9/2/00

Good evening,

This is one of those days that is bitter sweet. We had good and bad things happen. OK, where to start. Well, the good news is that we just signed on Babcock and Jenkins out of Portland to be our associate sponsor for the Petit Le Mans Race in September. With their support we are now fully funded and now can concentrate on driving!! What a relief and I am so grateful to them.

Well, now for the not so good news. I have never had a qualifying day that was filled with more "crap" than today. I will try to keep it straight and simple. The crew thought they found a problem with the shocks on the car and made a change. They went softer on the rebound on the front and well, lets just say it was the wrong direction! So off we go for our first session. The track management made some surprising changes on the track without informing the drivers. What a nice surprise during a qualifying run! Anyway, they painted a line after the chicane not allowing us to use the entire the apron on the track. The track said it was a safety concern. In my opinion, it was now MORE dangerous because they pinched off the exit. And I almost proved my point by spinning exiting the chicane and came very close to the wall on the speedway. Well, they then black flagged the session to put up cones that would not allow us to use more of the track on the exit of the chicane.

Well, after the session we had a drivers meeting and voted whether or not to keep that Mickey mouse session because some drivers were running over the new white line and others were trying (like me) to stay on the correct side. It was 8 to 6 in favor to scrap the session. Some people really didn't like the decision. Let's just say the heat is not bringing out the best in some people.

Did I say heat? It was only 110 degrees during our 2nd session. But that is the least of it!

Back to the qualifying, the second session started out fairly well and I was in 4th place. The car was terrible or maybe it was the driver behind the wheel. Who knows. But Fred was doing segment times between myself and the other top drivers and I was losing about 1 second on the bank oval. And that area is strictly horsepower because its flat out all the way around.

The session half over, somehow I managed to break off a value stem cap and got a flat front left tire. That made it very difficult to keep the car on track! What a surprise that is!! When I was coming off turn 4 on the front straight, the car was vibrating so badly that I couldn't tell the difference between the blue sky and the track. It was soooooo blurry I couldn't tell where the track was. So I shut it down but my tire was ruined.

So, I ended up 6th place in qualifying but only .4 tenths off the pole position. The top 6 cars are only separated by .4 tenths of a second. I am not off the pace that much but it's frustrating that I never had a good run at the pole. But you can't win them all.

We are not using the chicane at the start!! So we will be going around the entire oval and then using the infield. Oh my!!! I hope people will be using their heads on this one.

Now it's time to go racing. So keep your fingers crossed this car will stay underneath me for 45 long minutes!! Thanks for tuning in!

Cindi