Bazemore drives to No. 5 on Friday in Seattle

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
2004 NHRA POWERade DRAG RACING SERIES
Round 14 of 23
CARQUEST AUTO PARTS NHRA NATIONALS
PACIFIC RACEWAYS
KENT, WASH.
Race Dates: July 23-25, 2004


KENT, Wash. (July 23, 2004) - Whit Bazemore, one of the more outspoken NHRA
POWERade Drag Racing Series competitors against the track conditions here on
the dragstrip at Pacific Raceways since he first won here in 1997, qualified
No. 5 today for the CARQUEST Auto Parts NHRA Nationals and lauded the
resurfacing work the track has recently completed.

"The race track is good," he said after clocking a 5.048-second elapsed time
at 296.24 mph in the second qualifying session today in extremely hot
conditions. "They did a good job with it. It feels very smooth."

The track conditions aside, every pro team came to this event with new rules
with which to contend, including an 85 percent nitromethane mixture, down
from 90 percent, a new Goodyear tire, and newly-mandated tire pressures.
"There are so many different variables right now," he commented, "with the
new tire and the excessive heat that we have here (mid-90s). It's a learning
process. It's very tough for the crew chiefs and the teams to back these
cars down enough to go down a track like this. They've done a good job.

"We went out in the final session and we ran 5.04. That was three tenths of
a second quicker than we ran in the first round (5.336/261.62), which was
huge. I don't think we'll find three more tenths tomorrow, but it's
definitely a possibility that we could find a tenth or a tenth and a half,
depending on the conditions. Lee (Beard, crew chief) and the Matco Tools
team are still finding their way with this new tune-up. At this point, it is
somewhat of a crapshoot.

"Everybody coming in here was faced with the same sort of challenge and that
is how to take this new tire that's been mandated and get it to hook up,"
continued Bazemore, third in the Funny Car standings and two-time winner
this season. "No one knew what it would do on this new race track in
90-degree weather, with the 85-percent rule. The power has been cut fairly
drastically on the car.

"All the teams, including ours, have done a pretty good job of adapting the
cars. The only bad thing, from my point of view, is that the cars are really
slow. The premise of this sport has always been to go as fast as you can as
quick as you can. Now with these rules changes we have stepped back quite a
ways in time. 

"For me personally, I like going fast. It's not a macho thing. It's just
when you've been 333 mph it's kind of hard to get excited," said Bazemore,
who posted the quickest and fastest Funny Car pass in NHRA history this year
at Route 66 Raceway of 4.713 seconds at 333.25 mph.

"We left some on the table today. We'll fine tune the car. The bottom line
is it's still 85 percent. It doesn't have the same thunder or the same feel.
The car feels a lot different and it feels a lot slower. And the reason for
that is because it is a lot slower."

Two more qualifying rounds are scheduled for Saturday.

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