Let me explain. We’ve run six point races thus far. We’ve had two really good runs—obviously wins at Daytona and Fontana—and one pretty good run being a 12th at Atlanta. Two out of three ain’t bad—I’ll take two firsts and a 12th in a three-race span any time.
But we’ve had three mediocre to bad runs: a 23rd Sunday, a 33rd the previous week at Bristol, and a 43rd in Las Vegas. Each of those three finishes ends with the number 3, our worst being in the third race of the season in Vegas. I’m not going to get too worried yet, but I will keep an eye on this trend as the season goes along. But I think we’ll be all right, as long as I don’t keep an eye on it while I’m spotting!
Now I’m not saying any of those three disappointing finishes couldn’t have been better results if a few things would have went a little differently in each of those races. But the final result, whether you ran better than you finished or not, is what tallies your points for the race and what we have to live with. We’ll have to accept the results and move on, which is exactly what we’re planning to do.
Texas is this week, meaning we get back to the style of track at which we really excel. Tracks including Texas, Lowe’s, Phoenix, California and Michigan are some of the ones we’ve prided ourselves on doing well at every year. You could call them our staple tracks. We count on having good cars so Matt can drive them to top finishes to keep us in the thick of The Chase.
We’ve never considered Martinsville to be one of our staple tracks. I want to win everywhere, but nothing seems to come easy at Martinsville and when we can get out of there with even a top-25 finish, we’ll move on and look forward to better things ahead.
For more information about Mike visit www.mikecalinoff.com
