Paulie's Blog: First win in the Camping World Series

While the past week was full of fun events, it was highlighted by our win on Saturday night in the NAPA/Toyota 150 NASCAR Camping World Series race. This was my first win in the series and I've decided to highlight Friday and Saturday's events in this blog.

I arrived in Denver on Friday afternoon, just in time to grab lunch with a good friend of mine who recently moved there. After a quick meal, I headed off to Stapp Interstate Toyota for a two-hour appearance there. When I got there, our hauler was sitting right in front and my NAPA AutoCare Toyota was on display. After signing autographs and shaking hands for about two hours, it was off to Colorado National Speedway for a NAPA event.

D4D history

Paulie Harraka became the first Drive for Diversity participant to win a race in the NASCAR Camping World Series.

• Complete coverage, click here

NAPA's Western Region headquarters are in Denver, which is about 30 minutes from the Speedway. As such, Bill McAnally took that opportunity to host a large hospitality event for NAPA. We had dinner at the race track and then I gave about 30 ride-alongs in our two-seater NAPA Camry. That was a blast.

About halfway through the NAPA group I learned that Kara, the office manager at Bill McAnally Racing, had never gone for a ride. I asked Bill if we had time to get her in. He replied with a grin and said, "If you can get Kara inside the race car, I'll make sure we've got the time." That was all I needed. I started the ride off with a huge burnout leaving the pits and didn't look back, running four laps about 6 inches off the wall. Kara screamed the entire time. It was perfect.

The team and I headed back to the hotel after that and just hung out there formulating strategies for the next day.

Because three of the past four races have been on road courses, most of my shock inventory had been converted to road course configurations. As such, I had plenty of work to do when we got to the track Saturday morning. When building shocks, you don't just build four for the car -- you build four to start with and about 10 more variations so that you have other shocks to try, depending on what I feel inside the race car. In all, I built eight different shocks Saturday.

Just as our first round of practice was about to start, the rain began to fall. Fortunately, it didn't last long and we were able to get practice in, although the sessions were cut from one hour each to 45 minutes each. (Continued)