Home Depot 300
Irwindale, CA
November 2000
For this last race of the 2000 season I was afforded the luxury of flying to and back home from the event so Steve and Justin drove the truck and trailer out through a snow storm west of the Rockies and stopped for the night at their favorite spot, Palace Station Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Thanks guys and thank you to Palace Station for all of their support during our 2000 season.
The guys pulled in to the southern California area Friday afternoon to do a little more prep work with Fred at Jeff Murray's shop in Fontana. Thanks Jeff for letting us camp out for the day. After fighting the traffic the rest of the way to Irwindale that evening we were ready to go first thing Saturday morning.
The weather was pretty cool for LA when we got to the track at 8 am but the normal prep work needed to be completed. We had just the right number of crew members for things to gel pretty well, and we actually got the entire 1st practice session in. We made a few changes to the chassis, tried a couple different lines and went to work getting the car a little faster each time we went onto the course. After the 2nd practice session we were 7th quick and ready to qualify. We turned our fastest time during qualifying but it wasn't good enough to put us where we expected on the grid, ending up 14th out of 37 cars , nine whet home.
It started to rain lightly just before the support race was ready to start, so our race ended up starting about 1 hour late and it was really cold by then. The first part of the race stayed green a long time, and once my car and tires all got up to a good running temperature, the car started to really hook up. I could go anywhere on the race track so passing and racing was fun. We moved up to 3rd place once after a good pit stop then a car spun in front of us and another car got into the left side of the Oliver Gravity Separators Chevrolet then the yellow flag came out and we pitted. The damage we sustained changed the car for the rest of the night and it caused a bad push we slowed enough that we finally got lapped with about 75 lap to go.
It was an exciting race with lots of competition and I just love a race track with all that room to run 2, 3 and 4 wide. We had great pit stops including one good four tire stop this weekend and for that I would like to thank the guys that work for food: Darren, Jim, Steve, Justin, Gene, Greg, Duane, Billy, Brian. You guys are great! thanks for your time this past season.....Thanks to Fred and Davey for all their help these last few events, and thanks to those who help when they can, Ray, Ken, Brownie and our various scorers Dottie, Jan and Ken.
We ended up finishing 8th and with that secured 10th place in car owner and driver standings. For the many people that help along the way, thanks to Goodyear , Sign Edge Race Car Graphics, Palace Station, Deist Safety, Aramark Uniform Services and most of all thank you to Geoff Burney our car owner and Oliver Gravity Separators for being supportive of our efforts for over 10 years. In 2001 I am determined to get that win and would embrace a battle for a championship for all of these people that have made this possible for our team.
I'm on my way to Kansas City to represent the NASCAR Winston West Series for a press conference to announce the Winston West race date on June 2, 2001 at the new speedway. Hope to see you all at the opening event in 2001 in Phoenix on February 4, 2001.
Scott Gaylord #00
