Cannon ready to face the music in Memphis

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
NHRA POWERade DRAG RACING SERIES
Round 19 of 23
O'Reilly Mid-South Nationals presented by Pennzoil
Memphis Motorsports Park
Memphis, Tenn.
Race Dates: Sept. 19-21, 2003

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

CANNON READY TO FACE THE MUSIC IN MEMPHIS

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (Sept. 18, 2003) - Scotty Cannon is ready to face the music
at the O'Reilly Mid-South Nationals this weekend at Memphis Motorsports
Park. In a city famous for its musical heritage, not to mention Graceland,
home of probably the most popular American musician, the late Elvis Presley,
the driver of the Oakley Funny Car is ready to rock and roll.

"We're getting tuned up for the race this weekend, but I won't be playing a
guitar," says the popular Mohawk-wearing racer from Lyman, S.C. "I'll be
working on my Oakley car tune-up, now that I'm the crew chief."

Cannon has had a rough season in 2003, but, now that he's crew chief and
taking advantage of the Schumacher Racing brain trust of Mike Neff (Gary
Scelzi's crew chief), Lee Beard (Whit Bazemore's crew chief) and Dan Olson
(co-crew chief for Scelzi and Bazemore), he's looking for better results as
the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series winds down in the final six races.

Cannon, No. 14 in points, has qualified for every race so far this season,
which is quite an accomplishment on anybody's chart, but has advanced to the
second round just four times. He is still looking for his first Nitro Funny
Car win. 

"We're going to try to pick up here in Memphis where we left off with the
way the car was running at the U.S. Nationals in Indy," he says. "We'll just
try to finesse it a little bit. In Indy we learned we had a car with the
potential to run in the high 4.70s pretty easy. We just have to find the
right buttons to mash.

"I think we can do it . The weather's going to make it easier here, I think.
We're looking forward to trying to get into the field, getting it qualified
in the first run, then be in a good position to back it up on Friday night
to get it in the top half of the field.

"We're making progress," he adds. "If I hadn't made what I call a driver
error at the U.S. Nationals," where he says he stayed on the clutch just a
tad too long and lost in the second round, "we probably would have had a
better result and we could have gathered more data to help us at the rest of
the races. But we're getting there."

Two consecutive rainouts (U.S. Nationals and Reading) are a concern, as the
teams are looking at seven weekends of racing in a row at this stage. "At
least it doesn't look like we have to worry about Hurricane Isabel in
Memphis at this point," says Cannon, who also noted that Isabel has not
affected his home state of South Carolina. This should lessen his stress
level here in Memphis this weekend.

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