Cannon No. 9 on Fri. 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

CANNON TAKES NO. 9 ON FRI. IN SONOMA

SONOMA, Calif. (Aug. 1, 2003) - Scotty Cannon qualified No. 9 in the second
qualifying session today in his Oakley Funny Car, popping the motor at the
end of the run with a 4.941-second elapsed time at 296.05 mph. In the first
session his 5.415/228.19 was good for No. 11. This is Cannon's first race
weekend where he is technically the crew chief on his car.

"It was running good early and we're not sure exactly what happened," he
said. "It laid over at about half track. The half-track speed was way down.
The motor popped when I went through the finish line, like it blew the case
on the supercharger.

"We have a whole different program going here," he added. "Me and Todd
(Blakeley) are tuning the car and we're getting a little help from Zippy
(Mike Neff, Gary Scelzi's crew chief), and (Lee) Beard (Whit Bazemore's crew
chief) and those guys are helping us a little bit. Bottom line is I'm making
the last call. If we can come out of this thing qualified and go some rounds
it would be remarkable for me. But we're happy.

"Phil (Shuler, former crew chief who is now head mechanic) is still actually
helping us a lot. This is all still Phil's deal. It's his motor. Probably
things I had done may have messed it up, but we're plugging along. We
changed our program all the way around, for good or bad. We've got to show
some progress; I understand."

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