What a difference a week makes. Last weekend’s results made the 500 mile drive home from Gillette especially long. A DNF and a fifth didn’t fit too well with our expectations, but somewhere in the main last week I got the feeling. I went into the corner, rolled off the throttle and the car just turned and accelerated like the corner didn’t exist. That is the feeling a driver dreams about all winter. It is the feeling that keeps you entertained while you push yourself back and to the right in the stadium seat during that boring play your friend was in. It is the feeling that means you are half flying, half driving, and getting 100% of your car. It is the feeling of knowing that you are fully alive and at your best and no matter how long you live you will remember that moment like a full moon on a starry night. It is that feeling which had me excited and nervous for the races this weekend in Belgrade and Billings.

As we rolled into Belgrade, my nerves jumped up in my throat and stayed there till I crossed the checks. I haven’t been that nervous since my first few races in a mini-sprint. For some reason I rarely get that anxious anymore. Even when our J&J chassis was glued to the track for hotlaps it didn’t calm me down. It actually made things worse because often when you are fast in hotlaps you can miss the setup for the heat race. I was like a junkie looking for a fix. I had to find “the feeling.” But after the first lap of the heat race, when I went around the outside of Tyler Gable, I knew we were right. The ten laps flew by and we won without a challenge. This gave us the outside pole for the dash. The outside is generally a bad place to start at Gallatin Speedway and the 7 car on the inside of us got a good jump, but I pulled under him down the backstretch and thought I had the lead, until I saw the 22 of Jerry Brey go sliding past in three. Coming around turn one-two I got another great run on the bottom and took the lead onto the backstetch. Entering three I stayed very low and pulled away for the win. Now my nerves were really tight. We won the heat and the dash, how far should we change for the main. After watching the modified main I saw that the bottom was the place to be, so we put in some lower gears and more stagger to be able to hug the inside and get a good run off the corners. This is usually the opposite way to go for a main, but it seemed that getting off the corners was going to be everything. After getting the lead on the initial start for the main I knew things were going good when my crew gave me “big lead” signals after only a couple laps. At lap ten I saw the lapped traffic ahead and I slowed down some hoping not to catch them until the very end of the race. I knew on an open track I would be fine, but I couldn’t delay the inevitable and caught the lappers too quick. Working the bottom I got by four or five of them, but soon found myself trapped between two cars that were battling. I ran under them, into them and all around them but couldn’t pass. So I made the decision just to stick low and if anyone went around the outside I was through. At the checkereds the Oj car made a run around the outside but we squeaked out the win: a clean sweep. YES!!! It was even better that one of our main sponsors Ted Kronebusch of Kronebusch Electric was there and we were all wearing our Simpson gear with his name on it. That makes three mains in a row at Belgrade, the last two have been clean sweeps. I’m starting to love that place.

Moving on to Billings I was much more relaxed. The monkey was off our back. Plus we found a problem that was costing us big horsepower. All year long we couldn’t get the car to turn well and couldn’t figure out why. After we finished our maintenance in Bozeman Saturday morning we started the car and it just didn’t idle right. Now, idle settings don’t just change unless something is wrong so we started looking. We found a linkage had slipped on the injection and the engine was running too rich on the barrel valve. This would explain why the oil has been milkey all year and the car wouldn’t turn. I figure it cost us about 40-50 hp, but we had still won with it by just adjusting the car to make it work. But on the track in Billings it was a completely different animal now that it was leaned down. What a rocket-ship!! We started on the pole of the heat and just ran away and hid. That Ostrich engine is amazing. With the dash cancelled due to poor track management, we were to start on the inside front row of the main. On the outside was Michelle Dodge who had just won her first ever sprint car heat race. As soon as we started the parade lap she starts crowding me down the track into the mud. It was so bad that on the three wide salute to the fans I’m going around the corner sideways to stop from hitting her while I slip and slide through the mud. Sure enough, she keeps pushing me and we bang wheels going into turn one and all the way down the back stretch before the start. Then, in turn three she just turns all the way down the track and pulls right in front of me as the flag man lazily throws the green in a way that you know will be called back. After two tries to get a start off they send us back a row. I still don’t know what she was doing. I understand pushing someone into the mud to get a jump on them, but pushing them into the infield tires is another matter. So we start the race in third with the 7 of Paxton Lambrect on the pole and the 22 of Jerry Brey outside. Brey gets the lead on the start, with Lambrect and me following closely. The track was wicked fast since they had watered just before the main. Fast and smooth was the name of the game and I was able to get by Paxton for second when he got a little too aggressive getting into the corner and lost his momentum. The track was drying fast since it was hard as concrete and the water was only on the surface. As I closed in on Brey the yellow flew for a spun car; you guessed it: Michelle Dodge. On the restart I gave Brey a big slider in turn one and he practically drove off the top of the track to go back around me on the backstretch. For the next three laps we repeated the dance of big slide job until I had him convinced that the bottom was faster. Entering turn one he went low and I railed around him on the outside and promptly pulled away four or five car lengths a lap. Our car was a rocketship, but the track dried so quick that it was getting really loose with ten laps to go. Thankfully everyone was in the same boat with lap times falling off nearly two seconds over the course of the 25 lap main. The last few laps I could still see the “big lead” signal coming from the pits and I was just trying to keep as much momentum as possible. The checkereds were a welcome sight. Another clean sweep.

It’s not very often that you win every race you are in over a two race weekend at two very different tracks. One race won right against the inside of the track, the other won running high and wide on the cushion. It was a great weekend. We had decided to camp at the track and Dad went straight to bed since he had been sick all weekend. I roamed from trailer to trailer looking to celebrate. Nights like these you find yourself with a beverage in hand and one in every pocket as people keep buying you celebratory drinks. At about 2:30 Paxton decides that Phil Deitz and I need to go with him and his friends Jaime and Mike to race four wheelers at Jay Burns house. Paxton is always looking for ways to have fun and to beat Phil and I. So we go out to Huntley to find the party in high gear at Burn’s. Jay is running around with a hat that makes him look like a pirate or drunk farmer, I’m not sure which. I can tell he’s had a few when he kisses me on the check shortly after arriving. Jay has raced since the 90’s and it was him that I beat for my first feature win in 1998 at Belgrade. Somehow I won his respect that night and we’ve been close ever since. He’s a great guy and it was fun to look at all his pictures in his shop and to sign his wall of fame. Meanwhile Paxton can only get one four wheeler to run and Mike decides to tie a kiddie’s plastic wagon on the back. Soon enough the game is to see who can come up the gravel driveway fast enough to turn on the concrete sharp enough to send the wagon and its rider sliding into barrels of methanol or even into the cherry-picker motor stand. That motor stand did a good job cutting Mike’s pants off before they got the other four wheeler started. Then the races began. One lap is from the concrete down the gravel to the pavement and back with cars and corners in between to make it more interesting in the dark. It was great fun, but I got bumped into the irrigation ditch and while I was trying to make up my ½ lap deficit on the driveway’s blind corner Mike and I got into a head on collision at about 30 mph. No serious damage though.

Meanwhile I hear this yelling from across the field. “Jay, your neighbor is yelling at you.” “So?” It wasn’t long until the cops showed up and offered to take Jay in if we didn’t stop, and the party was over. As we got back to the truck at the track the sun was coming up. It was a great weekend. But as a racer, I know you have to celebrate while you can, because next weekend someone else could be the victor and you could go back to being one of the “also-rans.”