TALLADEGA!!!

We were all very excited about going to Talladega because we had new engines in both trucks, plus I had tested an ARCA car there before so it was a little more familiar than going to a track that I have never seen before.

We practiced on Thursday and the truck was really good in the draft. We had a little problem with dragging the left front of the splitter off all during practice. We missed most of the final practice because it completely fell off and the crew had to replace it. I really felt like from the practice that the truck would be fast in the draft.

We had qualifying on Friday and we drew 34th to go out. When I got in the truck and tried to start it there was a problem. NASCAR put us on the 5 minute clock and we finally figured out that the problem was in the kill switch. The crew guys had to run back to the hauler and get the steering wheel out of the backup truck and run back to pit road. They got it back to me and we got the truck fired up with 1 minute left!! Our first lap put us 20th and we were the only truck to gain position on our 2nd lap moving us to 16th.

Our plan for the race was to see how the truck handled in traffic and then just settle in somewhere and ride until around 25 laps to go. The truck was pretty loose when someone would get tight to my outside, so when we came in for our first stop the crew made some adjustments and made that a lot better. We had quite a few close calls during the race with people wrecking all around us…the closest call we had was when Sprauge blew a tire leading and spun in front of the field. We ended up going down through the grass and missing most of the wreck. The only damage we had was to the left front corner of the splitter. My spotters and my crew chief made the decision to come in and check everything out, which was a great decision because the splitter was under my left front tire and would have caused it to go down. My spotters told me that the yellow line was my best friend so we just stayed glued down to the bottom and ended up bringing home a 6th place finish!!

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