The Daytona 200 is behind us now and we are on the road again headed back to Mooresville to finish up our intermediate car. We had a good car for testing and then we brought an even better car for the race. Daytona was both good and bad for us. We were "Double Crossed" by an engine builder. The engine was not ready Friday afternoon and he informed us he needed to order parts. All of that didn't work out, but, it was probably for the best. We got on the phone and called a few people about buying an engine. We had people from our sponsor, All Sports Armour, coming and some other interested sponsors coming, so, I thought about what I needed to do to run good. It's pretty simple. When you thinking of speedway racing and ARCA you think of Bobby Gerhart Racing.

We got on the phone and talked to Billy first, then, I called Bobby back after he got off the chassis dyno and made a deal to lease one of his engines for the race, so, we came to Daytona without an engine in the car. We had a day and a half of inspection and I hate to leave the shop without the car being completely ready, waxed, polished and ready to go to inspection, but, that was the best we could do in that situation. Bobby and Jeff Collins gave me a heads up on how to plumb the car to accept the engine, so, we had as much of that done as we could before we got there. Bert Oostlander, the team owner, stepped up and leased the engine for us because he wanted us to run good. When we got there we put the engine in the car, which took awhile, and that took away from inspection time. We were about an hour later getting to inspection and getting through than we should have been, but, I knew it would be worth it to run a Gerhart engine.

We went out to practice and made sure that we didn't make any drafting runs because I didn't want to fool myself. We were almost as fast with the new laser cut plate as we were with the old restrictor plate that we used to run. The old restrictor plates we used to run up until this race were punched out with a punch press and they were not as consistent. In other words, you might find a 5 or 6 horsepower difference between each restrictor plate and that means a lot of speed on the racetrack. To make the playing field more equal, they came out with this new laser cut, red anodized restrictor plate where they're all equal. They're all the same. This way you don't have to worry about getting a bad plate going through inspection. They are red anodized, so, if some of the teams get creative and try to doctor them up and sand on them to open them up, the red anodize goes away and the aluminum is exposed so you can see it. Unfortunately there were a couple of teams that did something along that order and were sent home, so, I guess that paid off right from the start.

These new plates were actually slower than the old plates. They didn't make quite as much power, but, when we got on the track we were almost as fast as we were with the old plates. A lot of the guys slowed down. If you look at the time sheets for practice there were a lot of cars in the 49s. When it came down to qualifying, you had to go through inspection and put the new plate on and I think there were only 3 cars in the 49s. Everybody else was in the 50s.

We got the car all ready for inspection Thursday. Bobby told me he would have really liked to chassis dyno my car and dial it in because it would have really helped, but, we did what we had to do, so, we were, somewhat, shooting in the dark. You have to get on the line by 9 o'clock and they open the garage at 7. We had to re-scale the car and somehow in all the hustle to get ready to qualify, and everybody does someth