I had a flat tire on the way to the track. I nursed it home with my bottled nitrogen. The tires are shot however - cords are showing. New tires are on order. I'm going back to the 15" wide Hoosiers - so unfortunately I won't get an apples to apples comparison of Fast Eddie's set up. Next Thursday is questionable, depends on UPS.

I heard about Thursday's traction problems. I spoke with Bob Klein on Tuesday, who responded to my email, about my experience between Fontana and Irwindale. I have direct apples to apples comparison of Irwindale and Fontana two days apart and Fontana is way way better.

Bob was not moved by my arguments. Please add your voice to the cause. One voice is just a crackpot complainer. We need more crackpots. His email is bobk@irwindalespeedway.com And don't forget to ask for Sunday racing this winter.

I went four rounds at Fontana. Ran 11.61 @ 116 MPH - new performance bests. The last round I tried to tighten up my RT by inching in a little deeper and went red by 0.003.

I've done that "inch in" thing before with good results. Got some wins. But I got to thinking about it driving home. I won't be doing that again.

When I got home I got out my crayons and did some arithmetic. I've come to the conclusion that inching in to improve the RT is dumb. Here's what I came up with:

Let's say me and another car run identical times, both at 100 MPH. We roll in and start from the same spot. If I leave 0.050 before him, and we run 100 MPH, I'll beat him to the stripe by about 88 inches (7 feet). The ticket will show my RT was 0.050 quicker.

However, lets say I roll in 5 more inches than him and we leave at the same time. The RT on my ticket will again show me 0.050 quicker, but I'll beat him to the stripe by just the 5 inches I started with. Basically I've risked a red light start for a stinking 5 inch head start.

Crayons never lie.