I woke up this morning to rain pounding on the windshield of my motorhome and that’s never a good thing for a race day. So I wasn’t too happy about that.

I watched SportsCenter to see what was going on and I always DVR the Happy Hour practice. So I watched that to see who was really good, what lines people were running and things like that. But when it rains on a Saturday night and Sunday morning, the dynamics are so different.

I talked to my crew chief, Adam Stevens, a little bit. We talked about a few changes that we were going to make. I got to visit with some of the M&M (sponsorship) folks who were in town and with some of my friends and family who were here for the race. My mom and dad came up, so it was a busy morning before the driver’s meeting.

After that I made myself a turkey-and-cheese sandwich and ate an apple with some peanut butter. — nothing too heavy, but enough to fill my stomach up.

The green flag dropped and our car was really good, a little too good early. And as the track freed up and rubbered up, we just got off on adjustments. That’s probably a lack of my confidence in what to do with these race cars and maybe Adam was looking to hear something from me that I didn’t tell him.

We got a couple of adjustments off and that really hurt. That was at a crucial part of the race. Once you get two laps down, you’re really stuck.

I’m disappointed we didn’t finish better (than 18th). That’s a respectable day. We took care of the M&Ms Crispy Camry, but we can do better than that. Our goal was a top-10 and we just missed it.

The first weekend was good. We had a good time at Atlanta Motor Speedway, but I can’t wait to get back to Charlotte and see my family and get ready for Vegas.

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