Burke Lakefront Airport closes each year for 72 hours to run the "Roar by the Shore." CART Champ Cars, Toyota Atlantics and the Barber Dodge Pro Series put on a show over the wide airport runways in Cleveland.

This was my best finish last year and I was looking forward to going back. It is a short weekend, with practice and provisional qualifying on day one and final qualifying and the race on day two. The vastness of the airport leaves little in the way of reference marks and can be confusing. Most of the corners are fast, sweeping, quick transition corners.

I was happy to be back, but as I went out on the track the car was behaving strangely. It was handling differently in each corner. As it turned out my left rear tire had a slow leak and was going down throughout the session. After looking at the data we made some changes to the car and replaced the leaking tire. I went out and was immediately quick. My time held for most of the session until I was edged out just before a black flag.

We had six minutes remaining in the session when we went back out. The leader and myself were the first two on the track and we had a clear track. Having him in my sights and Josh, my engineer, pushing me over the radio was working. Our tire temperatures came up and we were both quicker. First he came across the line and bettered the time, then I came right back. The next lap was the same thing. Then we came around for the final lap and he couldn’t better his time as I went another 4/100 of a second quicker solidifying the provisional pole and a front row starting spot.

The wide runways are notorious for crazy starts in Cleveland. I went into Turn One second and came out fourth. I was stuck behind a car and couldn’t accelerate out of the corner. Three more cars got by as we approached Turn Two. I was in seventh place when a full course yellow came out. I wasn’t able to make up any ground on the restart, but was with the lead pack. As we came around that lap the two cars in front of me spun and I was fortunate to get by without incident. I chased down the car in front of me and had a good move into Turn Three to take over fourth place, then another pass in Turn One to take over third.

My car was fast and each time I got close to the second place car we would run into traffic, dropping me back. This happened three times. Interestingly enough, I was catching second place who in turn was catching first place. We were all converging together for a last-lap battle to the finish. But it wasn’t to be. Unfortunately, two cars in the back of the field crashed and brought out the full-course yellow to end the race. I would take my second podium in two races, but dropped to third in the points, two points out of second. As we head in to the homestretch I am looking forward to my first win this season and closing the gap to the leader. I have been qualifying well and consistently in the front collecting points. The next race is at Mid-Ohio.

Until then...