Ashley’s Weekly Blog
Monday, July 20

This week we are in Seattle, Washington. We actually drove straight here from Denver, Colorado. It was a 21 hour drive through some beautiful country! My husband Dan drove, along with my blower guy DJ. I read a lot, played with the cat, and during the graveyard shift of the drive, sat up front with DJ as Dan slept in the back and talked to the rest of our team over the CB. We drove in between two of our race trailers and it was actually a lot of fun, but definitely a long trip!

We got in to Seattle mid day on Tuesday. After a lot of eye fluttering I talked Dan into borrowing our team Ford Flex to go grab dinner, drop off our laundry and get my nails done! Hey, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do and nails, after a race weekend, are one of them!

On Wednesday, I stopped by Bowen Scarff Ford to pick up a vehicle for the weekend that they were gracious enough to lend me, and drove into the city of Seattle to do the NHRA Full Throttle press conference. During the media day I, along with our sponsor Bob Lawrence and BrandSource, unveiled our specially designed race car that I would be racing during the Seattle and Sonoma events. We have joined with the Ronald McDonald House Charities to raise awareness, interest and money for their special causes for children with health problems and challenges. It is a wonderful group of charities and we are very fortunate that our sponsor BrandSource, who also sponsors my sisters A Fuel dragsters, brought this idea to our attention. With so many young children at the races each weekend cheering us on, we felt this was a perfect match and a great charity to get involved with and I was very excited to get this beautiful race car on the track come Friday, and our first session of qualifying. My race team was excited as well!

We qualified in the middle of the pack at #8 and ended up losing in the 2nd round to Tony Pedregon. He went all the way to the final and lost to our good friend Tim Wilkerson but fortunately I still stayed #2 in the Countdown point’s right behind Ron Capps. My dad went to the semi’s and lost but we weren’t too bummed because my little sisters Brittany and Courtney were both going rounds in the Sanyo and BrandSource A Fuel dragsters so we didn’t have time to be upset! They ended up racing each other in the semi finals and Brittany was so amped up to race her little sister that she red lighted and Courtney took the win with a 5.40! We all went up for the final round to root Courtney on in her first final round appearance. The stage bulbs were lit and the tree came down and we all held our breaths as both she and Chris Demke raced down the quarter mile. I thought for sure his car looked a little smaller and farther away and thought it was his but then her light came on and she won! There was quite a celebration on the starting line! I hugged people I don’t even know and yelled so loud I lost my voice! We rushed down to congratulate her and then headed up to the winner’s circle for my little sister Courtney’s first win!

Though we didn’t do as well as we hoped it was still a great weekend for Team Force! The weather was beautiful, the fans were great and I got to bring my cat Simba in to his first winner’s circle with Courtney’s Sanyo team!