Bazemore No. 4 on Fri. in Spectacular Spark-filled Run in Sonoma

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series
Round 15 of 23
Fram-Autolite NHRA Nationals
Infineon Raceway
Sonoma, Calif.
Race Dates: Aug. 1-3, 2003

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

BAZEMORE QUALIFIES NO. 4 IN SPECTACULAR RUN

SONOMA, Calif. (Aug. 1, 2003) ­ Whit Bazemore grabbed the No. 4 qualifying
position tonight, at the same time putting on a spectacular show of sparks
as he crossed the finish line with the left rear body panel of his Matco
Tools Iron Eagle Dodge Stratus self-destructing as a tire came apart at the
end of the run. In an attempt to stop the car, Bazemore grazed the
guardwall.

"We're disappointed for a number of different reasons," said Bazemore, who
posted a 4.845-second elapsed time at 290.07 mph, "not the least of which is
we lost our race car probably for the rest of the weekend and we also lost
our chance at the No. 1 qualifying position. We were running pretty good at
1000 feet, good enough to be low, and it wasn¹t even under full power there,
so it's just one of those things. It's part of the business; sometimes the
unexpected happens.

"The biggest thing is the tire ripped off part of the rear wing," he added,
"which changed the aerodynamics of the car and that's what kind of put us in
the wall. I had the wheel cranked. After looking at the video I would have
thought that with both parachutes out I would have been able to keep it off
the wall, but I couldn't. It just scraped the wall easy; it wasn't bad."

"It appears that absolutely nothing fell off the race car," commented Lee
Beard, crew chief on the Matco Tools Dodge. "The motor is fine. As a matter
of fact, we're leaving the motor in the car; there's nothing wrong with it.
We¹re not exactly sure what happened, why the rear tire came apart.
Goodyear's engineers have it in their possession. They're going to analyze
it and hopefully give us an answer."

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