10/12/08
We came to the final race of the season feeling good and ready to race. It was a three-day weekend with practice on Friday, qualifying on Saturday, and 100 lap race on Sunday. On qualifying day, we found out that because of my fifty-point lead and the number of trucks there, all I had to do was start the race on Sunday to clinch the championship! Nevertheless, I still wanted to have the best finish I could, and I knew my truck was fast. When I went out for qualifying as the last of 22 trucks, I gave it all I had and got my TENTH pole of the season with a 17.756 second lap. My time was over a tenth faster than second place! Caraway keeps it exciting so even though you win the pole award, you don't get to start on the pole. So throughout the season, every time I had the fastest qualifying time, I had my work cut out for me by being inverted. Because I won the last race, I was inverted back to sixth place to start the race. Two trucks, including the guy that was second in points, were too light on the scales after qualifying and had to start in the back!
On race day, one more truck showed up which made a 23 truck field. I started the race with the attitude of saving my tires and playing it safe for the 100 lap race. I moved into fourth position and played it safe by hanging there for a while. There were a lot of cautions and since caution laps counted, they ate up a lot of laps. With about twenty laps to go, the third place truck went into the corner on the outside of a lapped car and lost control. Luckily, I squeezed by and moved into third as the yellow came out. After the restart, I could tell I was much faster than the two trucks in front of me and I knew I could go for the win but I didn't want to take the chance of making someone mad and taking revenge on me in the next corner. Or worse, somehow spinning the other truck and getting black flagged with only a few laps to go and jeopardize the championship so I just cruised into a third place finish and even better, won the CHAMPIONSHIP!
I had a great season at Caraway with 10 poles, 5 wins, 25 top fives, in 32 starts! Our plans are to sell the truck to get enough money to finish our late model car and race it at Hickory, as well as some other area tracks, now that I'm old enough for NASCAR sanctioned events! I'm looking forward to another great season of racing this next year!
