It's a real good marriage between these two teams to be able to go head-to-head the first race of the year. It's a barometer for us to find out where we're at, and we're a little bit better than what we thought we would be. I'm ecstatic. To me it's a win.

The human race has been set up. Someone, somewhere, is playing a practical joke on us. Apparently, women need to feel loved to have sex. Men need to have sex to feel loved. How do we ever get started?

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but there are a lot of good race cars out here, ... This is the best field (of Funny Cars) I've ever seen and that goes back to the days of 'Snake' and 'Mongoose,' Bernstein and the 'Blue Max' (references to Don Prudhomme, Tom McEwen, Kenny Bernstein and the car driven by three-time champion Raymond Beadle). I raced against all of them and I got spanked regular. But, bottom line, it's tougher now. There are no easy rounds.

A dog is not almost-human, and I know of no greater insult to the canine race than to describe it as such

I think the race remains wide open.

Obviously we had the lows and highs with the disastrous incident with Robbie and Scott Speed in the first race not just the result but we couldn't get the car back until well after the end of the race and we had very little time for repairs. Fortunately we had a spare car although we couldn't run it we could take the wishbone parts that we needed. But then in the Feature race Robbie avoided trouble in those first laps. Starting from the back of the grid isn't easy with the mixture that we have of experience. He found his way through and the strategy worked. The team did another superb pit stop and it was as good as we could hope. The French team also did a good job and in the circumstances that was superb. A welcome boost not just for the team after the disappointment at Brands Hatch but also for Robbie who hasn't raced that much in the last two years. This is all bringing him back to where he'll be fully on song.