(0-4)

We went to Dover with some high hopes. After our small success at Martinsville, we thought the Monster Mile would be a good track for us. As it turns out, it wasn’t. There’s no one to blame as to why – it was a conglomeration of problems that spoiled our weekend, and I certainly had a part in that.

I was reminded during my flight home of something Russell Wilson spoke about during the Seahawks Super Bowl winning season a few years ago. They didn’t win every game that year. In fact, a couple times, despite the successes of their defense, their offense struggled. They went on to win 13 games that year, and in reflection Russell stated, “sometimes, just like in baseball, you have days where you go 0-4.”

Martins Motorsports went 0-4 this past weekend in Dover.

I had been to Dover before, which allowed us to mock up pretty quickly for a qualifying run early in the first practice session. That’s where our problems started. We bottomed the truck out HARD and it took us a little while to figure out what the problem was. Eventually after clearing it up, first practice was over. We were slow, the truck was a handful, and we only had one more practice to try to fix it. We didn’t. The truck never felt like it was IN the racetrack. It was tight in the middle of the corner, sliding the front end, but completely loose as I tried to apply the throttle.

As Kevin Eagle and I discussed it that night, we settled on the idea that it could be a shock problem, and we crossed our fingers that we could get a qualifying session in so we could just use it like an extra practice. Mother Nature didn’t grant us that opportunity. Qualifying was rained out and we wound up starting at the back of the grid due to our practice time.

The race didn’t get much better. It was one of the longest, toughest races I’ve ever run. We nearly wrecked the truck 5 or 6 separate times. Kevin tried every adjustment he could make, but nothing helped. We finished the race in 24th place, which felt like a small victory given how bad we had struggled all weekend. It certainly was a better finish than we deserved.

I’m disappointed in myself. I felt like I never got in a good rhythm all weekend. Sure, the handling of the truck affected that, but it’s my job as a driver to help to pinpoint the issues. We never were able to do that.

Midway through the race, I was getting extremely tired. At one point, I tried to move my hand off the wheel and I physically couldn’t get my hand to open; it had been clinched so tightly that it had cramped up, and it took me driving the truck with my knee and pulling my hand off of it to get some relief. The position of the steering wheel in the truck was off, but in our rush to work on the truck during practice, I had forgotten to mention it. By having the wheel too high, my arms got pretty tired during the middle part of the race. All of these things are physical issues that have made me realize I need to make conditioning & the details of my cockpit much bigger priorities.

We learned a lot as a team this weekend, and I learned a lot as a driver. Dover is a tough racetrack, and it kicked my ass. I’m looking forward to redeeming myself at another track I’ve raced at, Charlotte Motor Speedway, this Friday night.

A Lesson

Have you ever been so mad, so frustrated that you aren’t even angry? You’re just calm. That was my mindset after we retired from Friday’s race at Kansas Speedway.

I felt exhausted. My father felt the same way. I’ll give our Crew Chief Kevin Eagle credit, he just went right back to work. Even though a motor issue ended our day, he and our crew kept working tirelessly to find the issues with our Diamond Gusset Chevrolet. Their effort is especially commendable given the damage we sustained in practice had them busting their tails all day Thursday to prepare the truck for race day.

I guess that’s my takeaway from Kansas. Our team doesn't quit. They never get their heads down. Even in the face of tremendous, unwarranted adversity, they just keep digging. They've taught me something about my approach to not just racing, but my outlook on any struggle life presents. I’ve been so blessed to have the opportunity to work with them this year, and I know that success HAS to be on the horizon for our team.

The weekend started out okay. It was my first time ever at Kansas Speedway, and my takeaway is it’s FAST. Per usual, Kevin and our team unloaded a solid truck for us to work on during practice. We skipped first practice because the conditions were going to be so different than qualifying or race time. When we went out for second practice, we did a shakedown run & two mock qualifying runs, which went fine. We wound up 23rd in P2, which we felt solid about going into final practice.

That’s where things went bad. When we first started out with our race runs, we actually picked up two tenths! Our truck was flying, and handling great. When I went into turn 3 on about our 4th lap of practice, the right front tire went down, sending us into the wall. I tried to pedal it as best as I could, eventually surrendering to the fact we were going to make contact. Luckily I was able to square the wall up, resulting in SOME damage to our Diamond Gusset Chevy, but Kevin and the guys stayed upbeat and were able to get the truck mostly repaired before the garage closed.

I can’t say enough about their effort on that fact. We don't have a backup truck. For us, if we didn’t get the truck fixed enough to make it through tech inspection, we would’ve been forced to retire from the event. Not only did they get it fixed enough to make it through tech, we had our second best qualifying effort of the year, 19th! I actually think I gave up a little during our qualifying run, but the guys told me to take it easy and feel it out after the damage in practice. Needless to say, we were excited for the race.

When the green flag dropped, it was obvious it was going to be an exciting race. Guys were all over the place. We got put 4 wide twice. We got put 3 wide 2 or 3 separate times. The aggression level in our series is at an all time high. If someone has a problem in front of you and you cut them a break, immediately the guys behind you are making it 3 wide. It’s crazy. That’s why you’re seeing so many accidents this year. Smart racing has gone completely out the window.

I got a bad initial start of the race, but was able to get back up around the top 20 before I felt us having another tire issue. I brought the truck down pit lane, and sure enough, it was another flat right front tire. The stop ended up costing us 3 laps, but we got back out on track right behind the leaders. Toby, our spotter, was encouraging me to stay focused and try to get one of our laps back; we were actually 2 tenths of a second faster than the leader when we got back out on track.

Unfortunately, 4 laps into that run, our motor started to sputter. Immediately I shut the motor down, hoping to keep from damaging it any further. When I brought the truck to pit lane, eventually we rolled it behind the wall and retired from the race.

The initial impressions are that we didn’t blow it up; it’s just a small leak we’ll be able to fix. It was and still is a very scary time for our small team since we only own two motors. Damaging one this early in the season could basically cost us the opportunity to race the rest of the year. We’re still waiting to hear from Mark Smith at Pro Motors to give us the final verdict.

As frustrated as I was when I left the race track, I’m more encouraged this Monday than I have been all year. We have speed. We are good. That’s more than a lot of the teams we’ve been racing against can say. Yeah, they might be finishing races ahead of us, and yeah we’ve had some awful luck this year, but it’s more and more obvious that this team and I can compete at this level, and our expectations are continuing to rise as the season goes along.

I’m ready to get to Dover.

My Health

Some of you guys might’ve seen me posting hospital pictures on my instagram and twitter accounts lately. Just to give you guys an update as to what’s going on, I had a tonsillectomy, turbinate reduction, & adenoid reduction on May 5th in Oxford, MS.

As for the why & the why now - this was a procedure I had talked about having for a long time. I’ve always struggled with sinus infections & sleep apnea, and this was the only long break we had left in the NASCAR Truck Series schedule until the end of the year. The full recovery period on this type of procedure is usually 2 to 3 weeks.

The procedure went well, but they had to put a stint in my nose because of just how much they took out of my nose – apparently my breathing passageway was somewhere around 70% blocked. My doctor told me I had the biggest adenoids & tonsils he had ever seen, so I guess I get the trophy on that one as well.

The first week of this recovery has sucked, and it got a lot worse a couple nights ago when the wound in my throat opened up while I was sleeping. At 5 am, my parents and I had to go on a mad dash to the hospital while we tried to stop the bleeding. There was A LOT of blood. It freaked me out a bit. I had to stay in the hospital overnight last night for monitoring but they felt like my throat clotted up well enough to send me home today.

There’s still a chance the wound could open up again – about 25% he told me – so I’m staying close to the hospital in case I run into any more complications. I’m scheduled for a checkup & to have the stint removed from my nose on Wednesday morning, so that should be a big checkpoint in the recovery process.

Thanks to everyone who’s reached out to check on me and wish me well in my recovery. As always, you guys are awesome.

I’ll keep you posted if anything changes, but as of now I’m 100% sure I’ll be ready to go at Kansas.

See you soon,

Tommy Joe

Bad Breaks

It seems like we’ve had a couple weeks worth of bad luck to start out the 2016 season. Before I get into the weekend in Atlanta I want to be sure to thank our wonderful sponsors - Diamond Gusset Jeans, our NEW sponsor ClikIt.tv, RPM Trailer Sales, & Riessen Construction.

I think the Diamond Gusset Chevy might’ve been the best LOOKING car in the entire field. This was the first race we ran our silver paint scheme, and I think it really popped. Big thanks to Brett Frankovich from Diamond Gusset & Rick Gaskins from Frontline Designs for their work on the scheme.

Also, it was a dream come true for me to be able to race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. I saw my first NASCAR race ever at AMS in the early 90’s. My dad took me up to the turn four wall just as Darrell Waltrip was making a qualifying run in his Western Auto Chevy. He ran high off the corner, shooting tire rubber & dust up through the fence and all over my face. At that point, I was hooked. I wanted to be a NASCAR driver.

My dad and I attended more than a dozen races at Atlanta over the years. My grandmother lived in Atlanta, so we made a family trip out of the spring and fall races there. Through all my racing career, I’d never had the opportunity to race at Atlanta until this past weekend. My grandmother passed away this last year, and my mother and father were both sick with the flu, and were unable to attend the race. I hate that none of them were able to see it in person. But, this past weekend allowed me to check one of the final boxes off my racing bucket list.

It’s been rare in my NASCAR career that I’ve been able to hop in a really nice piece of equipment, but I can certainly say our Silverado was as nice of a race car as I’ve ever had the privilege to sit in. Kevin Eagle & Adam Deem did an awesome job prepping our truck for Atlanta, and it showed in how we unloaded.

We missed first practice because of a tech issue as well as a fifteen-minute time penalty we had to serve from Daytona. Being my first time at Atlanta, I was conservative the first few laps we ran in practice, which really hurt our chances of posting a GREAT lap time. With the tire fall off at Atlanta, your first two laps of a run are the best you’re going to get. We didn’t have another set of tires to make a mock qualifying run, so we just worked on race runs throughout the second and third practices. We wound up 23rd & 28th in practice times, which I didn't think was that bad given the fact that we never changed tires. I was expecting us to make a big pickup in qualifying.

We did…it just wasn't quite enough. We ran a 31.71 – only 8 tenths of a second off the pole speed – with our SB2 motor. I never lifted off the throttle the entire lap. Unfortunately, that was only good enough for us to finish 28th in qualifying. The reason that’s important is the top 27 trucks get locked into the race based on qualifying times. So, just like at Daytona, we “officially” made the race because of our position in the owner’s points standings. We need to somehow find a little more speed in qualifying, and that’s something Eagle and I talked about after the session ended. We’re really close! With our motor situation, it just becomes so important to maximize every other thing you can out of your setup & line in qualifying.

Disappointing. That’s the best way I know how to describe the race. I felt really good about our setup heading into the race, it was so consistent during practice, but as soon as the green dropped, we started getting really tight. It was also really tough for us to pass people. Every time I would pull up behind another truck, we would get even tighter because of the aero push.

To make things even worse, we had ANOTHER tire issue. About 25 laps into the race, we had just gone a lap down. As our spotter, Toby, called out 5 minutes left on the clock, I started feeling a vibration. This is where I made a terrible mistake as a driver. Instead of bringing it up, and letting the crew chief make a call, I kept my mouth shut thinking we’d be able to fix it at the caution.

Only a few laps later, the tire gave way in turn 4. I managed to keep the truck off the wall, but couldn’t get down to the inside quick enough to make it into pit lane. Instead, I had to get going back up to semi-speed and make an ENTIRE lap back around. It wound up costing us two laps. So, 35 laps into the race we were already 3 laps down.

From that point on, we made some pretty conservative calls and just focused on bringing the truck home in one piece. I felt another vibration around lap 70 or 80, and we decided to change tires under green just in case. That cost us another two laps.

Realistically, we should’ve finished one or two laps down. We didn’t have the speed to stay with the lead lap trucks. But, we were definitely faster than some of the trucks that finished in front of us, which is really frustrating. One of our biggest goals as a small team is to beat some of the other small budget teams. Two races into the year, we haven’t achieved that goal yet.

I’m encouraged by the communication Eagle and I are developing. He’s sharp. We’ll get better each race. I’ve been encouraged by all of our friends and supporters telling me to keep my head up through our struggles. We’ll bounce back. It’s a long season. And I’m looking forward to having a solid run at Martinsville.

Tommy Joe