Bazemore takes No. 10 in Vegas qualifying

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
2006 NHRA POWERade DRAG RACING SERIES
Round 5 of 23
NHRA Summitracing.com Nationals
THE STRIP AT LAS VEGAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
Race Date: April 7-9, 2006


LAS VEGAS (April 8, 2006) - Whit Bazemore posted the second quickest elapsed
time of the final qualifying round today for the NHRA SummitRacing.com
Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to place the Matco Tools
Iron Eagle Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car solidly in No. 10.

Defending event champion Bazemore and crew chief Brian Corradi know they
have more work ahead of them to bring the Matco Tools Dodge back as a top
contender, but are pleased with this weekend's results so far, especially
the 4.799/327.19 on the last lap.

His other strong pass came in the Friday night session, when he delivered a
4.812-second pass at 327.03 mph. The two remaining rounds, in the heat of
the day, produced a 15.422/76.73 (loss of traction at the hit of the
throttle) and a 13.248/73.86.

"It's good," he said of the final pass. "We're still battling a consistency
issue over here. Todd (Okuhara, assistant crew chief) and Brian are working
extremely hard, as is the whole Matco Tools Dodge team. The attitude of the
team is pretty amazing considering the struggles we had and the expectations
that we we put on ourselves and the fact that we haven't met those at all.

"Everyone is fired up and really set on kill. We're here to annihilate our
competition the best way we can, and we're working hard to get ourselves to
where we can do that.

"I don't feel like we're really quite there yet, but, when it goes down the
track, the Matco Tools Dodge runs really quickly normally, and it's a
good-running race car. The thing that we're working on is trying to get it
to go down the race track often, and we're making progress there.

"I think we are starting to turn the corner."

Bazemore faces Phil Burkart Jr. in first round of eliminations on Sunday.