Paulie's Blog: Hitting our stride, third at Roseville

Although a bunch of different things happened last week, none of them were nearly as interesting as our second NASCAR Camping World Series West race at All-American Speedway in Roseville, Calif. We unloaded with a great car, ran up front all night, and brought home a third-place finish.

The week started with an appearance on News 10 Sacramento's morning show Sacramento and Company. I was asked to go on the show to help promote the Toyota / NAPA Auto Parts 150 at All-American Speedway. The show's host, Melissa Crowley, and I spoke about the upcoming race and the events surrounding it for a few minutes. After that, I got to give Melissa a ride in a two-seater version of my No. 12 Toyota. If you'd like to see the clip, it's up on my Web site (click here).

• West: News, Results, Schedule

Fast-forwarding a few days, all of the teams parked their haulers in the pit area Friday. The crew and I arrived Saturday morning ready for a packed day of racing. We would unload, go through inspection, practice, qualify, and race all in one day. It takes a very well-orchestrated group of guys to accomplish everything that needs to be done without error, and our guys got it done.

As I've mentioned in previous blogs, crew chief Duane Knorr and I learned a tremendous amount from the first race of the season in Kyle, Texas. We made a lot of improvements to the race car and it showed, as we unloaded with a really solid setup that put us in the top five at the beginning of the session. We were battling a slight "tight" (or under-steer) condition in the center of Turns 1 and 2, so Duane and I worked on some chassis changes to try and help that. The whole team of guys, Ryan, Jack, Randy, Travis, Eric and Joe, worked extremely hard to get the changes done that Duane wanted.

This continued into the second round of practice and we ended up making some small gains on the car. Overall, we were fifth at the conclusion of the final session.

After putting on a new set of Goodyear tires and making a few last changes, the team rolled the car up for qualifying. At the last Camping World West race of 2008, we qualified on the pole with an All-American Speedway record and we were looking to break that record. I worked as hard as I could to warm the tires during my warm-up lap. The car handled well during qualifying, but I still needed a little more heat in the right front, as the car had a slight under-steer during my final lap. When all was said and done, we qualified second, with teammate Eric Holmes third. (Continued)