Bazemore reaches fourth NHRA final round

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series
Round 9 of 23
O'REILLY SUMMER NATIONALS
HEARTLAND PARK TOPEKA (Kans.)


TOPEKA, Kan. (May 25, 2003) - For most NHRA pro teams it really doesn't get
much better than this: Your driver qualifies in the top half of the field in
each of the nine races so far, is low qualifier once, reaches the semifinal
round in each of the nine races except for one, advances to the final round
four times, wins one of them, sets track top-speed records, and is knocking
on the door for an NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series championship.

Most teams would kill for these results. But in the rarefied, competitive,
pressure-filled air of a top NHRA professional team, such as the Matco Tools
Iron Eagle Dodge Stratus R/T operation of driver Whit Bazemore and crew
chief Lee Beard, one quarter of the largest pro NHRA team on the circuit,
only one event win in nine races and second place is often just not good
enough.

After losing today in the final round against his nemesis and points leader
Tony Pedregon from John Force's team for the second time this season,
Bazemore is understandably disappointed to not have won his second straight
race. However, based on the results mentioned above, crew chief Beard less
discouraged. Nobody said it would be easy, but this Don Schumacher Racing
Funny Car team is clearly a contender, which no one would argue.

They launched with nearly identical reaction times: .073 for Pedregon, .076
for Bazemore. But it was Pedregon at the finish line first with a
4.848/320.66 to Bazemore's tire-smoking 5.126/252.38.

Quarter-mile race tracks may all look the same, but at most circuits lane
choice is critical. The left lane here in Heartland Park Topeka for the
O'Reilly Summer Nationals was the one to have and the two-time U.S.
Nationals champion did not have it in the final round. Bazemore earned lane
choice for the second round after defeating Bob Gilbertson in the first with
a 4.833/321.50, and also in the second round, when he defeated Tim Wilkerson
with a 4.872/317.64. But he lost the chance to select the more favorable
lane for the final, despite defeating Gary Densham with a 4.898/314.39 in
the semis.

"We tried everything we could try to have lane choice going into the final
and we came up a little short," said Bazemore, who is now 94 points behind
Pedregon in the championship. "Even shallow staging and running the car as
hard as we thought we could get away with in the semifinals. The bottom line
is we lost lane choice. Down track the right lane just wasn't good all
weekend. We were one of the many, many cars that got caught out. We spun the
tires in the final pretty hard just before half-track and that was it. We
got beat.

"We're just extremely disappointed that it's a lone-lane race track and that
we got beat. But, it's a long year, we've got a great team over here. I
honestly believe that we did everything we could do to win this race. I
don't think it was possible to win this race in the right lane unless the
other team made a mistake and they didn't. Those are the facts, for what
they're worth."

Bazemore and Beard did walk away with the track record, however. "Yes, we
did a 326.48 mph in qualifying," said Beard. "We ran good in the earlier
rounds, so we had lane choice until we missed it in the semifinals. This was
one of those events where lane choice was pretty much a determining factor.
Sometimes you have to not only run good, you have to run good enough to
maintain lane choice and we didn't do that today.

"The team did an outstanding job," he added. "We went into our fourth final
of the year. Obviously, we've got a great combination, setting track records
for speed in quite a few different places. I'm not disappointed. Yes, I wish
we could have won, but we finished second. We're working awfully hard. We'll
just keep our nose to the grinding wheel to try to beat the John Force
team."