Bazemore No. 2 Friday night in Houston

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series
Round 5 of 23
O'Reilly Spring Nationals presented by Pennzoil
HOUSTON RACEWAY PARK
Race Date: April 11-13, 2003
Friday, April 11, 2003

Contact: Judy Stropus, 203-438-0501; cell, 203-243-2438

WHIT BAZEMORE JUST MISSES NO. 1 SPOT FRIDAY NIGHT

After ending up No. 13 in the first round with a tire-smoking 9.656/89.40
pass, Whit Bazemore came back in the evening session and posted a
4.778/323.89 lap, which was the quickest and fastest until the final pair,
when Gary Densham squeaked ahead to No. 1 with a 4.755/325.69 pass. Bazemore
was relegated to No. 2.

BAZEMORE: "It was a really good run. It's a good rebound effort by our Matco
Tools team. Normally, in a situation where you struggle a little bit in the
first run, you don't really go for it on the second run, because you have to
be a little more conservative just to guarantee that you qualify and get
down the race track. Not (crew chief) Lee Beard; not tonight. He was real
aggressive with the car and the tune-up. Before we ran, he said, 'Baze,
you've got to keep it exactly in the center of the race track and we'll have
a good chance to be on pole.' And it ran a .77 and that was a tremendous job
by the guys. It's hard at night. We saw a lot of guys have problems tonight,
get out of the groove, hit cones and stuff and these cars are hard to drive
to begin with. This race track is very dark and bumpy and the front end gets
light and it moves the car around and you simply can't see where you are.
With clutch dust in the cockpit and the vibration of the car, you can't see
the cones. You can't see anything. It's a little bit scary; but it's the
same for everybody so we went down there OK. It's kind of a relief to get to
the other end without hitting anything."

ON THE FIRST RUN: "We shook. We were just a little underpowered for the
track. The track was pretty good early and so we shook the tires and went
into tire smoke and lost traction."

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