It’s been a great two months for us with the Stanley DeWALT team. We’ve had some really good races. We’ve had some great finishes. We’ve qualified well. We had Phoenix and that was a good day for us. We finished in the top 10. We ran well all day. We had good car speed in qualifying and finished third.
It was a lot of fun and the new track and new surface was cool. It was just good to have a good weekend when the slate was even for everybody. Everybody really had the same experience around the place. It was good that we ran so well.
Texas before that was really good too. We ran top five a lot of the day. We actually were in contention to take the lead there for a while. We took two tires and it really hurt our run and our finishing position. We finished 11th. That was a disappointing finish to what was a really strong day.
Martinsville was before that. We got rained out in qualifying. We got rained out in practice mostly so we were pretty under prepared for the race. We got up to third and then we were just dumped by the No. 42. That really ruined our day because it pushed the nose right down and then it was hitting the ground. We just couldn’t fix the damage and we finished 12 laps down in 29th.
Talladega was just a crapshoot. We got hung out to dry there. Our teammate, AJ [Allmendinger], spun out halfway through the race and so I lost my teammate to draft with. We made our way to a 19th-place finish.
Charlotte was a great race for us too. We ran strong all night, finished top 10 and felt really good about our day. Good qualifying, good stable race for us the second time around. We had a lot of speed.
As for the season as a whole, we started off pretty good. We had a bit of a slump in the early summer and then got ourselves back on track and got our first win as a team. We finished top 20 in points. It’s been a good first year. I think that anyone doing a change for the first time is going to go through challenges and we have had our fair share, but we have done well and we look forward to doing even better in 2012.
Definitely a strong year for us. Any time you can finish in the top 20 you’re doing something right. We’ve got aspirations to make the Chase next year for both cars, but this has been a big plus and we’re looking for an even better season next year.
I’m heading back to Australia for the offseason. I’m taking my family back there and I’m just going to get away from racing for a while and hang with my mates. We’ll do a little bit of fishing and a little bit of mountain climbing and see what happens from there.
We had a really successful year for Marcos Ambrose Motorsports and our driver George Miedecke. He finished second in points in UARA and won the rookie of the year. He had a lot of poles and a lot of great runs so we’re proud of him.
He’s actually trying to head back to Australia to do the V8 Supercars Development Series for 2012 and we look forward to helping him do that as well. Next year we have a new driver named Ben Rhodes. He’s a young up-and-coming guy from Kentucky and we’re looking forward to helping him in 2012.
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