Today at the shop...

8-8-11

Monday night after Seafair. I feel better tonight than last night. I just put Katie to bed and she sang to me. Taylor and Tiff are watching a movie. We just got back from dropping off my buddy Chris Kenner at the airport, then we stopped for Mexican on the way home. Life is getting back to normal.

We qualified sixth at Seafair, which is not as fast as we have been at the other races. We had a good heat on Saturday, losing to Villwock but beating everybody else. That kind of pumped everybody, including me, back up. Man, the bottom fell out of it on Sunday, though. Cal and I lost track of J Michael and I hacked him off going into turn one. REALLY hacked him off. Probably three boat lengths at 170 mph. Lucky he did not blow over. I got a level 5 penalty, which is what you get if you pull a gun on somebody at the dock. That was a DQ for the heat, $500.00 fine, and loss of 150 points. That is a big time penalty. Then, in the third heat, I put my fire out taking off at the score up bouy and got to the start about 5 seconds late. I picked off Hopp, but could not catch anyone else. Went to the last chance heat, gave J Michael the inside (cause we are faster) and got beat. No final heat, and no Seafair glory. We got some good TV time and good sponsor coverage, which is big. The TV guys said some nice stuff about our team. Lots of my friends have sent messages about the interviews, and I thank them for the compliments.

I still wanted to crawl under a rock last night. We have been kicking butt all year, and we got our butts kicked this weekend. We fell behind in points and I had a couple REALLY bad heats. It really disappointed me and I moped around the pits a bunch. Tiff kept trying to shake me out of it, but I was just too bummed.

That is the bad part about the weekend. Here is the good part: THERE ARE MORE RACES TO COME! We kicked ass before, and we will do it again. I got complacent in my milling procedure, and became predictable. That won't happen again. I was too aggressive going into the first turn. I learned a lesson and did not injure anybody. I am so VERY proud of my team, and I can't wait to get to the shop tomorrow and get back to work on our moisture missile. Dave Bell has stepped up into the position of Crew Chief this year, and the guys and gals just want to work for him. He is tireless in his pursuit for the right combination. We have a good setup for a 2.5 mile course (as evidenced by our performace at Tri Cities) and we will come to San Diego ready to play ball. Anybody want to bet against us?