Well, I've got a new sponsor this week. AutoTrader.com is our T-Shirt sponsor this year and after talking to them about how our season was going they decided to also take the hood for a few months to help us out a little bit more. Now, with both Culligan and Auto Trader on board, we can do a little bit of testing and hopefully advance our learning curve a little.

That's what we really need to do because we are trying so many things at the same time to try to get the car to turn better that when we finally do hit on something that works we may not know which change it was that did it... (more)

Here is what I mean. Last race we tried a set up with softer springs. We were also running a different brake pad in the rear. The car was bottoming out in the corners which make it slide up the track and the rear brakes weren't balanced with the front which made it push on light braking and loose on hard braking.

This week we went back to the old set up but decided to try some springs that were a little stiffer in the rear. Then, we changed the rear brake pads so that they were the same compound as the front pads. The last thing that we tried different was to add a little tire softener to the tires. Some other drivers told us that they used this and it made the tires last a little longer. At this point we were fine but then tropical storm Barry came through and they cancelled the race last week so that gave us another week for our fertile minds to come up with the other stuff to change.

My crew chief (dad) has been reading about shock absorbers lately. He decided to take the shocks apart last week since we had the car ready and there wasn't anything else to do. Then, he ordered a kit that had a bunch of parts in it and he rebuilt all the shocks. At this point we got a little bit beyond the point of making a few minor changes and then our bad luck kicked in. When we put the tire softener in the tires we first wrapped them with a thick paper towel and then wrapped them with cellophane. Then, we cut a whole in the wrapping and poured the softener into the paper towel. Once the towel was saturated we taped the hole up and left the tires on the shop floor. Since we did’t race last week we never took the wrapping off. The tires just sat there for a whole week and then, without checking them, we figured we would have to put the softener on again before we raced so on Friday night I cut another hole in the wrapping and poured more softener into the paper towel and sealed it up again. On Saturday morning we went to the shop to put the tires on and double check everything before we loaded up the car. When I removed the wrapping on the tires they were so soft you could dig your finger nails into them!

When we got to the track it was 94 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. The track had to be 160 degrees and everybody was sliding all over the place. My car was pretty loose but it turned right down to the center just like we had been wanting so I thought, with a little chassis adjustment, it would be pretty good once the track cooled down.

In the heat race I found out different. When we went green I jumped on the gas like I usually do but this time the tires broke loose and spun instead of gripping the track. That let pretty much everybody by me and I dropped from 3rd to 6th by the end of the heat. We decided to go buy some new right side tires but they had taken pretty much all the tires to another track for a big race they were having there so there wasn't anything to choose from. So, we wiped the tires down with gas to try to get some of the prep out of them and then see if we could just ride around in the feature and stay out of trouble and maybe salvage a decent finish in the points.

That plan ended on the first lap when the cars got bunched up in front of me going into turn 3 and then the car on my outside tried to drop down in front of me when there wasn't enough room. I've been here before and if I slam on the brakes I spin out and get creamed by the cars behind me so I decided to just keep my foot in the gas and hope that I could spin the car to the bottom of the track as he came across my bumper. That didn't work quite like I thought it would and as we both slid up the banking and I still got hit from behind anyway. When the car behind me hit me it spun me sideways into the other car and my left rear wheel slammed into its nose knocking my rear end over about an inch. When it all came to an end, I had a big piece of my front fender torn off and my toe was knocked in a little as well. Still, the car felt pretty good and I didn't know that the rear end was bent so I just lined up and restarted race.

Wiping the tires down with gas helped a lot but they still wanted to spin on the start. I had to ease into the gas so I just dropped low coming off the corner to let the faster cars behind me go by on the outside, Once I got going I focused on driving my line the car actually felt pretty good. In fact, I think it was a little better after the wreck! I kept getting faster with each lap but I still was over a half second slower that I usually am.

Lately we have had more cars come out than usual and some of the new cars are pretty fast. Instead of finishing 3rd out of 7 or 8 cars, I'm now finishing 6th or 7th out of 16 cars so I can’t complain. The car that we just passed last week in the points for 2 nd won the race this week so that dropped me back to 3rd with my 6th place finish. This week we'll be too busy fixing all the damage to come up with any more great ideas so maybe next week we'll get back to our old form and do a little better.