Getting to the track tonight, the racing surface was looking a bit on the dry side again. After hot laps were over, the pit steward announced over the mic that we were doing hot laps all over again. They decided to add a little more water to the track and we had to rework the track. After the first set of hot laps, the car felt pretty good. It turned in well but was still a little loose coming off. From what I could tell, I was one of the fastest cars on the track, but everyone was so bunched up I couldn't really stay in the gas to tell what the car was going to do. After they added water to the track the second time, I couldn't hardly turn the car. Back to the drawing board.

In watching the track after all the hot laps were done, the track looked pretty good again. Jerry and I talked things over as far as a set-up for the heat race and decided to go back to the original set-up we had on the first set of hot laps.

I started inside row 3. For the first lap or two, things were fairly smooth. I was still fighting the same problem that we have been trying to fix all year. No bite coming off the corners. Well, about 3 laps into the race, #10, Scott Borstad got loose and spun coming out of turn 4. I barely missed him...twice! That brought out the only yellow of the race. After that, I restarted 3rd and played follow the leader behind #38c, Brett Larsen and the #111 of Justin Selkin. This is getting old...following Justin to the checkers in the heat races! I am going to have to work on my heat races. At least up to this point, I have beat Justin in 3 of the 4 features up to this point. Unfortunately, due to my heat races, I am 2 spots behind him for the points lead.

On to the feature. Due to the way they line us up for the features, which is based on nightly point averages...and I am third highest, I get to start 12th tonight. At least Justin is still starting behind me. Let's see if I can keep him there. Green Flag! Going into the first turn, I went high and got around a couple of cars right away, but everyone was still pretty bunched up and that was all the further I could go for a couple more laps. A yellow comes out for a spin at about the 3rd or 4th lap. I am restarting about 10th. I manage to pick off another couple cars, but at the same time, Justin gets by me on the outside. I just try to fall in line and follow him for a few laps to see what I can learn. On about lap 6, going down the back straight, a couple cars start getting together in front of me. I dive low and get by about 3 of them and by the time I am coming out of turn 4, the red flag is flying. As it turned out, the #74 of Tracy Thompson ends up rolling 2 or 3 times and in the middle of the roll, #55, Paul Van Beek runs right into him. Everyone is ok, but it takes about 10 minutes to clean up the mess. Just as they are about to get us lined up again for a restart, we get a pretty good little rain storm that lasts for about 1 minute. Just enough to wet the track and we spend about 15 laps under yellow getting the track dried out again. I didn't think we were going to get to finish the race the way it rained during that one minute or so, but we did. I restarted 7th and once again played follow the leader to the checkers.

Not too bad I guess. Another top 10! As it turned out, I ended up falling to 4th in points as the #8J of Jeff Coster took the win and jumped ahead of me in points by 5. I am still only 19 points out of first, so I am very much still in the hunt!

See ya at the Street Stock Nationals on Tuesday!

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