I’m still so tired from this race, that I’m just now writing about it. My day before the race I was in normal mode. 6:15am wake up and feed the 3 month old. Head to work with truck,trailer and race car then put in a full day of work. Now the shop is closed and everyone is working to finish the Blue F/S car and Justin’s ’05. LOL both had empty engine bays on tuesday morning. Needless to say myself and Eric with the blue F/S car headed out at 12:30am from the shop for Bowling Green, it’s only 750miles. We drove basically to Tennessee about 6:30am and took a 45min cat nap. Got back rolling and finally make it to Beech Bend at about 1:45pm on Friday after a little detour thru the scenic Kentucky mountains.

I unload the car to find gear fluid on my trailer. NICE. So with about an hour before 1st round I had to pull the axle and Danny and I resealed the C Clip eliminator, that was odd. I guess I was ready for first round or was it sleep? I got to the back of the lanes to try and run last and I was happily surprised to see 14 cars show for the race, the biggest turnout of the season! I pretty much sat in my car and I think took a quick nap before the run. I luckly get thru my run with an 11.28 et and #1 spot to only here the trans making a lot noise on the return road. Broken tooth on 2nd gear. Yeap no sleep yet, gotta change the trans!

Saturday comes and I’m finally well rested. After the friday qualifing run I told Rich (RGR) and Mike W. I bet you I’ll run an 11.09 today, I’m skipping the teens.. That’s an inside joke since JB beat me there with ole’ smokey. But Smokey’s Evil Brother was ready to finally show everyone what’s up. I think to everyones surprise it actually happened!

It was a mini shot heard around the pits at least. So you know who was happy to greet me at the scales when I got the slip. Thom Bates and his paint sealant. I just smiled and said I’ll happily take it apart for ya this time.

Thom decided he wanted to see pistons this weekend so I pulled the motor and had it on the stand before 3rd round quailfing. I wanted to be #1 on the list for check out, since he had Ryan Hecox’s motor, Rocky Mason’s motor, Louis Sylvester Jr’s motor and John Urist car to inspect also. Thom came around and ok’ed everything and I was good to go. I had the motor in the car and running at 1:45 and left the track at 2:05am. Thank goodness for the Waffle House next to the hotel!

Sunday morning comes and I had locked up my 2nd World Championship! Also the word on the street was our 14 car field was now a 13 car field. The 2nd F/S competitor of the season was sent packing. This now gave me a first round bye. Which was nice considering I was holding my piston about 10 hours ago. Everything checked out good and I clicked off an 11.28 @ 120.61. Round 2 came and I had a rematch from the ’07 Superbowl with Alan “yes I ” Cann. He got the better of me in ’07 when I torched the tires. I wasn’t gonna let that happen again. It was a good race, Alan ran his quickest et ever with an 11.46 but not good for him I bettered my quickest et and ran a killer 11.072 @ 120.77.

I was pumped up and very happy that the teardown didn’t hurt a thing. Next up was Matt Amrine. I enjoy racing Matt. He always brings out the worst in me. He tree’d me in Joliet and took the Superbowl win so I feel I owe him everytime we race. Even though I got that revenge in the C-Bus finals I still wanted to beat him. He tree’d me again and I spun. Luckly my car was a freight train, because I didn’t go around him until I pulled 4th gear. So now I’ve made it to the finals. I was in the same postion this year against a Black MD car. Except this was my race to win. I got a good light, my car spun a little but I recovered and ran a solid 11.175 @ 121.01. I got my 2nd goal of running 121 in competition and I finally won the World Finals!