Cannon Advances to Second Round at Gateway (NHRA)

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
NHRA POWERade DRAG RACING SERIES
ROUND 12 OF 23
SEARS CRAFTSMAN NHRA NATIONALS
GATEWAY INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY
MADISON, ILL.
RACE DATE: JUNE 27-29, 2003


MADISON, Ill. (June 29, 2003) - The third car of the Don Schumacher Racing
Funny Car stable was the only car to advance to the second round today at
the Sears Craftsman NHRA Nationals at Gateway International Raceway. Scotty
Cannon, in the Oakley Funny Car, defeated Johnny Gray in the first round
with a 5.820/253.33 to Gray's 7.657/127.82. He was then ousted by Del
Worsham in the second round after smoking the tires early: 5.011/304.12 for
Worsham; 7.948/102.90 for Cannon.

This was the second time this season that Cannon has advanced to the second
round.

"First round we just got lucky," he said. "This track was terrible (in the
heat). What happened the second round was we were a little aggressive early.
We haven't been on this type of track conditions all year. This track is
tricky. Bottom line is we got a car set up to run 4.80s all the time and
everybody else here has the same problem: you come in and try to back it
down. You have to back everything down, which we did. We just didn't back it
down enough. 

"It would be nice to be able to be back here next year racing, looking at
these runs under these kind of conditions. I'm not making any excuses, but
we don't have any runs to look at with our whole combination, so we don't
know. It showed some promise. We actually made an adjustment for the second
round. I was pretty well 100 percent confident it would make it at least to
half track. It wasn't set up to run 5.01; we were just trying to run 5.07,
.08 or .10, and we were 200 hundredths later than him on the Tree. We took a
little clutch out of it too. That's really no excuse.

"We just got beat. This track bit us. We have to gather everything up and go
to Denver. Nothing we learned here or all year is going to prepare us for
Denver. (Mile-high) Denver's a crapshoot. The car's making some consistent
runs, that's a plus."

Cannon moved into 14th in the POWERade Drag Racing Series Funny Car point
standings, with 424 points.