It's a serious problem from our standpoint. We wish we'd known about it sooner. |
It's always good to have one of your players move onto the next level. That's what this league is all about, ... Matt had a great season and I know he will excel at the next level. |
Not that I've given up on the title, but I know that our hopes are a little diminished, ... My goal is to buckle down and make sure that we finish in the top five. I'm excited about the final three race swing. My attention is off the point chase and back to racing each race. We need to have a good showing and finish strong. |
Our first run was a really good run, ... To repeat what we ran last night during the day with the sun on the track, I'm really happy with that. This is the best race car that I've driven in a long time. |
Please get down off the wall-bars, stay off the seats, |
So from the 2003 season to the 2004 season we cleaned house. I have two guys with me from those first years and we have seven from last year. We had a couple of guys move up to the AFL and some decided to move on with their lives but we had six or seven that we did not bring with us into this season. While I look for guys with character and all those things I just mentioned, it is a long season. Most guys are use to a 10-week season in college and we play sixteen. Some guys taper down towards the end of the season. That was something we couldn't see in guys when we recruited. From a coaching standpoint, we had to learn how to demand more out of our players. |
The guys are trying some different things this weekend, ... It's really showing a lot of promise. They weren't trying to go much quicker than that. They were trying to run a 4.78 or 4.79. It was a good solid run. Sure, I would have liked to have stayed No. 1, but there's nothing wrong with No. 2. |
The issue has been resolved to our satisfaction. |
The last pass was actually a pretty decent one, ... It dropped a hole (cylinder) about 500-feet into the run. We addressed the tire smoking problem and I think we can go down there and run a high 4.70 in the first round. Even racing John Force, I'm as confident as I can be. We qualified ok, but we've got the setup to race on Sunday. |
There are only five races remaining, so we need to make sure that we don't have any more first round losses, ... We certainly didn't do ourselves any favors at Indy. Qualifying will be really important at Reading. It has been known to be a one lane race track with a narrow groove. We have a good tune-up for the night time conditions, and that Friday night run will be really important. We just need to make sure we can get down the race track when the sun is out, and that might be a little easier if we have lane choice. |
This will be another great challenge for our players to play against a great field in the Cowboy Classic. I hope we can put a couple good rounds together and make a good showing. |
Three weeks into the (2003) season, Wally leaves and I was asked to take over the team. I was so excited, I can't tell you how happy it made me feel...finally but it was very tough. I inherited Wally's team, not mine. He did the recruiting. That was his team. It was a difficult transition. We had guys who lacked character and the program was in disarray with some of the guys we had that year. I had to work with that team and we went 5-11 on the season. In 2004, Will gave me my job back and I built a team. My first priority was to build a coaching staff. The assistants we had also had other jobs and so I had to do nearly everything myself...breaking down film, run both offense, defense, and special teams. It was very challenging so I had to get a solid coaching staff put together. |
We did not match their level of intensity. |
We had a problem in the fuel system on the first pass and still ran 4.77, ... It should have been a better run than that. The clutch didn't wear properly and it shook the tires on the night run. The weather will be decent on Saturday, so we should be able to run between a 4.73-4.75 and get into the top half of the field. |
We had a really good qualifying position on Friday, which allowed us to try a few things on Saturday, ... We learned that we can't be as aggressive as we wanted to be. We got a little aggressive with the tune-up on the first run and the tires came loose. It just about made it on the second run. We've got a good race car for Sunday. I'm looking to go some rounds. |