All of which made our 5th place finish at Texas Motor Speedway, at our home track, even more gratifying!

Ironically, we had our worst qualifying effort of the year, starting in 18th position. However, the car maintained great balance throughout the race and was a pleasure to drive.

I honestly didn't think that we were going to get the race in due to the inclimate weather. Race day morning the rain began, and temperatures dropped into the 50's with a cold blustery wind. Not exactly ideal race conditions!!

In the early afternoon the rains stopped, but the humidity remained high while the jet dryers began their work around the track. Brian Barnhart held a second drivers meeting Sunday afternoon and covered the special start and restart procedures that would be used due to the very cold conditions. Because the tire compounds were not designed to operate at the low temperatures that we were faced with, Brian and Leo Mehl wisely elected for us to start the race in single file after giving us ample time to bring the cars up to speed to build heat in the tires.

The TeamXtreme crew called a great race for me and did an excellent job on our pit stops. We gradually moved up from our starting position as the race progressed; at the halfway point we had moved up to 10th place. My brother, Jeff, made two excellent spotting calls to keep me out of trouble in the second half of the race, and we moved up 5 more spots to finish in 5th place.

TeamXtreme also won the "Race Within A Race" award by Mall.com for being the highest finishing team in the race sponsored by an Internet Company (Lycos, of course!). On the Team's behalf, $5000 was donated to the "Indent-A-Kid" National Charity.

This difference in banking is all important with respect to the setup that the engineers put on the race cars to achieve optimum speed and handling. Although the six degree rear wing rule remains in effect at Las Vegas, a different approach to set up is generally taken because the car must have a significant amount of mechanical and aerodynamic grip in order to negotiate the "flatter" turns at speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour.

As a team we had learned some things at Pikes Peak that we were looking forward to implementing at Vegas. In the first practice session we tried this new set up, but the car was loose and quite uncomfortable to drive at the limit . . . however, as more rubber was put down in the groove in later practice sessions, the track came back to us and we knew that we had a good combination working for both qualifying and race day.

On Saturday we qualified in 8th position, which was our 5th top ten qualifying effort in a row. We became only the fourth driver in Indy Racing League history to qualify in the top ten this many times in a row.

On race day our plan was to run strong throughout the race, but not to take any unnecessary chances that would jeopardize a good finish. Our initial challenge in the race came during our first two pit stops; due to an engine mapping problem, the motor was extremely difficult to keep running at slower speeds. This resulted in the motor quitting and the crew had to refire it when the service on the car was completed. As a result, we lost three positions on the first stop and five positions (13th place to 18th place) on the second stop.

In spite of the above setback, the car was handling exceptionally well at speed. In fact, we moved from 18th to 8th position during the course of the ensuing green flag run.

At that point, the yellow flag came out due to Greg Ray's contact with the wall. On the restart, Ray was back on the track, but well off the pace. As I prepared to take the high line going into Turn One to get safely around Ray, contact occurred between my right rear wheel and Billy Boat's left front wheel. This incident turned me around and put me, Boat, and Dismore in to the Turn One wall.

Besides being extremely surprised and disappointed, I knew that I had a fracture in my left lower extremity. The telltale numbness was a reminder of my motocross racing days . . . Fortunately, Dr. Sheid informed me that I had only broken one of the metatarsal bones in my left foot, and that in 6-8 weeks I would be good as new. However, going into our season finale at Texas in three weeks with an injury was certainly not the "A-plan"!!

Racing, as every team sport is, is about a team working together in pursuit of perfection. That perfection can only be achieved through adversity. Early in Saturday nights race TeamXtreme was faced with that adversity in the form of an accident. Hollansworth described the event this way, "on lap 29 of the race I encountered some significant air turbulence from cars ahead of me in the middle of turns 1 and 2, which resulted in losing down force to my front wing, to counteract this I input more steering, then a blast of (clean) air caught the wing, pined the front tires and caused a snap over steer condition (the back end came around). I ended up spinning on the exit of turn 2, resulting in contact with the outside wall."

Crew Chief Rob Stark and Engineer Mark Weida then orchestrated a masterful repair job. Six laps went by until the league's tow truck deposited a car that certainly appeared to be out of the race, in the pits. The impact had destroyed the rear wing, the front wing was damaged, two tires had blown, the shock cover was missing and the gearbox had been badly damaged. The crew changed the front wing, nose, tires and fueled the car before hustling it back to the garage area. No hospital emergency room ever operated with more focus, speed or precision that the TeamXtreme crew as it completed the repairs on its heavily damaged race car. The repairs took and additional 32 laps and crew then had to push the car back to pit row (league rules) before Hollansworth could hit the throttle and resume the race. The television broadcast crew was shocked when the CompuCom / Lycos Dallara pulled onto the racetrack and noted it during the broadcast. The crew was now able to take a deep breath. High fives and cold drinks of water went around as TeamXtreme settled back into race mode. Hollansworth's take on the crew's efforts was, "the entire TeamXtreme crew did a fantastic job of repairing the front nose / wing and gearbox damage. We ran until the end of the 312-mile race, finishing in 19th place. By repairing the racecar and returning to the track, the team salvaged all-important points, keeping us in the top 20 and protecting our Rookie of the Year points lead.