We arrived in Las Vegas last Friday for a one-day event at the Bullring, a 3/8th mile oval on the complex with the speedway, with Merlin, the oldest car in our stable. We put the "Mule" engine in Merlin for this event, not fast but a lot of torque. Last year our car got torn up in this event really bad, but we brought home a 9th place finish anyway, so we thought we would definitely get some damage this year.

On the trip out, the guys in the rig had some problems, as they blew out a tire and tore the fender up on the truck. They also discovered that the jolt had caused Merlin to move sideways in the rig and hit the fender well, knocking the exhaust loose and tearing a hole in the driver door sheet metal. It was also 95 degrees on race day. The weekend had not started good.

We had one long practice session where we were not really fast, but kept improving the car. After the session, our team made a lot of changes on the chassis. Going into qualifying, Scott didn't know how the car would handle. He got the feel of it on the first lap and ended up 10th fast out of 25 cars on our second lap. We were happy with that, but disappointed that NASCAR had decided not to have pit stops in the race as we did last year, but instead to break the race at halfway for pitting.

Scott ran up front all night, quickly moving up to 7th and into the top 5 by the break. The car was real good down low, but not on the high side. Because there were a lot of cautions and a lot of lapped cars in the low line on the restarts, we were not real strong on restarts until things got strung out and then Scott could start picking them off on the low side.

We had a good stop at the break and didn't make many changes. In the 10-minute break, the crew was finished in 6 minutes. The heat in the car was horrible and we spent a lot of time cooling Scott down with ice packs, fans, drinks, etc.

The car ran great in the second half of the race, other than a brake bias problem, which Scott had to compensate for. He was on the move at the end of the race and ended up 5th, although I think we would have picked off two or three more if we had 15-20 more laps. Merlin was strong and consistent throughout the race, while others were dropping off the pace. And we ended the race with no body damage other than what occurred in the rig on the trip out! Unbelievable on the Bullring!

This event will be televised on Speed Channel April 22, 8 pm Eastern time because we got taken out of the race in an accident at Phoenix on the 3rd lap, we finished last there. But with this 5th place finish we have moved from last in points to a tie for 8th in points 2 races into the season. We head to Fontana in LA in two weekends with the Cup and Busch Series. The Phoenix car is repaired and we have a new motor, so we believe we have one of the strongest cars we have ever taken to Fontana.