I must first apologize to everyone who has been checking in to read this week’s blog, wondering what went on at Texas.  This week has been a blur and we are already on the plane heading to Phoenix.  The Texas race was quite frustrating.  We never could get the handling quite right all weekend.  I think it is a mixture of many things and they are being addressed.  These cars are so difficult to get the handle on.  Everyone on the track is having difficulty getting it correct.  I don’t think any car in the field handles well, some just a tiny bit better than others.  With the old style of car you could get the set-up close and the driver could make up the rest because the car had a much lower center of gravity and considerably more front down force.  This made the cars much more driver friendly, they could actually hustle them.  The new car is like trying to balance on a knife edge, it is so easy to fall on one side or the other. 

Almost all of the notes and the way we have made adjustments on the cars of old do nothing to the new car but make it worse.  It makes the days very long because they try many different changes and work really hard to make the cars handle better, we just haven’t found the sweet spot yet.  Just about every track we go to the car is loose into the corner, tight in the middle, then loose off the corner.  When you try to fix the loose in, it makes the car even tighter in the center and that in turn slows the lap time down even more.  Then when you try to make the car looser in the middle it affects the entry and makes it nearly spin out every single corner.  So that is some of the obstacles that we are facing everyday at the track. 

Donnie used some really good pit strategy at the end of the Texas race and put us in a position to gain about six spots at the end and came away with a 19^th-place finish.  Juan got all of us on the team some Supercross tickets for Saturday night at Texas Stadium to watch some dirt bikes race.  It was so much fun!  It was the first time that I had been to an event like that.  We sat right in the grandstands and had a blast.  We are about to stop for fuel in Tulsa, Oklahoma on our way to Phoenix.  I am getting yelled at about my tray table being down so I had better go for now.  Talk to you after the Phoenix race.  Have a great day!

-Tab                                               

Oh yeah, I spent about half an hour answering questions the other day in the comments section and when I hit “Submit”, it rejected it and I lost everything!  Can you believe that?  I was pretty angry.  I will figure out a way to get it done.  See Ya.