March 28 - 30

On the way to Houston, the fourth race of the season we stopped off in Tulsa, Oklahoma for a day of testing. Tulsa is a very good track to test at since it is smooth and the operators there are always glad to help us. We were able to get a lot done and had a great learning experience. Some of the new ideas we had been working on would help us in the future.

Houston looked to be real warm and humid for this time of year with both temperatures and humidity in the mid 80’s. Friday’s first session proved good as we qualified 2^nd for the session. Anytime you can do well right off the bat is a great way to start any race as you have less distance to go to get better and you can fine tune instead of making big adjustments. Fridays second session we tried to improve but we actually did worse; still we were ahead of the game because we knew what direction not to go. Still we were 6^th over all going into Saturday.

Saturday’s weather was a little warmer and the time would be hard to improve on, but improve we did, even though it was by only one thousands of a second it was enough to move us up 3 spots, from 6^th to 3^rd. Saturday afternoon session was even hotter and we actually lost a spot when Ron Krisher improved one thousand of a second and bumped us down to 4^th.

Sunday we woke up to a slight rain that cleared up, but the humidity was very high. We had the Kendall Oil folks for hospitality, with Pat Harlan hosting some of his customers and other guests. Also Phil Sontag and Monica Rey joined us from the headquarters just across town. We filled the Kendall Oil Dodge Stratus with a fresh batch of Kendall Oil and went out to face our first opponent, Kenney Koretsky. Kenney was celebrating his 50^th birthday but we blew out the candles by going right by for the win. Secondly, we faced Jim Yates who is another longtime racer. Even in the bad lane we treed Jim and took the win for an invitation to the semi finals where we would face the number 1 qualifier Kurt Johnson. As we let out the clutch to do our burn out against Kurt the transmission popped out of gear, probably breaking in the process. It probably didn’t make much difference as the track became a one lane race track and every one in the left lane lost traction almost immediately. Still 36 in points we head off to Las Vegas in 2 weeks. Don’t miss that one, as the Kendall Oil Dodge Stratus streaks to the winners circle.