Ashley’s Weekly Blog
Monday, October 12

Greetings from Richmond, Virginia! We got in to town Thursday afternoon and of course had team dinner at one of the guy’s favorites…Hooters! (My crew says they have great ‘wings’.) We came into this race 1st in points and only a few points ahead of Robert, and are exactly halfway through the NHRA Full Throttle Countdown to the Championship.

We had a great day of qualifying on Friday and ran #1 in both sessions gaining 6 points! The conditions were great for racing and the track was good so many cars made nice runs. We got to run at the back of the pack so we got to see these runs and push our car a little more and it paid off! On Saturday it sprinkled in the morning so we were on hold. It seems that the rain has followed our circuit through the year at almost every event so we’re used to it! After only a few hours of delays we got both passes in and ran 4.09 and 4.06 and ended up #6 in qualifying standings. The 2nd session was pretty amazing to watch with teams running some awesome numbers. Though we didn’t end up at the top of the pack we still had 4 consistently fast runs throughout qualifying and a top speed of 311 mph! The field was set and Arend was our first round match-up come Sunday. Fortunately my team was on the opposite side of the ladder from the rest of the Force teams which is ideal as we don’t want to run into each other unless it’s the final round!

When we walked out of the hotel Sunday morning, the conditions couldn’t have been better. The sun was shining and it was cold! Perfect drag racing conditions! Unfortunately the day didn’t go as we had hoped and we lost first round and could only cheer on our teammates for the remainder of the day. Robert went out 2nd round but Mike’s team had a great day and went all the way to the semi final round losing a close race to Tim Wilkerson.

We moved down to 2nd spot right behind Robert and though we didn’t have the best weekend, all those close to us in the points also struggled so it could have been a lot worse for us. We decided to stay and test on Monday following the race and we’ll do our best to get reorganized and ready to go and enjoy this little bit of down time before the big final two races. Hopefully we can go some rounds at Vegas and Pomona and end our 2009 season strong…Championship strong!