Bazemore Wins Joliet, Doubles Up for Schumacher Racing

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
NHRA POWERade DRAG RACING SERIES
Round 10 of 23
LUCAS OIL NHRA ROUTE 66 NATIONALS
ROUTE 66 RACEWAY
JOLIET, ILL.
Race Date: May 30-June 1


JOLIET, Ill. (June 1, 2003) - In front of 3000 of team owner Don
Schumacher's friends and business associates, Whit Bazemore collected his
second Funny Car victory of the season, the 14th of his career, on a
holeshot advantage against Tommy Johnson Jr. Bazemore's win made it doubly
sweet for Schumacher Racing as Tony Schumacher also won the Top Fuel race at
Schumacher Racing's home track, Route 66 Raceway. Schumacher Electric is
located in Mt. Prospect, Ill.

Bazemore took of with a .069 reaction time to Johnson's .152, grabbing the
win with a slower 4.872-second elapsed time at 319.67 mph to Johnson's
4.839/316.97.

Adding to the luster of a stellar weekend, Bazemore's teammate Gary Scelzi
set the NHRA Funny Car national speed record of 328.06 mph today.

This was the Matco Tools Iron Eagle Dodge Stratus R/T driver's third
straight final-round appearance, his third victory at Route 66 Raceway ('98,
'01, '03), and it moves him closer to No. 1 in the POWERade Drag Racing
Series Funny Car point standings. He's just 36 points behind Tony Pedregon,
who was eliminated by Tommy Johnson Jr. in the second round.

"This is our team's home race, and really a tremendous effort by everybody,"
said Bazemore, who has made it at least as far as the semifinals in nine of
the 10 races so far.

"Three straight final rounds and two wins out of those, it says everything
about our team and our organization, from Don all the way down," added the
Indianapolis resident. "It's just an unbelievable effort by Lee Beard (crew
chief) and the guys, Dan Olson (co-crew chief) and Mike Neff (Scelzi's crew
chief). My teammate Gary Scelzi had a tough week, with a tragedy in his
family. He was here. He's a three-time champion and he showed it this
weekend. To be here and set the national speed record with his Dodge, (was
a) tremendous effort by everybody involved."

Don Schumacher was understandably proud. "I brought in some great, great
people," he said, "with Alan Johnson coming in (Tony Schumacher's new crew
chief); he's the smartest man in this sport. The only guy close to him
realistically is Lee Beard. Lee is doing a fantastic job with us. The Funny
Cars performed all year long. We're going out here to win the World
Championship with this Dodge. Here at my home race track, there's no better
joy than [to win and] to be here with family, friends, employees, my crews
and such. It's just been a great, great weekend."

Bazemore still concedes that his rival Tony Pedregon is going to be tough to
beat for the crown, despite his early-round loss. "It seems that this season
and even going back halfway through the last season, the only time they were
really beatable was when they beat themselves; either Tony did it or they
did it themselves. This year it's been tough. We've beat them not that
often, but we have beat them when they made a mistake. No one else has
really been able to get the job done.

"They are a very, very good team and they have performance that, quite
honestly, we don't quite have right now. But we're very, very close.
Whenever they stumble it's very important for us to take the ball and run
with it. Today's the perfect example. For them to go out in the second round
was a real surprise, but it was good. It's a beautiful thing."

Lane choice was critical today, and Bazemore didn't have that option in the
final round after defeating Bob Gilbertson, Del Worsham and John Lawson. "We
made some pretty drastic changes to the car," he explained. "In fact, we
made one change that we were going to test tomorrow. We went ahead and made
that change for the final. Lee and Dan did a great job and they went outside
the box, so to speak, to try to solve some problems we were having. And it
worked. The car stayed hooked up down track and that was key. Obviously, if
we had run much slower than an .87, we would have gotten beat."

Schumacher was quick to credit his driver for today's victory: "Whit left on
Tommy, did a hell of a job out there," he said. "He rose to the occasion.
And really, we won that round because of Whit."

***

POINT STANDINGS:

1.  Tony Pedregon           912
2.  Whit Bazemore       876
3.  Gary Densham            671
4.  Del Worsham             636
5.  Ron Capps               586
6.  Tommy Johnson Jr.   552
7.   John Force                 514
8.  Johnny Gray                 509
9.  Gary Scelzi                 428