March 13 - 16

After being able to enjoy our win for two weeks we were ready to resume racing again. On the way to Gaines, Florida we stopped in Houston, Texas for a few test laps. Even though most teams headed for Southern Florida and Georgia, we thought testing on the next stop of the NHRA tour would be helpful. We have so many parts for Larry to test that there isn’t enough time to get to all of them. We were rained out on our second day of testing but found some value in the time we did have.

Arriving in Gaines we readied our Kendall Dodge Stratus for what looked to be a cool start, well cool it was. The rains came before we even got to warm up our engines and the day was called. Saturday proved to be a drier day but the humidity was so high it felt like it was raining all day, at least it did to the Coloradoans who are used to drier conditions. The first session surprised many teams and we certainly were one of them. We didn’t approach the track aggressively enough and recorded a lazy 12^th spot. Having only two sessions to figure out a track is very hard for racers especially when we usually only visit these tracks once a year. Usually it takes a couple of sessions to get enough rubber on the track to really make these cars perform. The second run on Saturday we adjusted the car to be much more aggressive and even though we ran a lot better, we still didn’t hit it hard enough and actually lost a spot to the number 13 position. Apparently many teams did the same thing.

On Sunday morning we readied the Kendall Oil Dodge Stratus for race day with a fresh change of Kendall Oil and we readied the hospitality area for Duane Munson and Kendall customers and friends. Our first opponent was to be Mike Edwards who is one of the best leavers in the business. We noticed our car was a little to quick off of the line on Saturdays session so we tried to slow it up a pinch. We cut a .040 light which was too slow compared to Mike’s .022 light even though we out ran him a 6.665 to our 6.660, which was the fastest run in the left lane. We did learn a couple of things that we had hoped to learn in testing and I’m sure that we will use them in our next race in two weeks in Houston Texas. I’m sure we wont try to slow up the car again as we should have left it alone. Happy Easter everyone, as the team takes off a couple of days to unlock some more secrets.