Baze No. 3 in Brainerd Fri. night

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
NHRA POWERade DRAG RACING SERIES
NO. 16 OF 23
BRAINERD (MINN.) INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY
LUCAS OIL NHRA NATIONALS
RACE DATE: AUG. 15-17

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

BAZEMORE THIRD ON FRIDAY NIGHT IN BRAINERD

BRAINERD, Minn. (Aug. 15, 2003) - Following a tire-smoking first qualifying
round, which was good only for No. 17, Whit Bazemore found himself in the
second pair in the second session, on a track that was still radiating heat
from the 90-plus ambient temperatures today. He posted the first
under-5-second run of that session, a 4.952 at 297.29 mph, but he knew his
Matco Tools Iron Eagle Dodge Stratus Funny Car just might not hang on to the
No. 1 spot. He was right, as he ended up third, despite the solid run.

"I think the team did excellent considering where we were," he said, "and
the fact that we were number 2 in line meant that we really couldn't judge
the track off of anything anyone else did so we had a great 60-foot time and
we're making good progress with our car. We're very excited about it.
Tomorrow is going to be a different day, and the heat during the day is
going to be tough again. It's going to be very tricky race track, but I
believe Lee (Beard, crew chief) feels like we can go out and repeat in the
heat. So we're going to try to step it up a little bit and we'll go from
there."

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