The one thing about racing that stresses me out the most is getting into accidents.  I know crashing is part of it, but I work really hard to keep Juan and our car out of trouble.  As many of you know we did have a crash today and it made me really angry.  I don’t know what I or Juan could have done differently.   It is all spur of the moment decisions.  Last week in Dover we were heros for avoiding a huge crash and this week we get into one.  The 07 car spun directly in front of us directly in the middle of the track and there was little time to judge where he was going and we hit him resulting in a huge fire. 

The last couple of weeks have been stressful like I have never seen in my life before at the shop and around the track.  It is not always pretty in this sport and everyone is feeling it right now.  It is very tense and the mood is not very good like it was at the beginning of the year.  I am not being negative!  I am usually the positive one but you guys want to know what is happening so there it is.  I don’t know how we can work any harder to get prepared.  Everyone at the shop and the track has been working crazy hours with little time off.  Sometimes it is hard to remember what day it is.  Hopefully it will get better soon.

Enough of that, I will let you know more about what happened at Pocono.  Practice started off terrible.  Juan kept saying that something was wrong with the car and after the final practice before qualifying we did find something wrong.  As we went through NASCAR’s height requirement gauges they made us adjust something that threw some of our measurements off.  Even though it took some time to find this, when it was corrected, Juan qualified 21st, the best in quite a few weeks.  Happy with the qualifying, we prepared for final practice.  The practices went OK, but Juan did manage to brush the wall in final practice.  I did not think it was too bad, but when I made it to the garage area afterwards I could not believe the body damage that it had done.  We had to take all of the decals off of the right side of the car, remove and straighten all of the crush panels, seal up all of the replaced panels, and re-decal the car.  It was a huge ordeal!  We got the car back in good condition, finished the pre-race checklists and were ready to race. 

When the race started I was happy with the progress.  Juan passed some cars and was doing really well.  Many people got on different pit strategies, and even though we did not have great track position at all times, we were still running pretty good.  Juan got really hot in the car.  We are going to look into more cooling and putting more heat shields on the oil lines and things around the diver compartment.  I think the style of cars we are racing today are generally very hot inside.  The summer races will be tough on the drivers.

Once the wreck happened, I thought we were done, but the guys did a tremendous job getting a new front end, radiator, oil cooler, numerous burnt up oil lines and brakes lines replaced and got the car back on the track!  The goal was to finish the race and gain as many positions as we could though attrition.  The car ran rather well considering the impact and repair that was done.  I have no idea where we finished; I was frustrated with the day but also satisfied that once again we never gave up. 

Now it is off to Michigan, kind of a boring two-mile track with not much action.  We will make the best of it.  Have a good week and talk to you after the race.    

-Tab