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OFFSEASON?
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What offseason?
It seems like only a few weeks ago we were finishing up the 2010 season at Homestead. Then a whirlwind of holidays, a race on Thanksgiving night in California, Christmas in which we traveled to Indianapolis to see Ashley's family, then to Nashville to spend some time with my parents, followed by New Years and a week in Tulsa OK racing a Midget at the Chili Bowl and here I am packing for Daytona testing! It has been a really fun offseason spending time with family and great friends for sure but the reality for me is, I really dont need an offseason. I guess that's why I pencil in every possible race I can find during the winter months!
Things are looking really good for 2011. We have some races sponsored and are still trying to get more done. They have the best marketing team around at JRM so I am confident that I will have a busy season with them. And while I am at it TAXSLAYER.COM is sponsoring a bulk of races here at the beginning of the season so make sure you support them for supporting us, and even if they weren't supporting us it is still your best option for getting your taxes done!
Harlow is getting so big! She officially has me wrapped around her finger. She is so smart! She is 15 months old and she talks like a 2 year old! I am so proud of her :)
Other than traveling, holidays, and racing this winter I have spent some time on iracing. It's the best way for me to get my fix and I find myself on there for hours racing everything from Formula One cars at Bristol to Legend Cars at Darlington!
In December I got the opportunity to test the 48 car for HMS. What a great opportunity that was. I guess I did ok because they have asked me to test this weekend at Daytona. I am just so greatful for these opportunities. I have really worked hard and made some tough decisions reguarding my career to be here today and I am lucky to have such great family, friends, fans, and the Lord to guide me. Thank you all.
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Jr Motorsports
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It's funny because I realized yesterday that it had been a while since I had blogged and when I went back and checked it I saw that I hadn't even blogged since my opportunity began at JR Motorsports! I can't even say enough about the opportunity that Jr Motorsports has given me. I am so greatful and honored to be a part of the team and I have really been giving it my all to make the best of it.
I have met such great people there at JRM! Tony Eury Jr is super cool and such an awesome crew chief. I always believe that it's the little things and attention to detail that really separate greatness from mediocrity and Tony Eury Jr has an amazing attention to detail. All the crew is cool as heck, i go to the shop about everyday and help work on the cars as much as they will let me : ) It is fun to get know the team and also to understand the cars i will be driving. A lot of people ask about Danica. Danica is great. She is one of the coolest people you will ever meet and she is a racer. I think she will do great in NASCAR as she gets more experience and considering her experience in stock cars, she has done great so far! I know first hand how hard that transition is coming from sprint cars and it is a whole different kind of racing.
In my spare time I've been training a lot for my races. I am really strict about making it to the gym every day and i also have been racing a lot on iracing on a simcraft simator. It's as close as you can get to doing the real thing. Other than that I just spend time with Harlow and Ashley. I love being a dad. Harlow is about to start walking soon and she says "uh-oh" lol!
I get to race the next 3 races (Gateway, ORP, Iowa) for JR Motorsports! Godaddy.com and HowDoYou.com? are sponsoring the races so pleeasse support them any way you can. If you look on the front page of my site there is a coupon for 10% off purchases on GoDaddy.com. Also if you go to HowDoYou.com and share a story about how .com has changed your life in any way you can win a prize of up to $10,000.00 and there is no cost to enter! They are giving out ipads as well! In the end it's you the fans, supporting our sponsors, that allows us to race every week so thank you!
Well it's about time for me to get rockin and rollin. We leave for St Louis tomorrow morning! Wish me Luck!
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May 2010
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I know I know, it has been forever since I have posted a blog entry. It's just that facebook and twitter make it so much easier to keep everyone posted. Anyhow, I am sitting here thinking this morning about something and wanted to write about it. Unfortunatley the team I am driving for right now, due to lack of sponsor dollars has had to "start and park" the last few races. This really stinks for me because I want to race obviously! Hopefully after a few races of doing this we can save up enough money to race a few. I really try to find the posative in the situation though, it is definatley better than sitting at home on the couch. I am still able to learn a lot. Darlington last weekend for example, I have never been to Darlington and with our limited budget for tires and engine bills I was only able to run 20 laps in practice. On top of this I never made a "practice" qualifying run which most teams make 2 of them. It puts a lot of pressure on you as a driver with so many things lacking and knowing that in the end it is all on your shoulders to go run 2 laps at the cars maximum potential. And we did it, we qualified 32nd of 46 cars, which may not seem great but knowing the full circumstances of the hand we were dealt, it was a great accomplishment! In the end we ran a fuel cycle, learned a little about the car and track, kept it in one piece and go on to Dover. I spend every day trying to figure out ways to keep my team going. I go to the shop to help with setting the car up (i dont have a real crew cheif, me and a couple of the guys just work together on it), I build and send out sponsor proposals, even make cold calls to sponsors myself. It is great. I love the grind. I love having to claw and scratch my way to the top. It's how I have succeeded at every level up until now and it's how I will succeed here in NASCAR.
Anyways enough pep talk lol. Life at home has been fantastic. Our little girl Harlow is getting so big! She says "daadaadaadaa"! My wife Ashley is seriously the coolest, smartest and most beautiful woman and I hope Harlow grows up to be just like her.
Thanks everyone for your support and keeping up with me.
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CATCHING UP
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Wow I don't even know where to start.
It has been a great year. It started out with so much uncertainty but as usual things have a way of working out.
Ashley and I had a little girl on October 13th. We named her Harlow Emerson Wise. It has been the greatest experience ever. Today Ashley went back to work so I am officially on daddy day care until the holidays. It has been fun this morning, the quality time is priceless.
Racing has just been awesome. I got to race all the open wheel races that I set out to race this year. It was really challenging living in Charlotte and trying to race in the midwest all summer but we made it work. I drove for some great people/teams and had probably the most fun I have ever had in a year. Everyone from Terry Riggs to Greg Wilke and Cruz Pedregon gave me opportunities that made this a year to never forget. At the beginning of the year I felt like I had a lot to prove-that I could still compete at the highest level of open wheel short track racing. Right out of the gates we won in Terry Riggs sprint car which was huge, had some good Silver Crown runs, won at Belleville, made a last lap pass a Sun Prarie Nationals in one of my coolest victories ever and set fast time and had a legitimate chance to win Turkey night at Irwindale Speedway-which is a race on my bucket list. Though those are the things people will remember about me this year, I will remember the late nights at the car wash with Dutcher and Riggs, me and my best friend Danny Stratton in long debates about how to set up Cruz's midgets, and the greatest moment of my life when I met my daughter.
I got an opportunity to race Nationwide at Texas and Phoenix at the end of the season. John Cohen and xxxtreme motorsport had been working hard on getting sponsorship for me to race and started making headway late in the season. Cavi Clothing spnosored the two races. Cavi is an awesome clothing brand and there is talks of them sponsoring some races for me next year. Hopefully moving foreward I will be able to race some more for them but the uncertainty of the future isn't as freightening as it used to be. I will just keep on trucking and doing all I know how to do.....race my ass off.
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HERE COMES THE STORM!!
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Well there have been a lot of exciting things going on. First of all I'm a married man! Ashley and I got married in Charleston South Carolina on May 9th. It was a great day and it was so cool having our families and closest friends together for a fun weekend!
On the racing front I have just been trying to race as much as I can. July is going to be an awesome month. I will race about 16 times! Just thinking about it brings back the good old memories, of sprint week and Belleville, up into the late hours of the night getting the cars ready for the next night, and throw in a couple silver crown races with 95 degree weather and 170 percent humidity. Your ready for the couch in your living room and some AC for a day or two by the end of it all!
I am really looking foreward to sprint week. I have only raced the 37 car a few times since our win at Lawrenceburg back in April, reason being we blew up our engine at Kokomo just after taking the lead on May 24th. That car has been awesome and I hope we can have some good runs during Sprint Week!
Belleville is another race that I just cannot wait to get to. It's at the end of the month. We will race a few Power I midget races that week leading up to Belleville. Danny Stratton and myself have been taking care of Cruz Pedregons midget team and I feel like we are really hitting our stride. With a little luck (which we have not had at all) we are definatley going to win some races before the years over in that car!
On top of all this going on I am racing for Carl Edwards/RE technologies/Curb Agajainian at Richmond this weekend and also at Iowa at the end of July. High hopes here as well. I really have to thank Mike Curb for helping me get that deal put together. So if anyone is looking to buy a good country album buy a Curb Records artists album!
So all in all life is good. I am definatley not giving up on things with NASCAR, it is just going to take some time for sponsors to begin to pick the sport back up again and when that happens, hopefully I get some more opportunities. Until then I am having a hell of a time doing what I'm doing right now!
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It's been wayyy too long...
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Sitting here this morning I am still so happy about this past weekend. It had been way to long since I had been to victory lane. Last year I dedicated all of my time to focusing on stock cars and with only a part time schedule, never saw victory lane. The best finish we posted was a 5th. I have won multiple races every year of my life since I was 7 years old so looking back at last year it was hard to swallow that I didn't raise a trophy over my head. All of that was made up for last Saturday! I hadn't raced a dirt sprint car in 2 years before I went out west in Febuary to Manzanita and Perris so needless to say I was a little rusty and I really didn't think I would see victory lane so soon again. I think the topper to it all was the fact that we set fast time in convincing fashion and legitimatley drove from 6th place starting position to win! I am home in Charlotte for the week before I head back to Indy to try it again at Bloomington this time. It can't come soon enough...
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Its About Time!
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So I know it's been a while since I have blogged so it's time to catch everything up! I am so pumped up, last week I got a call from Baker Curb racing to drive a second car for them at Texas! It definatley makes me feel like persistance is paying off in these hard times and hopefully I can make good of the opportunity. I tested last weekend at the Toyota proving grounds which is a facility that Toyota has in the middle of the AZ desert. It is a 10 mile oval and we test for the superspeedways there. It was really fun because we did drafting which was great practice for me. On top of all this I am planning on racing El Dora on April 10-11 which is one of my favorite tacks ever! In the midst of work and travel I always find time to pick up my guitar and learn a new song so last week I learned a song by a band called Anberlin and the song is Unwinding Cable Car....pretty proud of myself. I guess at least if this racing stuff doesn't work out I can be in a rockband (not).
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Chili Anyone?
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It's that time of year! I head to Tulsa Ok. to race in the Chili Bowl Midget race this week! It's going to be sweet, I race on Thursday and Saturday night. The winter is really flying by, I had a chance to go visit family and take a few road trips to Indy and Nashville over Christmas and even managed to "get hitched" as they say to an amazing young woman named Ashley. Yes, a pretty eventfull holiday! Really cool though and I am proud and just really stoked to be engaged! In the midst of all of these events I managed to make it up snowboarding,went testing in Florida for Michael Waltrip Racing, and read the book "way of the peaceful warrior" (which is great and I may read it again)...now I think that catches things up on my busy December! Looking foreward into the future it is hard to say how things will unfold this season, I am going to take on some more open wheel races to stay sharp and hopefully some things will open up as the economy betters. Other than that who knows, I am just going to keep pushing on!
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Sandblasted
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I spent last weekend in Memphis practicing the #99 car for David Reutiman. It was pretty cool working with the 99 team, we qualified 3rd which I really didn't expect because we focused on race run setup in practice. I had to be in Phoenix on Monday following Memphis to test Cruz's Toyota Midget at PIR. Naturally it's always good to try and catch up with friends when your on the road so I stayed at my friend PJ's house along with my buddy Jake. PJ has been working on building aftermarket suspensions for Yamaha Razors which, for those who dont know, is like a big gnarly inbred dune buggy/quad on steroids. I mean this little things have 13 inches of suspension travel, go 65mph and seat 4 people! So PJ takes me and Jake out to the dunes and trails a few miles from his house and of course we have to take the most souped up fast one he has! Now I have a hard time not being in the drivers seat, so as we whipped through narrow trails, hit 4 foot jumps at 60mph and nearly endoed off one of the jumps which finally broke the Razor(thank god, I dont know if we would have made it back in one piece) I didn't even end up getting to drive. Still an awesome time and its got me thinking, AZ is a pretty cool place to live if your into offroading or dirtbikes! The next day we tested the Midget and it went great, I'm so stoked for next weekend with getting to race the midget Thursday, Nationwide car Saturday and even catch a Sprint car race at Manzanita!.....gonna be good times......
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WELCOME!
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So my new website is finally done! I have been really pumped up about this! Steve Elliott did an amazing job and I hope you all like it! As far as I go it's been business as usual with racing the Nationwide Races and still attending the races even when I'm not racing. Testing has slowed a little at this point in the year so it leaves you with a little extra time on your hands, so I decided that I was going to knock a wall out of my house. With this decision came the decision that I felt that "I".....was competent enough to complete this feat. Well needless to say it turned into quite the project but with the help of a few friends, and many trips to Home Depot, 2 weeks later its done! It will definatley be a while before my next home project....hope everyone enjoys the new site!