Bazemore moves up to fifth in Funny Car points, loses in second round

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
2004 NHRA POWERade DRAG RACING SERIES
ROUND 2 OF 23
CHECKER SCHUCK'S KRAGEN NHRA NATIONALS
FIREBIRD RACEWAY
CHANDLER, ARIZ.
RACE DATES: March 5-7, 2004

CHANDLER, Ariz. (March 7, 2004) - Whit Bazemore has always said that
qualifying well and going rounds are vitally important when chasing an NHRA
Funny Car championship. The driver of the Matco Tools Iron Eagle Dodge
Stratus proved that point this weekend by qualifying No. 2 and moving up in
the point standings today despite being ousted in the second round of the
CSK Nationals at Firebird Raceway.

With two races down of the 23-event NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series,
Bazemore has moved from seventh to fifth in Funny Car points, in a three-way
tie with Jerry Toliver and Eric Medlen, despite what he considers to be a
disappointing effort in eliminations. Del Worsham was the event winner.

Bazemore, the two-time U.S. Nationals champion and 2003 Funny Car
championship runner-up easily dispensed with Keith Jackson in the first
round with a 4.961-second elapsed time at 304.19 mph to Jackson's
tire-smoking 13.096/72.77.

In the second round, however, he faced Del Worsham against whom he had a
close career 18-19 win-loss record. By the end of that contest, Worsham was
up one more win as he outran Bazemore to the finish line in a tight race.
Bazemore's .131 reaction time to Worsham's .081 didn't help, as he crossed
the stripe .054 of a second behind Worsham with a 4.958/303.98 to Worsham's
4.954/304.19.

"It's a round we should have won," said Bazemore. "I made a mistake on the
starting line and that's that. We got beat. What needed to happen was for
them to not run as well as they did and then we would have still been OK. It
just didn't work out that way. That's the way it goes.

"We're going to make sure that doesn't happen again that way," he added.
"There are a million ways to lose drag races and there's only one way to win
them and that is you've got to be perfect. We'll go to Gainesville and try
to be perfect there, and we'll be more perfect than we were here, that's for
sure."

Next up is the NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla., on March 19-21.