 truck to loose control and start spinning toward the infield...no problem, I will go high and miss him. Not this time! Justin over corrected and came back up across the track right in front of me. Pow!!! I nailed him right in the right rear and send him spinning some more. Luckily our cars matched up just right and not much damage was done to my front end. Chad was charged with the caution and send to the back. It will be a complete restart. The rest of the race went incident free and I was running 3rd after about the 2nd lap. Justin and Scott Borstad (10) were running side by side for pretty much the whole race and there was nowhere for me to pass, so I just kind of settled in and waited for something to happen. The track was so dry that I couldn't go any higher to try to get around them because up in the high groove, it was like trying to drive on marbles. In the last corner of the last lap, I thought I would try to go high just to try and make something happen. Wrong move! Just what I thought...no traction at all. I got real loose and 3 cars got by me and I ended up 6th. Bummer.

Tonight there were only 22 cars signed in for the Hobby Stock class so there were not enough to make a B feature, so it was right on to the A. Cool...my streak of not missing an A feature is still alive. 11 nights and counting. The only bad thing was, I had to start 16th on a very dry/slick track. I hope I make it out in one piece! For the first 3 or 4 laps, things went fairly decent with just the usual trading paint. I think I had worked my way up to about 11th or 12th. Then coming out of turn two on about lap 4, I saw some cars a ways ahead of me starting to get together and going in all directions. I decided to aim right for the middle of them thinking that by the time all was said and done, they would be somewhere else and I could drive right though. That is what I get for thinking! The two cars in front of me went left and right and there sat the #61jr of Don Brady Jr. I hit the brakes and cranked her to the left, but it was like trying to stop on snow. Slowed down a little and didn't turn a bit. Pow #2!!! I hit him so hard that I later found out that his trunk was almost dragging on the ground. I couldn't see what kind of damage I had, but everything felt ok so I stayed out on the track. From there on out, it was kind of survival of the fastest. People were trying to over drive the slick track and there ended up being about 6 or 7 more cautions for people just spinning out. Luckily all of those incidents were behind me. Slowly but surely, with all the cautions I ended up working my way up to 7th, which I thought was pretty good considering that I had no rear bite coming out of the corners. I had to be very patient and wait for the car to be almost completely straight before I could put it to the floor. On the last corner of the last lap, driver error took over again. I got it too high and just about lost it in the loose dirt and 2 cars got by me for the checkers. I ended up 9th. Not bad for the first night of the year.

Overall, I think that the car feels pretty good. Having a new motor with fresh heads and new parts is making a difference, although it was hard to tell since there was no grip on the track. I can't wait to see what it will be like on a tacky track and see how it compares to the "Junkyard" motor from last year.

Time to go home and fix the nose, that by the way, wasn't damaged nearly as bad as I had expected. Jerry and I must have built the bumper right, cause it sure saved the front of the car. Also, I need to get the car over to Alien so that he can get the sponsors painted on the car for next week.

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