Like Old Times. . .

This is a big week in motorsports, the INDYCAR series has the week off, but NASCAR and Grand-Am will be at Indianapolis this weekend.  Scott Dixon will be joining Jamie McMurray and Juan Montoya, in Ganasi’s DP car.  Chip is putting together a ride for these drivers to race in the Grand Prix of Indy.  AJ Almendinger had his “B” sample tested, and it came back positive, so his suspension has gone from temporary to indefinite.

As for me this week has been busy trying to get our car back together for Summit Point in August.  Since this car is brand new to us, it has taken a little bit of time to decipher the parts, and where to get new parts from.  It was a lot easier with the late models, I knew those cars inside and out- and one phone call would pretty much take care of any problem.  We will get it all figured out in plenty of time.

It has kind of been like old times for me these last couple of days.  I remember in the early part of my career, when I was learning the cars.  That uneasy feeling you would get when you are looking at critical parts for the first time.  Then trying to figure how they work, and what it was supposed to look like- BEFORE- you blew it up.  Then trying to find someone who sells that part you need.  Finally- trying to talk to someone who sells those parts and get raked over the coals on the price of those parts.  Yep, pretty much like old times.

            There is one good thing about all of this.  After we fix our clutch issue, we will understand our racecar that much more.  Its one of those things that is hard to explain.  You kind of form a relationship with a racecar.  It’s like when you meet a girl and ask her out on a date.  You go on the date, and if the date goes well- you go on a couple more.  You start spending a lot of time with her, because you are having fun, you feel good when you’re together.  After a while though, its not all fun and games- and maybe you have a fight- that’s what my racecar and I did at Pocono- we had a fight.

            I’m trying to make up with my racecar right now- but instead of buying jewelry- we’re buying parts.  Nice, new, and shiny parts- and if I buy the right parts- we won’t fight anymore.  For good measure- I’ll give it an extra coat of wax after I put it all back together.

            I’m kind of poking fun at the situation, but Pocono really wasn’t that bad all things considered.  I’ve been very fortunate over the last couple of years, and I haven’t had many bad days at the track due to mechanical failures.  Spoiled I guess, but you can’t beat the crap out of a piece of machinery and expect it to stay together forever.

            I’ve got some plans for Summit Point; it will be our last race before we head to Mid-Ohio for Nationals.  In case you have some time next weekend, The INDYCAR series will be there, so you can tune in and see what the track looks like.  We missed the track record at Summit Point in June, by .062 seconds.  I think we can squeeze a little more speed out of the car, and I have a little more time in the seat- and that always helps. 

            I look forward to getting the car back in shape, and changing a few things.  It’s kind of a light week to talk about, but we will be in the shop getting our work done.  We really want to be able to put our best foot forward at Nationals.  Hopefully all goes well this week and I have good news very soon.  Till Next Week. . .

Pocono's Grand Slam. . .

            This past weekend we traveled to the Pocono International Speedway for NASA’s Grand Slam at Pocono.  If I had it to do over again, I would probably never have loaded up the car and left the shop.  Actually, it wasn’t that bad, but it was a very frustrating and mentally draining weekend.

            We arrived early Saturday morning and unloaded for the day.  I headed off to the drivers meeting and met up with a few drivers I knew.  NASA was going to run Saturday clockwise on the “Long Course” and Sunday would be run counterclockwise.  That’s pretty neat, because even though we are at the same track, it is very different to run the track opposite ways.  After the drivers meeting, I headed back to the pits and met up with everybody.

            The call came for us to head to pit road for practice and I climbed into the racecar and belted in.  The crew unplugged the oil tank, and I fired up the engine.  I looked over the gauges and everything was good to go.  My guys pushed me out of our pit spot, and I shifted into 1^st gear.  About that time my weekend fell apart.

            The car started to move, and then BANG.  Catastrophic clutch failure.  So. . . back to the pits and up on the lift.  I changed out of my driver’s suit, and into my street clothes- I was part of the crew on this one.  To make a very long and frustrating story short, I blew up the clutch.  We were able to make repairs and get the clutch back together- but not before missing qualifying as well.  We checked with race control, and they said that we would have to start at the back of a 40+ car field.

            This wouldn’t have been so bad, if I would have had even a couple of laps on the speedway.  I, however, had absolutely no track time in this car.  We felt confident that we had the problems fixed, and again we were called out to pit lane to pre-grid for the race.  This time, when I went to pull away, the car moved forward and got up to speed.

            As we came off the last corner, which was NASCAR turn 1 backwards, the green flag was waving and the hammer went to the floor.  I started passing cars and trying to get through the field.  The tracks’ timing and scoring loop was down, so my crew was trying to count the positions I was making up.  That doesn’t work very well on a 2.5 mile road course because you just can’t see the whole track.  We thought we finished 14^th, overall.  In fact, I finished 7^th, which meant in roughly 35 minutes, we passed over 30 cars and ran down the leaders.  Not bad for not having a single lap on the speedway.

            The bad news, the car started to shake and vibrate the last lap.  That meant we were going to be tearing back into the transmission after the race.  We let the racecar cool down, and once again started pulling parts back out and getting frustrated.  We realized, about 2 hours into it, we didn’t have what we needed to fix the car.  The bad news- we had to go back to the shop to get a whole new set-up, the good news- we only had a 2 hour trip.

            Sunday morning had us once again fixed up and ready to go racing.  This time, we made practice and we were happy with the car.  Again, long story short, 3^rd lap of qualifying. . . coming down the front straight- I shifted into 5^th gear- BANG- but this time followed by a serious over-rev of the motor.

            If you would have been at the track, at roughly 1:45pm you would have heard this whooshing sound.  It was all of the air being let out of our sails.  It was too much; I don’t think we could have handled anymore.  But. . . once again, there we were.  There we were, back in the pits, but this time in the rain and really- REALLY- upset.

            The Race Director also announced at that time, that due to the weather, they would be moving the race up about an hour because of a thunderstorm headed towards the track.  Back to square one.  Only this time, we had half the time to fix it, and we had to fix it, because if we didn’t run at least half the race, we would be given a DNF for Sunday.  Not something we could afford with Nationals in September.

            My crew is the best.  Hands down, they kept at it and never gave up.  Even after the race started, they kept thrashing.  In fact, as they were wrapping up, I climbed in and started getting strapped in, and somebody headed down to race control to notify them we were indeed heading out.  My guys tightened the last bolt, let me down off the lift and race control gave us the green light at the end of pit road.  We did, in fact, run over half the race.  We salvaged a terrible day.

            We salvaged an entire weekend.  With everything that happened, we still managed to win our class on Saturday.  We persevered and made the best of what we had to deal with.  On the positive side, our engineers have already started working on finding a fix to the problem.  I think, in the next couple of days, we will have found the cause of the problem, and the solution.  All in plenty of time to test it out when we head back to Summit Point Raceway in August.

            I want to thank our sponsors for the support this week.  It makes it a lot easier to get through weekends like we had, when you know your sponsors are behind you.  I will have updates next week about our progress with the car.  Till next week. . .

Countdown To Pocono. . .

            NASCAR was at Daytona, Indycar was in Toronto, and the racing was great at both places.  While the racing was great, the sanctioning bodies were also handing out penalties, fines, and suspensions this weekend too.  Eventual NASCAR race winner Tony Stewart was found to have an open cooling hose during qualifying, and had to start in the back of the pack Saturday night, though he did win the race, NASCAR still took 6 driver’s points away from him.  AJ Almendinger was temporarily suspended from competition, for violating the substance abuse policy.  Until his “B” sample is tested he will be sitting out of the car.  For his sake, I hope this test comes back negative.  Ryan Hunter-Reay won his 3^rd straight race on Sunday.  The points took a major toss this weekend as well.  Mike Conway had a podium as well, but during post race inspection, was found to have to big of a fuel cell.  10 points and $15,000 later, the team still ran very well and hopefully it’s a sign of things to come.

            As for me, our cars have been loaded up and are ready for their trip to the Pocono Raceway.  This will kind of be like a homecoming of sorts for me; the first road course I competed on was Pocono’s North Course.  NASA will be using the North Course plus NASCAR turns 1 and 2 plus the frontstrech as our course this weekend, 2.5 miles around.

            This weekend is a little bit different for us, while we will be racing during the day; we will be attending “Our Lady Queen of Peace” (Brodheadsville, PA) Church Festival Saturday evening.  I hope we avoid any contact on the track and keep the racecar in one piece during the day, because it will be on display Saturday night.  We let the kids sit in the car and sign some autographs, take some pictures and get some time to hang with our fans.  We also are going to use the time to talk about RAD and why it’s important to live a drug free and healthy lifestyle.

            We should have some good video and pictures from this weekend.  Since the race is so close to home, we will get to have a lot of people at the speedway supporting us.  Friends, family, old crew members, are going to be there to see us race.  My Mother, who is kind of our team photographer, is able to come this weekend as well.  I always enjoy when she comes, because there are always great shots that she is able to get.  She is going to get a test, she is used to oval short track racing, but this is a whole new dynamic.  Look for her photos on the site after the races.

            Speaking of the http://www.justinonderko.com/ site, one of our sponsors- OC2 Interactive- is currently working on designing our new site.  I actually had a conference call this afternoon and I can’t wait to see the site go live.  Special thanks to Michelle for taking time out of her day to discuss the progress of the site.  OC2 is the real deal- if you need web based design- they will create what you need.  Check them out www.oc2interactive.com- look at some of the work they’ve done, it speaks for itself.

            Next week we will review the race weekend and how it went.  We are prepared for a good weekend, hopefully the weather stays nice, but we are bringing our rain tires just in case.  I kind of hope it does rain- I really enjoy racing in the rain- you have to be very technical and precise with your inputs- you’re on the razors edge the whole race.  Till next week. . .

Down Time

This week was a rare week for me and the team.  We decided to take some time off and get away from the shop.  I didn’t go far, actually- I spent a little time over at the shop going over some notes from Summit Point.  I didn’t get to watch Brad Keselowski take the flag at Kentucky, but I heard it was a pretty good race.  Hats off to the speedway for making the necessary changes to its facility, last year was a fiasco with parking and lack of roads to the speedway.  Grand-Am was in New York, at the Watkins Glen International Speedway.  Joao Barbosa and Darren Law from Action Express Racing took the win.

Congratulations to Ricky Stenhouse Jr.  After Matt Kenseth announced that he wouldn’t be back with Roush-Yates next year, Ricky got his dream shot to the Cup Series.  I hope Ricky makes the best of it, and I can’t wait to see where Matt ends up.  If I were Joey Logano, I would be passing around my resume, because I think that’s where Kenseth made his deal.

As for me, like I said I took some time to be with my wife and family.  It’s just been a couple of days but it was nice to recharge for Pocono.  After the rush for Summit Point and the backlog of work that always follows a first race in a new car, I was glad to put away the tools.

While I was going through the notes from Summit Point, and looking at what I wanted changed for Pocono, it hit me.  With a quite shop, and no one to bug me, I realized how fortunate I have been.  Even to now, my racing career has been pretty good.  I’ve gotten to pilot more than a couple different types of cars, and gotten to race against some really talented drivers.

For me, I would work sun-up to sun-down on these cars if my body would let me.  Sometimes though I forget about lessons from my past and start to neglect the people in my life that are close to me.  My family is just like my crew- they are the best around.  It’s actually a truer statement than you might think- I have quite a few family members that come to the track and crew the car on race day- so they are just like my crew.  My parents have always been there for me, both as a guiding force and to lend a hand when my racing dollars ran out- I told them that when I sign my first contract I’ll pay them back- I’m good for it.  My sister, who is in Annapolis, MD- and does great hair and make-up so give me a shout and I’ll get you a good deal-  has always been there to give me a boost when I needed one.  The person who I lean the hardest on is my wife. though.  She puts up with a lot, and my family would back me up on that.  So, we enjoyed the last couple of days together and are ready to go back at it.

I have had some great sponsors over the years as well.  Everything from a twenty dollar bill a guy gave me just to help out, or free garage door springs from a guy who enjoyed looking at the car (it’s a long story-feel free to ask about it in person), on up to today with our latest sponsor OC2 Interactive- and everyone in between.  All of you help us to go out and prepare our cars and win races- without you in would be impossible.

Speaking of OC2 Interactive- we have a couple things in the works, but since I am contractually obligated to not release the details- I will say this; stay tuned and keep checking the website.  The staff at OC2 is top notch and has been a pleasure to work with.

 Sometimes we get wrapped up in how much we think we do, that we forget how much others do for us.  I couldn’t drive the way I do, if I didn’t have all of these people behind me, and the downtime made me remember that.

Pocono is in 10 days, and the car is just about wrapped up.  It goes on the scales Tuesday, and loaded Thursday afternoon.  Pocono is only 2 hours from my house, so it will be nice to be in an area that we all know. 

If you live in the northeast, and can make it, head over to Pocono and feel free to seek us out in the garage area.  If you can’t get to the racetrack follow me @justinonderko for live updates and don’t forget to friend me on facebook to catch up on things as well.  I’m looking forward to more in-car video with a few different angles.  Happy 4^th of July to everyone in the United States- and a big special thanks to all of our service men and women who keep us safe and let us do what we love!  Please return home safe to your families.  Till next week. . .