We arrived in New Jersey with hopes of our season turning around and left with a bad taste in our mouths.
On Saturday during the final qualifying session we lost a friend.
Scott Kalitta was killed in an accident. A terrible succession of events and an unprepared facility resulted in a tragedy that not only makes me sick to my stomach, it hurts my heart as well. If any of you have watched the television programs or read the Internet websites you know my position on this incident and I will leave it at that for now. My thoughts and prayers go out to the Kalitta family.
We made a good run on Friday, a 4.56 et at a slowing 315 mph as the blower belt exited a bit short of the finish line.
Saturday's qualifying brought a tire smoker on the first run and an aborted run in the last session. During my burnout our front right tire went flat, evidently we ran over something that punctured it ... not good!
We pushed the car off the starting line, changed the front tire and dragged it back to the pits, very disappointed that we didn't get the run as we need all the runs we can get right now.
On Sunday our first round opponent would be Hillary Will. As a member of Team Kalitta, Hillary and all of the Kalitta cars chose to sit out eliminations - a decision we all understand completely.
As a matter of fact there was a good chance we were going to sit them out as well.
With our car struggling the decision was made to run the car. We need all the information we can get right now and since I was not confident in the facility and its shut down area I made the decision to drive it to half track and shut it off as the information we needed would be recorded in the first half of the run.
Our second round opponent would be Brandon Bernstein. We made some changes to our car in hopes of picking up the performance as we knew Brandon would be tough. Unfortunately the changes that were made did not work and we smoked the tires early in the run and lost. Definitely not the results we were looking for and as our season continues to progress we need to get our act together right away to make this year's countdown to the championship.
I want to thank all of you that have taken advantage of purchasing our team merchandise through our website and the UPS Oasis system. The support means a lot.
Thanks for reading,