NHRA: Bazemore Loses a Heartbreaker in Houston
19 April 2000
Posted By Terry CallahanMotorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
After defeating a tire-smoking Bob Weigennant to start Sunday's final eliminations of the O'Reilly Nationals, Whit Bazemore knew he would have his hands full in the second round with rival Tony Pedregon. After all, the two had performed almost identically in the opening stanza, with lane choice going to the Kendall Motor Oil/Matco Tools Camaro Z28 by a mere five thousandths of a second. The match-up lived up to expectations, as the two cars ran as if bolted together, posting elapsed times within four thousandths of a second. In fact, the actual margin of victory seemed to be the slight advantage gained by Bazemore's opponent at the starting line. Afterwards, a disappointed Bazemore was more than ready to shoulder the responsibility.
"Today was a case of good news, bad news. The good news is that this Kendall/Matco Camaro team has their hot rod back, but the bad news is that I was pathetically late in the second round, and lost a race we could have and should have won. It was my job to win, and I didn't get it done. It's very frustrating, and fortunately doesn't happen very often, because you feel miserable afterwards.
"Even so, this Etchells Racing Team had a pretty strong race. Our Camaro performed well throughout the weekend, with four good passes in qualifying and two solid runs today. It's now up to us to take the positive momentum from here and build on it in Richmond."
Text provided by Racing PR
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