This weekend's NHRA Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio, is going to be one of the bigger races in my career. Not because it is the first race of the Countdown, because it's not, or even the last race of the year, which it isn't. This race is going to be so different for me not having Ed “Ace” McCulloch as my crew chief. Instead, it will be the first race in which John Medlen will be the one pointing at me into the windshield before I make a run.

After the race last weekend in Bristol, Tenn., where we lost in the first round, team owner Don Schumacher made a decision to move Medlen from my teammate Matt Hagan's DieHard team to take over as crew chief on the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Funny Car team. Ace is going to stay at DSR as a consultant among the three Funny Car teams, and that's a good thing for all of us.

Norwalk is going to be an emotional race, but you have to put all that aside and focus on what's going on right now in our 2010 season. We've obviously slipped a little bit in the points and fell to seventh, and there are only five races left before the Countdown to 1 playoffs start and that's when reality starts to hit. We saw the drama last year that unfolded in the last race of the regular season when there was only one spot left in the top 10 and there were several drivers trying to get into it.

Our NAPA team is way too good of a team to be focused on that part of it. We have great people, and when you go through a change like we are starting in Norwalk, it's tough. At times it feels a little personal, but you have to ignore that and think about the business side of it.

The first thing that I think of is my NAPA crew guys. As a core team they have essentially been with me since 2005 when I came on with DSR, with the Brut car. They've been the same guys who have fought as a team to win a championship and the same guys who have had several chances offered them to go to other teams – and they chose to stick together as a team.

This is when you really learn a lot about your crew, when you struggle like we have the last few races. There was never a doubt in anybody's mind about the crew's ability to do a great job. When you're going to three or four races in a row, you spend more time with the crew guys than you do with your family, and so you learn to fight the fight together for one common goal. And, to be honest with you, it's going to be fun to work our way back to the top.

We know that if we get into the Countdown we are as good as any other team out there, and as capable, if not more, as any competitor out there. It all comes down to confidence. With the Countdown being six races, you obviously have to peak at the right time. But, when you're in the middle of the summer months of racing, like we are going into Norwalk this weekend, there's nothing better than having the confidence in your crew when the track conditions can be so tricky.

Drivers who have won championships in the past have talked about how they dug down deep, and you can talk that talk all you want. But what matters is the confidence you have as a driver. When you have confidence that your car is going to go down the track and it's going to be a tough car to beat, you feel like you can pretty much beat anybody in the cockpit. And that's what we're striving for. We're striving to have that confidence throughout the whole team.

One great thing is that DSR has such a great support system that having Ed McCulloch stay on board and work with all the Funny Car teams as well as for the NAPA team, will only make everybody better.

I was very close to Eric Medlen, who lost his life in a testing accident in 2007 in Gainesville, Fla., and I've gotten to know his dad John pretty well, even more so when he came aboard at DSR. It's going to be an emotional thing after all those years watching John point his finger at his son Eric before he made a run and now having the same guy point at me before I make a run. It's going to be very special.

Ron

The four-wide NHRA race in Concord, N.C., created so much excitement. It was a lot of fun – it was a challenge for the drivers, and it was something we've never done in our careers.

When I say we, there's some drivers who have been racing as long as I've been alive who have never done anything like that. I hear stories of way back in the day before I was born, that a lot of tracks had four-, five-, six,- seven-, even eight-wide races when drag racing first started.

I think not only did Bruton Smith demonstrate great marketing skills and forethought in building the track to run four-wide, but I think racing four-wide is going to make a great, exciting All-Star race of some type. I don't think it's a race we probably should run at a points event or or during the Countdown to 1 playoffs. One four-wide race isn't conducive to helping decide a championship.

All in all, it was a great time and the most important part was being able to do a burnout, back up, and look up at the grandstands and see how packed they were. That was very rewarding.

At the same time, I'm glad that it's over because it sure created a lot of challenges for the drivers. I saw a lot of drivers walking around in circles trying to figure out the Christmas Tree, the extra blue lights that were on top for the other lanes, and just a lot of things that threw a lot of drivers for a loop. But, now, looking down the road at other races coming up, it'll be back to normal racing.

I have to touch on the amount of talk I hear about getting back to quarter-mile racing. I know the NHRA has said that they're working on an engine combination that will slow the cars down so that we can go back to quarter-mile racing.

I want to remind all the people who are adamant about having quarter-mile racing, there's a few things you need to know. First of all, I'm not so sure that it's a great idea that we slow the cars down and go back to the quarter-mile, because I don't think the excitement that you'll see from cars running 4.8-4.9 seconds in the quarter-mile (1,320ft) will equal the power and the good racing that we're seeing right now racing to 1,000ft.

Racing to 1,000ft, the fans are seeing the closest racing they've seen in years and the best side-by-side competition. It's also created quite a bit more excitement for the drivers, because the reaction time has become more important than ever.

You don't have the time or the real estate to run a big speed and make up the difference in reaction time to reel in your opponent and pass him in the last 300 feet. So, the shortened track has created more importance on the driver doing his job on the starting line. I really think the close racing is what's best.

Looking at the big picture, the most important thing is safety. You have to remember that, yeah, we're going faster. We hear people talking about us going over 315mph now at 1,000ft, but we also have up to 320ft of shutdown we didn't have before.

And, to hear Houston Raceway Park come out with an announcement that their fans want drag racing back to a quarter-mile at their track was a little disturbing to me, personally. I can understand a track as nice as a Bruton Smith track, whether it's Concord, Sonoma, Vegas, Bristol, and even some of the other NHRA tracks, coming out with a statement like that. But Houston is a track that hasn't prepared its surface well enough so that it still creates problems. It's been a one-lane racetrack for the last few years. Yet, they were able to build new hospitality areas and other amenities. On top of that, this is a track where we still have to endure mud in the pit area if it rains. If there's any rain, teams can't pull the trailer and cars out of the pit area.

More than anything else, it's not the drivers who are complaining that the quarter-mile is too fast. We're racecar drivers. It's a double-edged sword for us. This is the reason I drive a nitro Funny Car. I want to go as fast as I can possibly go. These are the best cars to be able to show the talent of a crew chief to be able to catapult the car to over 300mph in four seconds.

Most drag strips were built several decades ago, if not more, and the shutdown areas can be a problem. When these tracks were built, there was not sufficient land to add space.

These tracks were built when racecars were going 280, 290mph and the shutdowns were built for cars going 280, 290mph. Now that we're going over 315mph at 1000ft, and over 330 in a quarter-mile, you just can't expect these cars to slow down as fast as in the past. So, it's not the speed the drivers have been worrying about, it's the ability to slow down the cars.

Instead of these tracks complaining about getting back to the quarter-mile, they need to work on the track surface and make it the best track they can make it for 1,000ft racing, in my opinion.

Ron

Every year you try to find what you lacked the year before that kept you from winning the championship and then try to improve on it. And, to be bluntly honest, I don't see a lot of areas that the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge team needs to work on for the 2010 NHRA Full Throttle Series.

We were there to win a championship in 2009 and we came close. If we can keep doing what we were doing and stay aggressive in 2010, that will be the main key to achieving success. Of course, we have two races under our belts already this season, we're third in points, and we fell just short of winning those races. But, when you look at the big picture, we're on the edge of winning a race early in the season and I feel good about our chances.

Right now we're on our way to Gainesville, for the Gatornationals. It's funny, because we're going to one of the biggest races on our circuit and the big talk right now is the four-wide race in Concord, N.C., at the Zmax Dragway at the end of this month. It will be the first time in history that we've had four lanes going at all once during a race. To be honest with you, it's got a lot of drivers shrugging their shoulders, kind of in anticipation of what's going to happen.

From the safety aspect, a lot of the drivers question whether or not we are ready for four-wide racing, but, in talking with the track owner, talking with the NHRA, I'm told they feel like they have accomplished as much as they could as far as safety is concerned in the shutdown area. I think a lot of the question marks, unlike in other racing divisions, is the staging process that we're going to go through.

One thing that the casual fan may not see when a drag race starts is a certain psychological aspect to the way we stage our cars, because in our sport, races are won and lost most of the time on the reaction time of the driver at the starting line.

There's a lot that goes into the staging process. It's a fine art and certain drivers are very, very good at it. While other drivers are also good at it, when you put two cars together racing each other it's always interesting to see what the outcome will be. Now we're going to put four cars out there and what happens is the 8000hp nitro cars are so dependent on the temperatures of the engine and the clutch, that the staging process is very, very important. It's going to be interesting to see how it's played out as far as guys trying to play mind games.

Certain drivers take longer to stage their cars. And like most drivers, such as those in F1, NASCAR and IndyCar, we develop sort of a notebook in our heads and a file on each driver. We know how a certain driver stages a car, how long he takes on the burnout. I guess if you went to any of the top NASCAR drivers they could tell you a little about each driver and what they expect when they get up next to him and they're side by side. They know how close they can get to the other driver, they know how hard they can race that driver. The same thing applies to drag racing. But, I think it's a little more important because what happens in the staging process could affect the tune-up of these cars. The longer the staging process is, the worse you can make the clutch temperature and the engine temperature.

So, it can be something that a driver can do to throw another driver off, but at the same time a driver can also get bit by his own trickery, or whatever you want to call it.

Each Christmas Tree we have to look at between each two lanes will now have pre-stage and stage bulbs for all four lanes. So, another thing that's an unknown is what our Christmas Tree is even going to look like. NHRA has not yet informed us of that aspect.

There's going to be a lot of challenges, a lot of unknowns for all the drivers and crew chiefs. We're so used to our usual regimen of working with the standard Christmas Tree and staging the car, and now a totally new Christmas Tree is going to be thrown at us that no one has seen before.

When I talk about the mind games and staging process, all the driver has to do mainly after he/she pre-stages is pull the fuel pump on, let his/her foot off the clutch, hold the car with the brake and then let the car roll in using the hand brake. It doesn't sound like much, but there's a lot of drivers who take a lot longer than other drivers, and whether they do that on purpose or not it can affect the tune-up of their opponents. So, the fact that we have a new Christmas Tree, we have three other cars that we have to worry about, and not just our own car, is really going to throw a monkey wrench into the learning process. And we're not going to know what will happen until we get there on Friday afternoon for the first round of qualifying.

There's also going to be another unknown. You only had to worry about the driver next to you, and whether or not he/she smoked the tires and you could see when you won. With four-wide, you won't know what's going on in those other two lanes because you won't be able to see them. A lot of drivers will be pedaling the car if it's in trouble or flat-out just holding their feet down and smoking the tires, even though the car next to them might be in trouble, because they're not going to know what's going on in the other two lanes. It's going to risk a lot of engine damage and it could cause a lot of cars to catch fire.

You're going to have to still try to get your car to the finish line in your own lane, even if you're in trouble, because you might still be able to win the race.

Also, when your crew chief brings you up to the stage car, Instead of looking over and making sure that the other crew chief has his car ready to bring the driver up, there's going to be two other cars to add to the equation. The more I talk about it, the more nervous I get.

I know the fans are excited about the four-wide racing. The place will be packed, and everybody is talking about it. But, I'll be honest with you, the people most apprehensive about it are the drivers at this point.

One cool thing for the fans is the race will go by a little quicker – they will be able to have more time interacting with the teams and the drivers in the pit area in between rounds. And I would imagine the TV time for interviews will be greater, because the racing will be over a lot quicker.

It's going to be a learning process for everybody – the ESPN TV crews, the crew chiefs and the drivers. But even the fans will have a hard time watching four lanes of action. They might actually miss seeing the winning run. It's hard to watch four lanes with only two eyes.

In my last blog I congratulated Robert Hight and the John Force Racing team for winning the Funny Car championship. Now I would like to provide some ideas and/or suggestions as to how the NHRA might be able to improve the way the Countdown plays out and perhaps make it more balanced for most of the competitors.

I'm really hoping – and I've read some articles written on it – that the NHRA will make some changes similar to what was done in NASCAR in the Chase, by making race wins more important as far as your position in the Countdown is concerned.

Any team that shows up on a Friday for a racing weekend wants to do nothing but win the race, and that is the primary goal for any team. So, when the points are reset for the Countdown at the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, I really would like to see the NHRA put more importance on the number of wins a driver has earned and reward him/her with bonus points per the number of wins.

Winning is what we all strive for. And I really believe that, if the NHRA rewards a driver who had the most wins in the “regular” season, we'll see more and more teams stick to what they're doing (aiming to win each race) instead of going off and testing halfway through the “regular” season knowing that they're going to get into the Countdown anyway, with just a few points separating the top 10.

I can tell you first hand that it would have definitely changed our outlook on the way that we that we entered the Countdown. And, I do know that PRO (Professional Racers Owners Organization) has already recommended this to the NHRA.

Something else I'd like the NHRA to consider is an idea our NAPA crew chief, Ed “Ace” McCulloch, had for a different format for the Countdown. I think this is something that the NHRA should really look at very hard: Make it eight teams that are in the Countdown. Those eight teams, once the Countdown starts, would run on their own side of the eliminations bracket on Sunday. Those eight teams in the Countdown also would be the last four pairs of every qualifying session on Friday and Saturday. Track and weather conditions can change dramatically between the first pair and the last pair, so this would provide a more level playing field for the Countdown teams during qualifying. And, having the Countdown cars qualify next to each other would provide the fans more drama in the final moments of the qualifying rounds.

On the other side of the eliminations ladder would be the rest of the competitors. What would happen is the winner of the Countdown side then would race the winner of the other side in the final round. That way, you have an increased chance for a team that's not in the Countdown to actually get into the final.

Also, the fans would see Countdown cars racing Countdown cars on Sunday until the final round.

Let us know what you think.

Ron

The 2009 NHRA season was an interesting one. As I've written in this diary this year, it was very much a roller-coaster ride for our NAPA team, in particular.

For the NAPA team to win the most races this season, lead the points for most of the year, then fall short and end up third in the points, reiterates how important it is to peak at the right time, especially now that we have the Countdown to 1 playoffs for the last six races.

I want to point out that Robert Hight's getting into the Countdown at the last minute and then winning the championship surely seemed to have a side note. And a lot of people have talked about the fact that there probably should be an asterisk next to his name because of how he got into the Countdown.

What I want to say about this is, at the beginning of the year everybody sits down and counts on their fingers the 10 teams that they think will be in the Countdown and who they think they're going to have to battle with for the championship right down to the wire. And everyone I talked to always had Robert Hight and his crew chief Jimmy Prock at the top of their lists. But, and you can talk to any racer in any of these sports on this website who have been through similar seasons, it's going to happen. It's a profession that has so much competition and so many talented people in it, for someone to think that he or she is going to walk away with it would be pretty cocky.

You're going to have seasons where you just absolutely struggle, and that seems to be the kind of season Hight and Prock had. And, while we on the NAPA team had a great start to the season, won five races and led the points for most of the year, the fact that there's controversy as to how John Force helped get Hight into the Countdown at the very last race in Indianapolis is unfortunate. I've talked with Robert and he is very uncomfortable about it. I really believe that Robert is going to make a great champion and will represent our Funny Car category as a champion extremely well.

Their John Force Racing team has run good enough and has been competitive enough to be a championship team. It's just unfortunate that the way they got into the Countdown seemed to have left a bad taste in a lot of the competitors' mouths.

I can tell you, there's a lot of times during a race season that you just can't wait for a vacation and the holidays, just to get your batteries recharged and get away from the racing for a bit. It draws so much out of you, you're just physically drained by the time the last race in Pomona is over with.

We had such a great season with our car that, to be honest with you, I'd love to be back racing in another week. We had a car that was competitive all year and the competition level in the Funny Car division has just been incredible.

Looking at everything, such as the economy, with questions out there like whether or not we were going to have fans showing up, it turned out to be a great season. To do a burnout on a Friday afternoon in a qualifying session and look up and see the grandstands packed at almost every racetrack reminded me how lucky we are to be doing what we do as racecar drivers.

We're already thinking about what we're going to do about testing in Florida in January to kick off the 2010 season. We already have requests from our sponsors to do photo shoots for next year. So, while the 2009 season is just barely over, we're already thinking about 2010.

The holidays are always nice because you can reflect on how good a season you had and you can start looking forward to the next season. The great thing about being a part of Don Schumacher Racing is having smart and talented people around me, personally. And I don't mean just our NAPA team, but everybody at DSR. I have teammates like Tony Schumacher, Cory McClenathan, Antron Brown, Jack Beckman and Matt Hagan. These guys are viewed as the best at what they do and it's very cool for me to feed off of these guys.

And the same goes for our crew chiefs. My crew chief Ed McCulloch is obviously a legend in the sport. He's won races in Top Fuel and Funny Car, and he's been voted as one of the top drivers in the history of NHRA. What's great about that is that he's a gamer. He's already thinking about what we can improve on from this year.

But, I can tell you, knowing that the Countdown was looming and that we were leading the points at the halfway point and it looked like it was a lock for us to at least be in the Countdown, we felt that we could do some testing during the race events and try some things out that would improve our performance in the Countdown. We would have liked to have stayed in the points lead going into the Countdown, but that didn't happen for us.

Like in any form of motorsport, you start playing with different small things that will gain you a fraction of a second here and a fraction of a second there, and in our sport a fraction of a second is a difference between first and ninth.

In hindsight, looking back at 2009, had it been a normal season like a decade ago when there was no Countdown, we would have kept pounding the pavement and running the way we were and we probably would have won four or five more races. But the fact that we did have a Countdown is the reason we went into a little bit of a testing mode and didn't win as many races as we felt we could have.

The way that the season went was a direct product of the Countdown that the NHRA implemented, and that is just the way it is. This is two years in a row now that a team that entered the Countdown not even in the top half has gone on to win a championship. Robert Hight is now going to be sitting around the Christmas table with a championship ring on his finger.

For me, for as many years as I have been driving, it's frustrating because I felt the teams that I've been with have earned a championship and we've been close to winning one. But that frustration just has to be corralled and used as motivation for next year.

There is frustration for a lot of us to see Robert win the championship, but I really feel like they played the game the way the Countdown should be played. All you have to do is get into the Countdown, and if you're in there you have a shot at it. So, congratulations to Robert, Jimmy and John Force on winning the championship.

Ron

The 2009 NHRA Full Throttle season will be over after the next two races, in Las Vegas and the finale in Pomona, Calif. We're fourth in the Countdown to 1 playoffs point standings, and about three rounds out of first place. So, with eight rounds of competition remaining, as well as bonus qualifying points up for grabs and the possibility of setting a national elapsed-time record for 20 bonus points, the championship has definitely not been decided. We are not out of it, by any means.

Looking at the whole season, there's been a lot of controversy of how situations have been handled, how possibly results have been manipulated by the teams, plus a lot of discussion as to the value of the Countdown. But, based on all the controversy and talk, it is obvious that the Countdown is extremely important for a team owner, a driver, a crew chief, and everybody on a team.

We've seen what people and/or teams will do to get into the Countdown. It clearly means everything. Drivers and teams start to believe that all their efforts, plus the time and money spent, are a waste if they don't get into the Countdown. Even though we made it comfortably into the Countdown, if we had it to do over again, our NAPA Auto Parts Funny Car team would have made a car switch before the Countdown started in Charlotte, instead of after the Dallas race, which was the second event of the playoffs.

We learned a lesson that cars, even though they are built identically, don't always react the same. So we switched back to the car we started the season with, winning the first two events. Having a great season, winning the most races of anyone, and thinking you've earned it, doesn't guarantee you're going to be handed a trophy for a championship, especially now that the Countdown is in place.

To be honest with you, all I wanted all season was to make sure that our NAPA team had a legitimate chance at winning the championship. We had such a great year it would have been a travesty to not be one of the teams with a shot, with two races to go, at winning the championship. And the unfortunate product of the Countdown, and I've said it before, is if you have a bad race or even a couple of bad races during the playoffs you very well could lose your chance at a championship.

You hear me brag about the NAPA team a lot. You haven't seen me on fire, you haven't seen me in any wild crashes, you haven't seen me with anything flying off the car, and I've said it time and time again at the top end of the track that it makes me proud of my guys to put me in a car time and time again that is prepared like no other car.

I know when I go down the track everything is as good as it's going to be for Ace (crew chief Ed McCulloch) to tune it. And not making those highlight reels tells you a lot of about a team. These guys deserve a championship.

It's good that we rebounded after Dallas with a semifinal finish in Memphis and Richmond, after finding our problem and getting back on track. Yeah, we're still in a hole, and it's going to be tough to fight back. But, it can be done and we've come close before. I talked to my old teammate Gary Scelzi the other day and he reminded me that we rolled into Las Vegas pretty far behind in points in 2005 and we went to the final round against Gary and ended up beating him. We then went into Pomona separated by single digits. Scelzi won the championship, but we ended up in second, just eight points back.

So, it's very possible, and looking at the record we had, especially winning the first Vegas race earlier this year, and having our NAPA hot rod back, I'm excited. It reminds me of when my teammate Tony Schumacher in the 2006 season finale in Pomona – in what has now gone down in history as “the run” – had to set the national elapsed-time record and win the final round in order to claim the crown, and he did exactly that. Those kinds of moments are something you dream about.

You don't want it to come down to that to win a championship, because the stress and the pressure is going to be unbelievable. But, we're behind, and we have a great chance of fighting our way back into this.

I tell you, there's nothing like the pressure of having two races left and being three rounds behind the leader. Ashley Force Hood, second in points, is having a great season right now, just like we did at the beginning of the year, and she and her team have earned the chance to vie for the title in Pomona.

That team, led by crew chief Dean “Guido” Antonelli – and you can ask anybody on our team – has raised our level every time we had to race them, and they have been consistently good. We're going to need some luck for them to be knocked out early.

Points leader Robert Hight's team is obviously one of the cars to beat now in the Countdown. You can debate whether or not that team deserves a chance at the championship, but the fact is that's one of the cars that you're going to have to definitely get around if you plan to win one of these races in the end. They're as good as any team right now.

When we beat them in Memphis in the second round, that was the biggest round that we had this year. That was huge.

We also can't count out (third in points) Tony Pedregon's team. That's a team that you know you're always going to have to battle for any chance at a championship.

You can't rely on somebody else doing your work for you to knock somebody out early to gain points. You want to qualify well, but it also means that if the other teams in front of you in points are running well, too, you're not going to see them until later in the day. So, you just have to hope that somebody can beat them early, and you have to concentrate on what's in front of you and not worry about all the drama that's going on around you.

Ron

This weekend at zMAX Dragway in Concord, N.C., across the street from Lowe's Motor Speedway, we'll be racing our second event in the Charlotte area. It is also the first race of our Countdown to 1 playoffs, which is NHRA drag racing's “Chase.”

Our NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Funny Car team has been great all year long. We won the most races of anyone in the Funny Car class, and it's interesting now because you watch the Chase with the NASCAR guys and several races ago Mark Martin was fighting just to get into it and now that he's into it he's at the top of the list with all his wins.

When the NHRA Countdown came into effect it was tough to swallow for a lot of the “old school” fans, much like the NASCAR fans when they added the Chase. It was tough to adjust to, but it's brought a lot of excitement to the sport. NHRA also announced that, besides the fact that the leader going into the Countdown earns a bonus 20 points, a new qualifying points system will begin for the Countdown this weekend, where the top three qualifiers in each of our four rounds will earn three, two and one points, respectively. If someone is No. 1 in each round, he/she could earn an additional 12 points for the weekend, on top of the regular points.

Generally, depending on the weather, we have four runs of qualifying every weekend, and everyone has a chance to make up over what is half of a round of competition points-wise (20 points for every eliminations round win) just in qualifying. I think is a great new addition to the Countdown.

Let's face it, the first year of the Countdown I was the points leader by triple digits when the Countdown started and then we lost the points lead. Had we not had the Countdown, there was a very good chance that I would have been a world champion.

But we all knew what it was going to be like going into the Countdown the first year. This year's going to be exciting, especially with NHRA adding the chance to make up three points per qualifying run.

I think NHRA wanted to make sure all the teams were trying their best to make the best runs for the fans in qualifying, because a lot of teams, if not all of them, once they were qualified decently in the show on Friday night's good session, tended to test things on Saturday because usually the conditions you have on Saturday are much like they are on Sunday on race day as far as the weather and track temperatures go.

That being said, it was the perfect opportunity to try something. Well, now, the chance to be the quickest car, which excites me as driver, and earn those points changes everything. My crew chief on the NAPA charger Ed “Ace” McCulloch is very driven, especially in conditions that are tough, hot, and the sun is out on the track. Those challenges result in a crew chief really having to figure out a way to get the car down the track.

Another thing NHRA did, which is a long time coming, is to offer the 20-point bonus for resetting the national elapsed-time record racing to 1000 feet. It's going to be tough because what they did was go back to the quickest run to 1000 feet in Funny Car, and that was our 4.02-second run in Phoenix this year. They had not recognized national records racing to 1000 feet before, but now they will, and we are the current national record holder with the NAPA Charger. The NHRA will not reward us with the 20 bonus points retroactively, unfortunately, and now that time is a bulls-eye for all the other teams.

But, you have to remember, in order to break that national record and claim the 20 points which, ironically, is one round of competition's worth of points, you have to break the 4.02 and you have to make another run within one percent of that during the weekend to back up the record.

So, it's not like a team just has to go run quicker than 4.02, they have to be able to back it up in the same race.

I think we're going to see where that is going to pose some interesting strategies for the crew chiefs when the Countdown gets down to the end of the year, because if you're going to go for the record you're going to risk going over the edge and smoking the tires. I think that's going to cause a lot of teams to change their focus – and that just might be a bigger story as far as the Countdown goes than a lot of people think.

A lot of teams are looking at it as a way that they can lose those bonus points to someone else. I'm looking at it the other way around. This is going to be a way that we can earn them. If you go into each qualifying run and think you're going to lose three points to somebody else, what kind of confidence level are you demonstrating? I'll be looking at Ace pointing at me through the front windshield when I'm staging during qualifying and I'll be thinking, OK, we're going after those three points right now. It's going to be cool.

We might not gain any points, we may not be that good in qualifying the rest of the year, I don't know, but I think the excitement of being able to earn those extra points is pretty cool.

The Concord race this weekend is going to be really exciting. It's the first Countdown event of the year, and last year was the first time we raced there. What amazed me last year was walking in the pit area and having fans that you wouldn't expect to see at a drag race who were new fans to drag racing that were big NASCAR fans. They were reaching out and actually touching you and saying, ‘Man, I can't believe I'm getting this close to you drivers.' I think that really opened up a lot of the eyes of some of the fans in that area.

I've heard so many people who are flying in for this race from all over. It's become kind of a destination race, much like the Vegas race, where people make vacation trips around the event.

And, talking to Bruton Smith, he's telling us that the ticket sales are great in advance of this race. That really makes us proud of what we're doing and we know we're going to give fans a great race this weekend.

Our NHRA Full Throttle season is coming down to two races before the Countdown to 1 playoffs begin following our Daytona 500/Indy 500 – the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis on Labor Day weekend. After that, the final six races will determine who is the champion in all of NHRA's four pro classes: Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock car, and Pro Stock Motorcycle.

It's been kind of a fun battle for me and the NAPA Auto Parts team because we led at times by several digits during the first 16 races of the season. We started the season with our mindset being that we will focus on one run at a time and go up and try to be the best car and make the best run of that session. Well, that plan won us five races this year.

But, we also had to look out a little bit in the future and, honestly, because of the testing moratorium set by NHRA (only four test days allowed), we had to do some testing during race conditions. Also, with the Countdown looming and knowing that we still had to win races and rack up points, there was a little more going on inside my head personally.

My good friend Tommy DeLago, who tunes my new teammate Matt Hagan's car, is kind of fighting to stay in the top 10 (they're in 11th right now), while my “old” teammate Jack Beckman is pretty solidly in the top five. You want your teammates to be in the Countdown. There's nothing better than to go into this Countdown and have two other teammates in there with you. We can go up and stand on the stage Sunday morning knowing that we each have a shot at earning some points for the championship run.

Not that it was a distraction, but it surely has been in our minds. There are five championship-caliber cars battling for those last three spots in the Countdown: Robert Hight in 12th, Hagan in 11th, Cruz Pedregon in 10th, Mike Neff in ninth and John Force in eighth.

We decided to do a little bit of testing during the Western swing of races (Denver, Seattle and Sonoma, Calif.) and we ended up with a win and a semifinal out of the first two races.

Right now, it's getting down to where we have to focus on regaining the points lead we held for most of the year. We're now in second because of our quarterfinal finish in Sonoma. We're 28 points behind Tony Pedregon, but we really want to earn the 20 bonus points that NHRA awards to the regular season leader going into the Countdown. We found out this year that every single point is going to count more than ever. And, to be honest, after leading the standings like we had been earlier in the year it was good to get those competitive juices flowing again mixing it up with Tony and Ashley Force Hood (third in points) for the top spot. She's 97 points behind us.

In a way, I'm glad to have that competition among us three, because it gets us back in that race mode that we're going to have to be in when the Countdown starts. Some people may wonder if we're disappointed that we lost the points lead, but the answer is no. It's actually got us back on our toes and not on our heels.

We know to win a championship you have to race offensively and not defensively. That may have lost us championships in the past by racing defensively when we had the points lead.

Obviously, everybody knows the Countdown is coming. It's much like the Chase in NASCAR. There's going to be a lot of good teams that won't be in the Countdown and they're going to look to be spoilers. It's going to be very interesting to see who makes it in and who doesn't.

We have two official test days left and we're going to have to use them wisely before and during the Countdown.

Ron

In my last diary, I started to write about how important it is to have a crew chief who totally understands what a driver is dealing with when driving a 300-mph-plus Funny Car down either a quarter-mile track or to 1000 feet.

I think the great drivers have always had a crew chief to not only help set up their car but with whom they could communicate really well. And I think that's what has made my career as successful as it has been so far, having Ed “Ace” McCulloch as my crew chief.

Besides being a crew chief, he's driven Top Fuel and Funny Car, so when I get back from a run and I try to explain to him what happened during a run, he gets it.

If I tried to explain to you the reader in the same terms I use to talk to my crew chief you would probably look at me like a dog hearing a high-pitched sound. It would be humorous to listen to. But, Ace understands, and I think that's probably the coolest thing about having a crew chief who has been a driver.

Now that I've given credit where credit is due, let's get back to explaining what goes on inside the cockpit of an 8000-horsepower Funny Car during a run.

Most drivers have two manual parachute levers mounted in the car. You have to remember, we're traveling so fast that we cover four football fields in four seconds racing to 1000 feet. Once the car gets going at half track and the clutch locks up and it throws you back in the seat, your next goal is to get ready to hit the parachute lever while you're trying to keep this 8000-horsepower Funny Car planted in the middle of the track.

You acquire an internal clock in your head, and for me personally, I always know at a certain point when I look out and I see the finish line coming – and at first it's pretty far out there – when to hit the lever. But, the car is moving so fast that by the time I hit that parachute lever I'm already to that point. I've gone several football fields in a fraction of a second.

When you reach up with one hand to deploy the parachute you're hoping that nothing unusual happens at that point, so you quickly get your hand back on the steering wheel. You're still on the throttle until you hit the finish line and then you let off the throttle and about that time the parachute opens.

The funny part is you think there's a lot of g-forces on your body when you're hauling down the track – and there are over six gs at that stage – but when the parachute deploys it's well over negative seven or eight gs, and sometimes more if you hit both parachutes. And it literally wants to throw you out the front of the car while you're going 310-mph-plus in four seconds with a whole lot of adrenaline gushing through your body.

You're quickly brought down to probably 150mph right when the 'chutes hit and then you're able to get on the brakes and bring the car to a stop less than another quarter-mile down at the end of the track.

That's why you see a Funny Car driver after he/she gets out of the car to do interviews at the top of the track so out of breath from just going a quarter of a mile (or 1000 feet). I think that answers the question of why we get out and we can hardly speak sometimes. It always amazes me to see a NASCAR driver who's just gone 500 miles get out of his car and is pretty nonchalant when doing his interview.

A lot of times when I race in other types of racing, the competitors joke with me that I should be more than comfortable because I'm used to going over 300mph. Everything is relative. When you get into a new form of racing, it's often uncomfortable just because it's new. So you're trying to adapt to it, and on top of that you have cars all around you, which we're not used to when we're drag racing side by side.

To be honest with you, during a run your competition is actually the lane that you're racing in. And your opponent is the wall on one side and the centerline of the track on the other side. These cars are so unpredictable and so squirrelly that they could, at any given moment, take a left or a right-hand turn and put you in either the wall or over the centerline (an immediate disqualification).

You're not even worried about who is in the lane next to you; you're worried about keeping the car straight.

I think what really separates our sport from other forms of motorsports, besides the fact that our speeds are the fastest of any auto racing series in the world, is that the technology that has continually advanced in most motorsports has taken the driver out of the equation in many instances. And you hear it from a lot of the drivers, whether they race in IndyCar or NASCAR. When it takes the driver out of the competition because of the advanced technology, it's upsetting to a driver who feels his/her driving talent should be the major factor in winning a race.

That's what is so neat about our sport of NHRA drag racing. As a spectator or a viewer, you may look and see that the car is just going straight down the track – but it's not. We're fighting for our lives to keep that Funny Car in the middle of the track.

And, on top of that, the reaction time is so very important from start to finish. Our races are won and lost on driver talent and there is no computer to control our car during the race. You can look at the computer data after the race and decide what to do for the following race. But during the run it's all about the driver – and the driver hanging on in a car that was given to him by a crew chief who knows how to tune a winner. But it's up to the driver to do his/her job on the Christmas Tree with the reaction time, and even more so to manhandle and finesse the car down the 1000-foot track.

You wouldn't think finesse is an appropriate word when talking about an 8,000-horsepower Funny Car, but in today's cars it is so important. It's a matter of inches a lot of times where races are won or lost, and whether the driver can keep that car in the center of the track where the rubber is.

It may sound easy, but when the car is trying to take off like a rocket and you're trying to keep it in the center of the groove and the front end is barely on the ground, it's hard to steer and it becomes a very difficult car to keep under control. And we certainly do not have power steering!

Ron

I've had a number of great opportunities in my racing career to compete in different types of motor racing. And it's been a dream come true to race with some of the guys I race against on short-track ovals, in the dirt, and at other venues. But, any time I'm asked about whether I would ever make a switch in careers, I'm quick to shake my head no. I have told people time and time again, especially racecar drivers, there's nothing on this planet that compares to driving an 8000 horsepower fuel Funny Car.

The cool part is getting a lot of questions from the other drivers about what it's like to drive a Funny Car. What surprises me is that some fans think all we do is step on the throttle and then hang on. And, while that's true in a lot of cases, these 300-plus-mph cars are extremely unpredictable when you step on the throttle. From idle to full throttle you're only talking about an inch and a half of travel with your right foot.

What most people understand is that the reaction time at the Christmas Tree is very important in drag racing. But that's only a part of it. And as the years go by, reaction times become a little bit less important, because there is so much horsepower with these cars you're basically being catapulted down the track and the car wants to take off. While the wheelie bars help keep the car somewhat planted to the surface, keeping it from doing a back flip, it's hard to keep it in the center of the groove in the track where the rubber is.

A lot of times you'll have a newcomer who is maybe standing behind the car during a run say after he/she watches the race, "Wow, that looked like it was a straight run." Well, it may have looked straight from the outside, but inside the car you're sawing away at that wheel and steering the car left and right constantly all the way down the track just to keep the thing going straight.

You're strapped into the car as tight as possible and you have an 8000-horsepower engine literally a couple of feet in front you. There is so much noise and so much vibration that, even though we do this all the time and do it for a living, it's still frightening at times to know how much power we are controlling that is sitting right in front of us.

On top of that, you add the fact that you're going from zero to 100 mph in less than one second from a standing stop. You throw all these things into the mix and you get that incredible out-of-this-world rush of being catapulted down the racetrack in four seconds at over 300 mph.

You're being shot down the track with a force of over 6 gs, and, if that's not enough thrill for you, then throw in a new experience when the engine loses a cylinder (there are eight) on one side. Just image that one cylinder produces as much power as one NASCAR Sprint Cup engine, about 800 horsepower. When that cylinder is dropped on one side, there is so much downforce lost that the car will move easily one full width of a car to the left or the right, while you're pinned back in the seat at over 6 gs. And that's when I believe the good drivers are separated by the "just OK" drivers.

One of the common questions I am asked is what makes a good Funny Car driver. I think anybody can step on the throttle and, if they're brave enough, hang on. But, when something goes wrong, say, on race day, and you have a problem and you have to figure out a way to get to the finish line -- whether the car is smoking the tires or a cylinder has been dropped -- the good driver is the one who can feel that and know when to get off the throttle and when to get back on it.

You have only a split second to decide whether to get back on, but if the car is not straight when you get back on it, you're in big trouble. Not only are you in big trouble, you could definitely hurt the person in the lane next to you if you're not pointed in the right direction. These Funny Cars are so unpredictable with their short wheelbase and the stiff chassis that you start to learn how to feel the car with your butt.

I have learned a lot from driving racecars that make turns and slide in the dirt that I can actually transfer that knowledge to when the Funny Car gets sideways and I have to figure out how to get it down the track.

You won't be surprised to know that a driver's vision during a run is very much affected by all the power. There's always a constant vibration on the run on top of the outrageous thunder of the engine and the smell of the nitromethane. For the first probably 300 feet (of a 1000-foot race track this season, as opposed to the regulation 1320 feet or quarter-mile), the vibration that you feel in the grandstands or at the starting line as a spectator is what we feel in the car tenfold. And it's very hard to see for the first 200 or 300 feet. And then at that point, while the clutch starts to lock up and the run gets smoother and smoother, you're also going faster and faster.

After you step on the throttle you don't know how long it's going to rattle It's kind of like having your head in a paint shaker at times where you're trying to get your vision straight but your head is being shaken around.

The funny thing is that a lot of times after a run I come back to the NAPA Auto Parts trailer and talk to my crew chief Ed "Ace" McCulloch and it might take me seven or eight minutes to tell him what happened during that four-second run. Everything is crammed into your brain in such a short time during those runs, on top of the adrenaline level you're experiencing, that it's a lot of like a computer being uploaded and downloaded.

When you get back from a run your brain starts to unload all this data and you start to remember things that happened. That's when I think a good driver can tell a crew chief all the important details he thinks the crew chief should know. Even though there is onboard data for the crew chief to look at following the pass (no data acquisition is allowed to be viewed during a run), it doesn't hurt for him to listen to the driver, especially a crew chief like mine, who was one of the greatest drivers that has ever been strapped into a drag racing car. He knows what it feels like in the cockpit, so he understands what I'm telling him.

When you look at all forms of motor racing, you'll see that the successful drivers have all had great crew chiefs behind them.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Ron