Boy, this was a bit of a last minute scramble to get to the track. I had all of my regular maintenance done and figured all I had to do was check the toe, clean the radiator and load 'er up. Well, while I was under the car checking the toe, I noticed my right outer tie rod was bent pretty badly. I jumped in my pickup to go get a new one and the battery in my pickup was dead. Long story short, I had to go get a new battery as well. At this time it was about 4pm. Shouldn't be a problem to get the pickup and the race car done in time. Things usually don't work out for me that easily! Brian Heiman has been helping me out a ton this year and he told me that he had a couple of sets of tie rods, center links, etc. that I could have. After getting a new battery in my pickup I got home and installed a different set of tie rods (inner and outer), thinking it would be faster to just swap out a complete set. When I went to adjust the toe, I could not get the adjuster sleeve to move at all. I pulled those out and put in a second set. Same problem! By that time, Brain was at my house and jumped in to help. Another long story short, we got the toe adjusted, Brandon, Brian and I loaded everything up and hit the road at 610pm. We pulled into the gate at 632pm as the driver's meeting was taking place. All right, back on track. Let's go racing!

After adjusting tire pressures and oiling the car up, I started the first heat race from the 5th starting spot. We went around for one parade lap and then the officials kicked us all off the track! After several minutes of sitting in the staging area, an official came up to every driver and told us we were waiting for a fire truck. After the fire truck got to the track, we lined up again, although in a different order for some reason. Now I was starting 5th in heat #2. Whatever! Seems to be a semi regular thing this year for the officials to redo the lineups at the last minute. That is a whole other story.

Green flag, finally! The first lap, everyone kind of held their own and stayed as they started. Then on the second lap, I am not totally sure what happened, but the a couple cars in front of me, one being the 7f of John Fischer separated and I stuck my nose in between them going into 1 and 2 and came out at the end of the back straight in second! From then on, I hung on to the rear of Marty Halouska for the rest of the heat race, trying to get around him, but couldn't quite get it done. This was a sign of things to come.

After discussing the handling of the car with Brian, we tried to loosen the car up in the middle of the corners to get it to come off the turns faster. We made some changes with front tires and air pressures in the car which would loosen it up a bit going into the corners and through the middle. I started the feature on the outside of row 5 right beside the 07 of Kyle Crawford. When the green dropped, I drove her hard into turn one and just about lost it, was hit from behind and somehow managed to save it and keep going. A quick underwear check told me that everything was OK, so back at it! This was another one of those races where I am not totally sure how I got to where I was, but I believe on lap 2 Mehlhaff almost drove off of turn 4, I dove under him and somehow managed to pick up 2 or 3 more spots by the time I hit turn 1 again. A caution came out on lap 3 and gave me a chance to collect my thoughts a bit. I think I restarted 5th when we got going again and within 2 more laps, I believe, I had made my way up to second behind Halouska. Sound familiar? The middle on top of 3 and 4 were pretty slick and after a couple more cautions and restarts I just about spun myself out several times trying to get around the 86. For the rest of the race, I tried everything I could think of to get around him, mainly trying to get around him on the high side. I almost got it done a couple times, but when I would get beside him on the straights, he would drift up and nearly put me in the wall or off the track on the back. He was also getting wicked loose at times and a couple times I tried to get under Marty, only to have to hit the brakes when he got very loose and came across my nose. I could have easily have kept my foot in it and spun him out, but I was afraid that I would get the blame and be sent to the back. With about 2 laps to go, I decided the only way to get by him was to drive under him. At that very moment, when I headed to the low side, Tim Waltner dove under us both and took the lead. At that point, all I could do was to follow Tim. I tried going into 1 and 2 but didn't have the grip. This was the last lap, so it was now or never. Going into 3, Marty decided he was going to go low, so I went high again. As we were coming out of 4, Marty almost lost it and came up across my nose again. I hit the brakes as hard as I could, but still drilled him in the right rear and almost put him into the wall. If I wouldn't have backed off, he would have been scraping his car off the wall. Anyway, I ended up 3rd tonight. Another would have, could have, should have night, when I thought I should have won that race.

My front bumper needs a bit of TLC, but other than that, another good night and the car is in one piece! I have now moved up to 5th in points. What did I learn tonight? Stop being so focused on trying only one way to get around someone and don't wait so long to try it! Brain and I also found something new that the car likes and will try to improve upon that next week with a couple more little changes.

See ya then!