Once again it was a very exciting week in Talladega.  The Superspeedway races are so different than any of the other tracks, you almost need to be in a different “mode” than normal.  The crew chief swap this week took everyone by surprise and everything went really smooth this weekend in regards to all of that. 

The track is so big at Talladega handling is almost not an issue.  You can usually go anywhere and it is all about horsepower and aerodynamics.  When practice started we immediately got into the pack and did some drafting practice.  After a few runs totaling about 25 laps we felt the car was driving pretty good and did not want to take a chance of getting into an accident so we parked it and started preparing for the race.  This was an “impound” race which means that after qualifying, we are not allowed to touch the car except for a few minor things on race morning.  After qualifying we were to start in the 26th position, which I thought was rather well considering we concentrated on race pace instead of starting position. 

I was really looking forward to this race, even though it is definitely the most difficult track on the circuit for me.  The last few Superspeedway races have been pretty fun, even though it is pretty much chaos! 

As the race started Juan moved nicely through the field.  There are so many times when you are up front and then you get shuffled to the back of the pack.  It is very difficult to choose the correct lane to do your passing.  Most of the time the cars are three-wide on the track and if one person switches lanes it causes others behind to slow momentarily and lose momentum.  Juan did a superb job being very patient all day even under extreme pressure being four-wide at times!  The car ran really well all day and I never felt we were stuck in the back of the pack.  Juan would sometimes take it easy to cool off the engine and then would make his way back into the top 10. 

One time at the exit of turn two a few cars in front of Juan “stacked up”, it happened so quickly I could not get the words out of my mouth!  Juan hit the guy in front of him and it put quite a dent in the front of the car.  Even though it was not optimal the car still ran rather well, even going to the front and leading a few laps with the help of Denny Hamlin pushing him.  I don’t mean a cushion of air, he was literally pushing Juan to the front!  Quite a few people started doing this to get to the front of the pack.  That was something that had not been done in the past.  Two of these cars could join together bumper to bumper and were unbelievably fast. 

After a lot of good racing we were into the final laps.  Dario Franchitti was injured in the race the day before so David Stemme was back in the 40 car filling in for this race.  On a restart, Juan was fourth with Stremme behind him.  They were able to get an excellent run and Stremme pushed Juan all the way to second and Juan slowly blended in the bottom lane.  It was only a matter of inches for Stremme to be clear to fall in line with us but he didn’t quite make it and fell back quite a bit.  I really wished he could have made it in the hole that was there but the 12 car closed it up when he was bump drafted from behind. 

We were down to the final two laps.  All that I was thinking and I told Juan was “Don’t make your move too soon!”  In the past I have seen it so many times where you get shuffled to the back in the final lap.  As they took the white flag and entered the back straight, Juan had a plan and was waiting for turn four with the checkers in site to execute it and then…a caution!  “Oh no” I thought to myself!  The field is frozen and we were to finish second with no chance to make the move at the end.

It was a hard fought day and an excellent points day for us.  I had a really good time with the race and everyone on the team did an excellent job.  It felt good run up front most of the day.  Now it is off to Richmond for some Saturday night short track action.  We will be back in the Texaco/Havoline car this weekend and it will be a Big Red car at Darlington the following week.  I hope everyone has an excellent week and I will talk to you after Richmond! 

-Tab