This weekend we competed in the Short Track Nationals in Little Rock, AK. The event was pushed back a week due to rain giving us another week of anticipation. We were looking forward to the opportunity to defend our title. We went in Wednesday night to the open practice session. I think part of our success at Little Rock is due to the open practice session. We seem to go out and turn more laps than anyone else and it paid off. We qualified Thursday night, drawing the highest pill of the night, number 95. With that draw we started 7th in our heat and took the checkered in 2nd.
We were high point car out of the heat races giving us enough points to line up 8th in the qualifier race. During the qualifier race I battled in top 3 with Wayne Johnson and Sammy Swindell. We wanted to win, but finishing top 3 was our focus so we could get locked in for Saturday night. This is exactly what we did with our 3rd place finish.
We took the car back to the hotel and stripped it down. We had extremely high expectations on Saturday night. We went out in hot laps and when the checkered flag came out everyone slowed down except one guy and he ran over us. He hurt everything on the rear end: the U-joint, torque tube and drive line. We had to change the rear end out. I cant thank my crew enough. We were able to fix the car in time to run our hot lap session.
We lined up 5th in the dash and finished 5th. We didnt have much going and were focused on getting the rear end completely fixed. We made some changes to the car from what we learned in the dash. We started 5th for the main event. On lap 5 we took the lead and never looked back! We were able to jump to the top of the track on the restart to get around Wayne Johnson and Danny Wood. After that it was uncontested.
I never thought I would win one, much less two Short Track Nationals. Its unbelievable and a dream come true that we have back to back Short Track Nationals victories. Im the third person to accomplish this along side Steve Kinser and Gary Wright. Its a special feeling! I cant thank my crew and dad enough. Without my dad none of this would be possible. Its just as much his dream as it is mine for us to be on the road and competing at this level. Its a big honor for us to go down to Little Rock and put our name on the T-shirt twice!
This week we will be at Cowtown Speedway in Kennedale, TX, for the Open 360.