A Favorite Week Turns Out To Be Another Good One

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A Favorite Week Turns Out To Be Another Good One

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Last week was one of my favorite weeks of the year, as it was time for the Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals in Denver. It gives us a chance to visit with a number of Mopar executives, along with spending plenty of time with the fans.

On top of that, we’ve had a good deal of success at Bandimere Speedway and always feel pretty confident going there to race.

I got to Denver on Tuesday in the afternoon and had a little bit of time to get ready for everything that we had waiting for us the rest of the week. It’s always a busy and sometimes hectic week, but it’s sure worth it and all of the folks from Mopar and the track do such an amazing job making sure that it is a special and very fan-friendly event.

Everything got started bright and early on Wednesday morning for me. I had some interviews to do on Wednesday and Thursday. I was on a bunch of different radio shows, which I always enjoy. We also had the NHRA Press Conference at Morton’s Steakhouse in Denver on Thursday, and the Mopar folks had some things for us to do around town.

We also had to make sure to get our Mopar Dodge Avenger to downtown Golden for the Mopar Big Block Event on Thursday night. The Big Block Event was awesome as always. All the Mopar people did a great job lining everything up and making sure there was plenty for the fans to do and take part in. We had an autograph session with a number of fellow Mopar drivers, which the fans really enjoyed.

There was a trivia contest, with folks winning Mopar goodies. I did a tour of the event with ESPN2, pointing out my favorite things about the event, and I went through the crowd and got to visit with a lot of fans one-on-one.

The Block Party got great coverage on ESPN2 Sunday. It’s the biggest racing party of the year on the NHRA circuit and always a lot of fun. There were thousands of people in attendance and I think it was the biggest one they’ve had to date.

We got to hang out with Mopar President and CEO Pietro Gorlier, along with Tricia Hecker, Mopar’s Director of Marketing, and a number of other people from Mopar and Chrysler. It’s always a good time having them out there, and when they get to see us do well that makes it even more special.

We can’t thank them enough for all of their continued support and encouragement. We have a lot of camaraderie when they are there and have a lot of fun, but we also cram a little business into it as well.

People ask me all the time what makes our team so good at the Mopar Mile-High Nationals, and it’s the hard work that we’ve put in preparing for that event over the years and all the testing that we’ve done at Bandimere Speedway. We’ve tested out there a ton and have paid our dues to come up with a good combination that works there, with the air the way it is, and we have really hit on something.

I am very proud of that and how hard my team works each time we head to Denver. We won the NHRA Full Throttle Hard Working Crew award for the event this year, which was great recognition for my guys.

On the track we started off on a very good note, earning the top spot in qualifying. Our Mopar Dodge felt very strong going into Sunday. We were up against Greg Anderson in the quarterfinals and had a great pass against him. That was the best run we had all weekend, a 6.955-second elapsed time (ET) to set the Bandimere Speedway ET track record, and it felt nearly perfect in the car. We also had top speed of the weekend and low reaction time too.

We made a little boo-boo in the semis and that’s what cost us lane choice for the finals and probably cost us the race, because I think we would have won it. Losing lane choice hurt a little, but I think we still could have pulled the race off. In the finals, I was just a little too pumped up. A nine-thousandths of a second red-light, well that’s just a green light that turned red and was almost perfect.

All in all, it was a great weekend. We are holding our heads high. It was our fifth straight final round appearance in the Mopar Mile-Highs. We started the Western Swing off with a bang and we’ll go to Sonoma and hopefully keep this level of intensity up and then head to Seattle. Hopefully we can come back from the Western Swing in the top-three or four in points when we head to Brainerd with our Mopar Dodge Avenger.

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