Cannon runs strong in first round, loses to T.Pedregon in G'ville

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series
Round 3 of 23
MAC TOOLS GATORNATIONALS
GAINESVILLE (Fla.) RACEWAY
SUNDAY, MARCH 16, 2003

FINAL ELIMINATIONS

CANNON HAS STRONG FIRST ROUND RUN AGAINST NO. 1 QUALIFIER TONY PEDREGON

No. 16 qualifier Scotty Cannon, driving the Oakley "Elite Special Forces"
Funny Car, had a strong run against No. 1 qualifier Tony Pedregon in the
first round, but was eliminated by the driver out of John Force's camp,
despite posting his quickest elapsed time in eliminations this season, 4.923
seconds at a top speed of 316.01.

The Oakley crew was not disappointed, however, as they feel they're on the
right track to solving the problems they've been experiencing this year.

"It was good," said Cannon. "Naturally, we wanted to win, for sure. We were
looking to be a little faster. That's the only run we have to go on, because
we put a new manifold, a whole new fuel system on the car which we were
trying to run the first of the year. Counting testing at Phoenix on Monday
(after the Checker Shuck's Kragen Nationals at Firebird Raceway), we didn't
go but 306 (mph). And coming into this race we hadn't been to the finish
line but one other time; it was kind of slow, a 5.07 (qualifying here), so
if you take all that into consideration and all the engine problems that we
were having, blowing up, kicking the rods and throwing the mains out of it,
our main issue coming into this race was basically to just fix that problem
because it's just a matter of time if you have a problem with that before
you keep tearing up stuff, number one, and driving a Funny Car you
eventually hurt the car and run over some stuff, like a crankshaft or rod.
The other good thing is, I guess, (team owner) Don Schumacher probably had a
knife to his wrist with all the stuff that we were blowing up, so he can
probably put it back into his pocket for awhile now, unless we start tearing
stuff up again."

NOTE: With Gary Scelzi¹s defeat of John Force in the first round, Cannon¹s
Don Schumacher Racing teammates Scelzi, in the Oakley "Grab Life By The
Horns" Dodge Stratus R/T, and Whit Bazemore, in the Matco Tools Iron Eagle
Dodge Stratus R/T, have each beaten John Force this season: Scelzi here in
the first round and Bazemore, in Phoenix, in the second round.



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