I got a phone call that I would have never expected last Monday. Gerald Mead, the owner of the #22 car, gave me a call and asked me if I would like to drive his car the next weekend. They are a first year team and would like to have me drive the car one night and try to help them get their car set up better and to see what it could do. Also, this would help me stay in the points race and give us another week to try and get a new car ready to go. I would also like to thank Ron Weber, the regular driver of the car, to step out of the driver's seat for a week to help me out. I think this will be good for both of us.

This was kind of cool. Show up at the track with my race bag and get in the car and race! Kind of like the professionals! I could get used to this!

Maybe my run of luck is still with me. Just before we were to get up to speed in the hot laps, the bottom radiator hose blew off. Nothing serious, but now I have to start the heat race in a car that I have never been up to speed in. Jerry put his set up under this car and I just have to hope that our set-up will be pretty close and work with this car.

I started on the inside of row 2 and at the green flag, it was put it too the floor and hope for the best going into the first turn. Jerry did a nice job setting this up. The car handles pretty well. Problem #2. After I hit about 4000 rpm, the car starts to miss. The car pulls well off the corner, but due to the miss, about half way down the straight, the motor just lays down. The only thing I can do is keep the car on the bottom and try not to turn too many rpm's. To make a long story short, even with the miss in the motor, I am able to keep up with the others for the most part and finish 5th, side by side with Tim Dann. One spot short of transferring directly to the A feature. That is alright. Now I get one more race to try and work out the bugs and get the car handling a bit better.

During the B, the car still has the same miss in it but is handling very nicely. To be honest with you, due to several weeks having past between the race and the actual writing of this, I can't remember where I started or finished, but I did end up transferring to the A.

I started the A feature 18th. Jerry didn't change the set-up at all. The car was handling good enough. I just wish we could figure out why the car had that miss. Just to keep the story as short as possible, I am only going to mention a couple highlights from the race. Coming out of turn 2, on I believe lap 2, Terry Bender driving the 2EZ hit the tire wall and rolled. I drove almost right under him as he was going over. I thought that he was going to land on me! Close call #1. I don't need to be wrecking this car tonight, since it isn't even my car! Close call #2 came a couple laps later when Chad Graves was trying to get under me coming out of turn 2 and got loose. All I saw was him coming right at my door! Luckily he missed me, but as it turned out, he did an easy roll over off of the back straight. He did continue on with the race that night. I can't say the same about Terry. Anyway, back to my story...toward the end of the race, I had the car up to 8th or 9th when the bottom radiator hose blew off again with only 2 laps remaining. Officially I finished 17th.

It was a learning experience for both myself and for Gerald and Ron. Once again I would like to thank them for letting me drive their car. I hope it was as beneficial to them as it was to me.

On to building the new car. Hopefully it won't be more than another week or so.

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