Practice went well and when qualifying came we knew the field would be close.  The speeds are really slow at Martinsville and it makes qualifying very difficult. Acceleration is very important and the tires have very little time to get any temperature in them to help grip.  The whole thing is over before the “get up to speed” laps at most track.   We qualified 29th but with the field so close only one tenth of a second would have put us in the top 15.  It is crazy that all of the cars are that close. Then you have to try to pass them in the race!

Sunday came and so did the cold weather!  I could not believe how cold it was!  I had on every single piece of warm clothing that I could find.  We were on top of the main grandstand totally exposed to all of the wind and misty rain that stayed with us all day long.  I had a thick face mask on and I did not want to sound muffled on the radio, if the microphone is not right up to your mouth it is very difficult to hear.  Before the race I cut a hole in it to put the microphone through, it worked excellent and I stayed pretty cozy considering the elements!  I could not wait for the race to get started.  Martinsville is very action packed and I knew Juan would be on a mission to get to the front.  He is always fun to watch at a place like this! 

When the race started it was pure mayhem!  People were bumping and pushing each other all day and Juan was no exception!  He did a really good job of passing people as soon as he got to them.  Lots of people lose time waiting for the right moment but Juan attacked quickly.  It was a very physical race.  There were many different pit strategies being played out by many different teams.  We worked our way into the top five at one point.  Our car had an aggressive set-up that wore the tires a bit more than we wanted, but it had to be this way because of the starting position.  We had to be able to go through the field and not get a lap down.  It was a good strategy because we never came close to it!  At about 40 to 50 laps in a run our tires started to give up a bit. A caution came out about 35 laps into one run and we had to pit or we would have been toast if it was a long green period.  That is when we fell back to around 20th.  Juan did an excellent job for the rest of the afternoon slicing and dicing for position, having tremendous battles even with lapped cars.  Juan came over the radio and asked me “Why doesn’t the 84 car give me any room?!”  In the mean time Juan went three wide with him and another car!  I said to Juan “He can’t!  He has someone outside of him too!”  Juan’s response was “So what!!”  I just had to laugh, he was right, we had to get going.  Juan made many more really good three-wide passes with lots of precision.  He battled all the way to the line on the last lap and came away with a 13^th-place finish.  I really wanted a top 10, but considering all of the potential for trouble we will take it.  Today when we got the car back to the shop we discovered the radiator had been leaking for about 160 laps resulting from one of the hard bumps in the race.  We got very lucky, that could have easily ended the day.

Now that the race was over I left on all of the warm clothes because it was now time to ride the motorcycles home!  It was 39 degrees Fahrenheit and raining when we left the track.  What were we thinking on Thursday?  That was an all new cold that I have never experienced before.  It actually was not too bad, my hands just got very cold.  We stopped once to warm up and rode the rest of the way home.  It was quite an experience.  We will talk about that one for a while.  That is why I did not have the blog for you yesterday!  I needed a day to thaw out!  Now it is off to Texas, one of my favorite tracks and states.  Tomorrow we will put the finishing touches on the cars and loading them onto the hauler for the trip to Texas.  I will talk to you after the race!  Have a good one!

-Tab