Memorial Day weekend always a good time
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| Capps |
I admit it. I'm a racing junkie. I'd be happy racing every weekend if I could. So, I'm certainly not complaining about having to race this weekend at Heartland Park Topeka immediately after having raced in Columbus, Ohio, on Sunday.
Having a back-to-back week in Columbus and Topeka is nice. It's great to go right back to racing. And it's Memorial Day. It's a great track. We keep saying that we're going to see these warm and humid conditions which we thought would show up in Atlanta, which they didn't. Then we thought they'd show up in Columbus, which they didn't. So the weather is playing tricks on us.
I'm not having a hard time sleeping on Saturday night but I don't envy the crew chiefs because they're the ones making the calls. They're looking at the weather report during the week and then, lo and behold, they get to the track and it's completely the opposite of what it should be.
It's a lot of fun right now, because it's so competitive. You get those juices flowing and you're in the heat of the battle and everyone is running so good. This class is so tough right now. Just when you get depressed because something happens like it did in Columbus when I lost on a holeshot, John Force -- the No. 2 guy in points -- goes out the same session. It gives you a little bit of a glimmer of hope.
We're going to get into some really quick races here. It's going to be Topeka, a weekend off and then it's going to be three in a row, at three completely different kinds of tracks after that. And it would be really nice with a weekend off after Topeka to do well there.
The main thing, and you have to remember this, we did lose in Atlanta in the first round and we did lose in the first round in Columbus, but those losses were within a couple of thousandths of a second. They were close races, so we didn't beat ourselves. And that's what's gotten us to where we are now.
If we can keep these points like this and just keep doing our deal, we'll be fine.
Memorial Day always makes me realize that I'm still a fan, like I've always said. I still feel like I'm that kid. I get a soft spot when I see somebody out there with their kid or kids because that's how I grew up in the sport.
I grew up going with my mom and dad and standing outside the ropes watching Don Garlits work on his dragster right next to his pit area. Those memories stand out more than anything in my life. A lot of racers forget that the fans are why we're out here.
If the fans didn't come to see us and enjoy what we did we wouldn't be doing what we're doing.
It's Memorial Day and while a lot of eyes are going to be on the Indy 500, the last few years we've been in Topeka racing on Memorial Day weekend. It's a great race, first of all, but the best part is the amount of people who come out this week and camp out and make a whole event of it.
I talked in the past about going out to the campground and hanging out with the fans and having a good time with them when we're not on the track. I think that's part of the experience of drag racing. The fans come into the pit area, and I and a couple of the other drivers always get on the golf cart and head out to the camping area, play games, hang out and barbecue.
This weekend it's finally going to be warm. We expected warm weather the last few races and it was cool. Yeah, these cars run better when it's cool out, but we spent a lot of preseason testing getting ready for hot weather with the new Goodyear tire that was mandated this year.
The first few tracks on which we had any heat were Gainesville and Houston and we won both of those. That's just where all the hard work paid off and it's going to be in the low 90s in Topeka. I know a lot of drivers are probably saying, "Oh, Man, that's hot." I'm welcoming it with open arms.
Topeka is a full-service motorsports park. They have one of the great road-race tracks here, they run drag races here, of course, and they have a dirt track that's a 3/8-mile banked dirt track where they hold some very big races. What makes this weekend so great is there's a big Memorial Day weekend race on the dirt track on Monday night that I'm going to compete in and I'm going to kind of look at it as a tuneup for my race in Eldora (Nextel Cup Prelude to the Dream) with Tony Stewart and those other NASCAR guys.
I'll be driving a dirt late model. The funny thing is, I was watching Wind Tunnel on Sunday and I learned that Kevin Harvick is at a dirt-racing school this week, probably because I beat him in Eldora last year. Tony Stewart told him he'd better go get some more dirt experience. Actually, a bunch of guys finished ahead of him.
And Matt Kenseth said last year his goal was to finish ahead of the drag racer and I ended up finishing ahead of him. It's going to be a lot of fun this year at Eldora.
The Topeka dirt race on Monday night is also going to be a lot of fun. And we're going to have a lot of drag-racing fans who are going to stick around and go over and hopefully cheer me on at the dirt track next door.
Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend.
Ron Capps drives a Funny Car in the NHRA for Don Schumacher Racing. He is providing a diary to ESPN.com throughout the 2006 season.
