WD: Yeah, I left my d*** on the starting line in Englishtown. It's still there. I mean we had a run, we qualified really good. We had to run a lower dollar team (Scott Weis); a good team, but they can't run as hard as we could run. I was just out there trying to show everybody I could run with Bernstein and LaHaie and it didn't make. It blew the tires off right at the start of the first round. I should have been trying to run 4.70 not a 4.50.

So, then me and Joe had a talk and he kind of settled me down and now I'm running the car just fast enough to beat the next guy. That's how hard I'm running it.

DRO: You're not trying to set low ET every round?

WD: No, I'm just trying to race smart.

Crew chief Wayne Dupuy analyzes a run by Top Fuel driver Darrell Russell.

You know, when you're doing what we're doing you start to create your own luck. People like Timmy (Richards) and LaHaie and Cory and those guys know that to race us they be better be on their game, or they're not going to beat us.

So, we've got a good car, we've got a top three car right now and we just want to keep it up. We're looking to make it a couple, three or four quicker and have a little bit of a cushion and we're struggling with that right now. We have numbers to half-track to run .52 or .53. When Bernstein ran .58 in Seattle and we ran .58, when we got to half-track our car was four-hundredths quicker than his. But he runs big speed and right now we're struggling to make this thing run big speed. It's not running efficient at the other end. It keeps on dropping a cylinder -- it ain't the same one -- and it seems it's not in the fuel or the timing 'cause we've been everywhere. It's something in the motor, maybe in the cam, we ain't figured it out yet. It struggles from a thousand foot to the finish line. 'Cause when we run 3.07 or 3.06 to half-track, we did in Columbus the same thing and he beats us by.002 to the pole and he ran four hundredths slower at half track, then we've got to work on that. 'Cause if we would run 325 (MPH) like he does, then our number would be a .53 or .54 instead of a 4.58.

DRO: Does Joe Amato get that much involved with the car, other than signing the checks?

WD: Yeah, he's involved. He hasn't been coming to the track a lot. All Joe's ever done his whole life was either work or race; he's never done anything else because the way he built his business he never had time to do anything else and his enjoyment was coming out racing. So, now that he's not in the seat, he wants to do more things in life, some of the stuff he never been able to do. So he's out venturing a little bit and I think that's good. He's in total contact with everything that's going on; we're on the phone three or four times day (about) what we're doing, what we're accomplishing, how we're going to go about it. He keeps me in check so I didn't get over ego'd or spend money where I shouldn't. It's working out pretty good and he's been a great asset.

(next page)

Copyright 2002, Drag Racing Online and Racing Net Source