Paulie's Blog: Not the start to '09 we had hoped for

The Camping World West Series season opener turned out to be everything but what we had hoped for, but in the end, there was a bright side to it all.

After arriving in Austin, Texas, I headed to the track with the guys on a rainy, cold Friday afternoon for inspection. Although, as the driver, I didn't really have any specific jobs to be completed as a part of inspection, I did have a NASCAR safety meeting at the track that evening and felt it was best to be there and to be around my team before I had to go to the meeting. The guys got everything unloaded and completed much of the inspection process with the NASCAR officials.

In the safety meeting, we were briefed on all of the latest developments in safety equipment and offered advice as to how to make our cars safer. NASCAR deserves a huge pat on the back for the work they've done in the field of driver safety. Steve Peterson, who spearheaded NASCAR's safety team before his passing last summer, was a mentor of mine. Steve's work has been carried on by an extremely qualified group at the NASCAR R & D Center.

I got out of that meeting at about the same time inspection closed, so the team and I all headed to a place called Salt Lick Barbeque for a team dinner. The night was full of good company and a lot of laughs, which was a great way to bring our team closer. Once we got back to the hotel, I headed to bed around 11:00 p.m. to try and get a good night's rest before race day.

After an early breakfast with the team, we all headed to the race track. The entire event was basically a one day show, as we were scheduled to practice, qualify, and race all on Saturday. Fortunately, it wasn't raining when we arrived at the track. The team finished preparing the car for the first round of practice and went on track at 11:00 a.m.

With it being my first time at Thunder Hill Raceway, I had some learning to do. The track is D-shaped and, because all of the rubber had been washed off the track by the rain, the fastest line was on the bottom. Once I learned the basics about the track, I headed into the pits for our first round of changes, which were pretty substantial, as we were extremely loose. We made a number of other large changes during the rest of the session and made some improvements. Still, we never got the car where we wanted it. (Continued)