Spencer

What a great finish for Team Target in Saturday night's Pepsi 400 at Daytona. The guys did a great job adjusting the car all night. During the first part of the race the car wasn't that good. When we got up there and started mixing it up, it got a little too loose on us. My crew chief, Doug Randolph, did a good job making adjustments with tire pressure changes. We got it really good and then the last change was awesome.

We worked our way up to the top-15 and then there was a bad accident. I just thank the Good Lord I missed it and nobody got hurt. That put us in a situation where we could battle for the win and a top-five. I gave my teammate Sterling Marlin a heck of a push. I know Michael Waltrip lost his teammate in Dale Earnhardt Jr. That only left two Dodges and a Chevy and Ford. We'd probably made it three wide and it would have been a heck of a finish.

It was interesting, the longer our car ran the better it handled and I think Sterling was in the same boat. Being in the lead draft, being in the lead is the key. You can dictate what you've got to do. You can move around the track, you can do a lot of things. All in all, this was a great run for our team. It secured the points lead for Sterling and moved us closer to the top-10.

I think Dale Jr. tried to win the race. He moved on the outside of Michael and nobody went with him. In the Busch race, nobody would even try. They all stayed in line. They were all a bunch of wimps. But I knew these boys would make some action happen at the end. I was just glad I had my teammate there. I just stayed with him. We moved back some, but we knew if we stayed together we'd be all right. Dale Jr. tried to win the race, and I don't blame him one bit.

We'll be at Chicago this weekend and I'm really looking forward to it. Last year we finished fifth in the inaugural Winston Cup race there. We qualified good and ran good all day. We're taking the same Target Dodge that's been a good car for us at other tracks this season, and we're going with the attitude that our season started last week.

I think our whole team has learned a lot since the Daytona 500. We built a car just like Sterling's for the 500 and it didn't work for us, so the guys went back to work and built another one for July. I think this will help our entire superspeedway program. I can't wait to get back to Talladega with it. We felt we should have qualified better with it at Daytona, but it was a brand-new car and it had never been tested. We still think there's two or three tenths left in it, and we'll find it by Talladega. I know we're a long way out of the top-10, but we've got 19 races left and if we can gain 20 points a race we'll be there by the end of the season.

Finishing in the top-10 was one of our goals when the season started and just because we missed the Daytona 500, I don't see that being an impossible thing to do right now. We've worked on some new things the last month, and it's beginning to pay off. We've got great motors, our cars are better and the team is getting stronger every week.

It's like we were on our first date when the season started. It didn't go too good the first couple of dates, but then things got better and now they're awesome. We know what each other is thinking now, and the team communication is so much better than it's ever been. I'm really looking forward to the second half of the season with this Target Dodge. It felt great to be running up front with Sterling at Daytona, and I think you're going to see a lot more of that in the next 19 races -- starting this weekend in Chicago!

Jimmy Spencer is the driver of the No. 41 Target Dodge Intrepid R/T. He will be providing a regular diary to ESPN.com throughout the Winston Cup season.