NEW SHARON, Iowa -- Another racing season is underway. We traveled to the South this week.

We made a quick pitstop in North Carolina on the way. Zack's buddy and fellow high school classmate, Kyle Sterk of Montezuma, lives in Concord (Charlotte area). On Tuesday night Kyle took us on a tour of the motor shop for Penske Racing. Penske racing includes NASCAR drivers Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch. That is where he works. His fiance, Danielle Alexander, also originally from Montezuma, met us and we went out for dinner.

Kyle was gracious enough to let us use his car the next day to go to Mooresville, N.C. Mooresville is where many of the Nascar Race Shops are located. There we hooked up with Kyle Pinkerton, formerly of New Sharon. This Kyle works for Robert Yates Racing. Those drivers include Dale Jarrett and Elliot Sadler. We also met one of the ARCA & Busch Cup drivers from RYR, Matt McCall. We went to lunch with Matt and Kyle P. Matt is a nice young man and we wish him the best of luck this year. We toured Penske Racing Car shop. It was very impressive. You could eat off the floor it was so clean.

We also toured DEI - Dale Earnhardt Enterprises. Also very impressive and almost undescribable.

Zack was to practice on Thursday, February 2nd for the Young Guns Race. Have you heard of " Rainy night in Georgia"? Practice was cancelled. After we picked up Kelly & Dawn Shryock from the airport, we went out for supper. Friday the 3rd wasn't great either. We were fast in hot laps and feeling good for the race. Friday's race was the Championship Modified Series. Zack was to start on the pole of his heat race. Here at Oglethorpe Speedway Park starting up front is key. Anyway there were 2 heats left to run. Zack's was one of them and here comes the "Georgia Rain"! So those races were scheduled for Sunday. It rained most of the night and even a downpour Saturday morning.

Saturday Feb 4th

We are still at OSP and Zack started 3rd row outside in his heat for the CMT Series Modifieds. He had to drop back. He just bought a new helmet and it competely fogged over and couldn't see anything. We went back to his old helmet and no problems. It was interesting , another racer had the same situation, brand new helmet, same helmet as Zack's, and fogged over, he had to pull off the track. So the helmet incident put us at the back of the feature.

Young Guns time trials for modifieds went well. Zack timed 7th out of a field around 50. So that meant he would start 7th in the Young Guns Modified Feature.

Now here comes the kicker. They begin the Young Guns Feature. In three laps Zack went from 7th to 5th. Then there was a bad accident on the front straightaway. During that delay, law enforcement came in and shut the place down, exercising the noise curfew ordinance. At that point they threw the red/checkered flag, and that was the end of the race!!!! The Top 5 were Jeremy Payne, Steve Arpin, # 15, Alan Mondus, and then Zack!!! Needless to say people were quite upset to call the race after 3 laps!!!

Sunday, Februrary 5th

Today was heat races from Friday night and the feature for the CMT series. Remember, we were on the front row of our heat race?? Well so many people left that they had to redraw. Guess what ... we drew last!!! The race started at 1:00 and it was extremely windy & dusty. Here you run on Hoosier Tires and we are not used to that. We missed the tire set up.

They also ran a 20 lap Young Gun Shootout race today as a token race to help make things right from the previous night. In this race Zack was up to 2nd, but couldn't keep the car down in the corners. A couple cars got underneath him and he finished 4th.

In the makeup CMT Series features from Friday & Saturday night. Zack had to start towards the back of both. He and several other drivers pulled off because the dust was too bad to see. After a few wrecks, they finally watered the track.

So now we are headed back to Iowa to get ready for our 2006 USMTS & USRA Season. We are excited to get that underway.

We also wanted to thank Kelly & Dawn Shryock for going down to help us. Also, thank you to Jackson Drost for his help in the pits. Jackson was headed to Florida with Musco Lighting and stopped by Saturday night.