Kansas City was a lot of fun. I went out there knowing that our mile-and-a-half program is a little hard on us. It was an action packed weekend for me. I was able to run my dirt car at Lakeside Speedway on Friday night and Saturday night also. We went out there like we always do, on a shoestring budget, and I was really excited to have Blue Ox on the car. They’re a really nice company.
Blue Ox has helped us out a few times this year. They make us feel like we’re somebody and we can go to the racetrack with the Blue Ox logo on the car; that’s meant a lot to me all year. We had a competitive finish at Kansas. The key to staying in the Top 30 in owner points is to be there at the end of every race. Obviously, you can’t wreck out if you’re running slow and stay in the Top 30 in points.
Kim and I were together, we sold souvenirs at the dirt track. They had like 80 cars each night at the dirt track. They only ran 24 in the feature. The first night we ran 16th and the second night we ran ninth. It was a great Missouri weekend and what made it even better was that after I was done with the TV show on Sunday, Kim and I jumped in the car and drove on to St. Louis.
Fontana – my wife let me down on that one. I teased her, because she said “You can go out there by yourself.” She doesn’t like going to Fontana. We used to really enjoy going out there. One of my favorite things to do out there was the Ontario Mills Mall. They’ve got a skate park out there – not roller skating, but skateboards – and that’s where I learned about Vans tennis shoes. It just seems like every year we go out there, though, everybody gets less and less enthusiastic.
So I went out there all by myself and it was funny. We shouldn’t have been out there, let’s put it that way. We went out and did one of those Jay Robinson Racing moments where we ran literally two laps of practice. Two laps. Not three, two. Two laps of practice. We qualified next to last and raced hard the whole damn race and finished 23rd. So, we gained some points there. That was a very non-dramatic weekend. I felt like a bachelor. I was bored to death. I was kind of lonely that week – I missed Kim!
Charlotte – oh, God, that was brutal. I was glad to be at home, but it was a race for the new car. The last time we ran the new car was Richmond, and we had the exact same car and we ran really good. But we spent all day Wednesday, all day Thursday and qualifying on Friday trying to get it to quit bottoming out so hard. We qualified next to last and it was terrible. But I’m not a quitter and we stayed out of trouble, so we still have about a 200-point lock on 30th place in owner points. We’ve run the whole year on a very small budget – we pulled it off.
About the author
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.
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