Quotes from NHRA at Denver
Compiled by Ian Tocher
Photos by Ron Lewis
7/22/04
After a two-week layoff, the NHRA's best were back in action July 16-18, for the Mopar Mile-High Nationals at Bandimere Speedway, near Denver, CO. As usual, they told the story in their own words through team and NHRA press releases.
TOP FUEL
"These next three races will be a blessing to some and a curse to others. All the data you've collected this year is now just wasted paper. You'll really have to start over. If you had a combination that was working before, it means nothing. All the teams will have to start over. The most difficult part will be determining which of the three new variables is causing a positive or negative result. I hope we'll be in a position to take advantage of someone else's tuning nightmares, instead of someone else capitalizing on our tuning woes. I'm sure there will be plenty of frustration to go around."
"More than half of our events are done with three races in a row. If the car is running good you can make up some ground, and if the car is running bad, you're in trouble. So, I like it. If you don't like it then you should go run in the IRL or another series."
"The conditions affect the cars more than the drivers because we're not racing on foot."
"On the last qualifying run, the car shook pretty violently when it left the starting line. I lost vision for a second, and I almost shut it off, but the tire shake cleared up and I was able to drive through it. It turned out to be a great run."
"It was bit hairy going down to that last qualifying pass to get into the field."
"It's a shame to give your opponent a win like that without even being able to go down the track."
"I pulled the first parachute and pulled on the brake. When I did, the brake pulled all the way back and I knew it wasn't working. I hit the second parachute and it came out, but it was too late. I knew I was getting closer to the sand. About then I wished I could be like Fred Flintstone and stick my feet through the floor boards."
"It's real depressing to lose a tight race like that."
"I don't know what's worse, losing this way or with a red light."
"He started running me down about half track and that was it."
"This is the first win for [sponsor] Jesse (James). You know, he's used to being on top and let's just say he's given me lots of words of encouragement lately."
"I'm glad we broke out the new tire here because you don't have much downforce coming into play at altitude. This was probably the best place we could have made the switch."
FUNNY CAR
"Driving a Funny Car sort of takes your breath away, but at Bandimere where there isn't much air to begin with, it really knocks the wind out of you."
"One of the oddest things about drag racing is how much we work for the little amount of actual driving we do. On Sunday night, especially if you made it all the way to the final, you're just exhausted as a driver and your crew guys are about to drop. All for four laps down the track in about six hours. That usually adds up to less than 20-seconds of racing on Sunday. It's a good thing we don't have to go any further than that, because it wipes you out."
"We changed the center of gravity on the car to try and keep the tire spin down so the car wouldn't shake. It worked but, at the same time, it created another problem. The car wants to hike up the front end, and that's not good. But we've addressed that by putting more weight on. Shake has been the problem. Getting past the starting line Christmas tree has been a problem. If we can get the car to go consistently by the tree, we can solve the other problems."
"My big concern right now is this new Goodyear tire and how big of a curve ball it's going to throw our tune-up. The only thing I feel positive about is that we've had three different tires this year and we've been able to make each one work in a relatively short amount of time."
"It's a very tricky race track, especially now; it always has been. It's very challenging. The altitude always presents a problem with making horsepower and making downforce, and now with shortened qualifying sessions and a new tire it made it more challenging."
"It wasn't as good as what we wanted, but we'll take it."
"The post that holds the plate that holds the parachute pack sheared off."
"The Firebird has the chutes in a different location than on the Corvette we were running. Things happen so fast in these cars, I'm not sure if I reached up to where the parachute lever used to be or not. I hit them once and they didn't come out and by the time I hit them again and they deployed it was too late to stay out of the sand."
"If the sun would come out, it would really help us, because the heroes are throwing out some numbers that we really can't produce."
"That wasn't exactly the script I wrote."
"There are no excuses. The weather is the same for everybody. It's not like our side of the track was hot and their side of the track was under a big umbrella."
"It was unfortunate, but these things happen. Different combination, different tires."
"I got the jump on him off the starting line but the car started to shake a little bit and I pedaled it twice. When I saw him pulling away I just lifted off the throttle. We can't seem to catch a break in the first round this season."
"Man, that first round race was big. My job is to keep Del and Whit and those guys off of [team owner] John (Force). We had a chance to do some good and, fortunately, we did. I felt really good about that and it lasted just about an hour." -- Eric Medlen on his first-round win over Del Worsham -- but after losing to Schwab in round two
"I think the key to success here is to work with less power, [but] we couldn't pull enough power out of our Monte Carlo today."
"I was nervous when we left the pits because the cloud cover came in over the race track. [Crew chief] Mike (Green) and the guys tuned the car to go down a hot, sunny race track. We tried to compensate for it, but that's what bit us. The car shook the tires around 150 feet into the run and I had to peddle it and that's why we got beat."
"When I hit the throttle, I didn't see him at first. You usually see them at the hit of the throttle. At about 300 feet, which is a third of the way out, I thought we were in good shape. All of a sudden, my car shook (or spun) the tires."
"I saw a whole lot of Cruz the first half of that race and I didn't like what I was seeing. But then we went by him at some point and the next thing I saw was the win light."
"You know, we learned every lap and that's what was so rewarding. We fought the track, we fought the elements, and by the end of the day we were outrunning everyone."
PRO STOCK
"This is kind of the turning point of the season. Based on where you are and how you're doing, it can be tough to motivate yourself if you're not in it for the long haul. The races are back-to-back, the travel is grueling, and there are a lot of changes to contend with, from the highest corrected altitude at Denver, back down to racing at sea-level in Seattle, in less than a week."
"The air is awful thin up there, so in an effort to compensate for the bad air we gear these cars deep and stack the transmission with super low gears. From a driver's standpoint it really doesn't feel much slower, and trust me, with the deeper gear you're really occupied
"We must drive differently because we can't feel when it's time to shift the car. We have to get used to the lack of acceleration because it's different than being at sea level."
"Basically, we're down 250 horsepower from our normal race conditions. That means you have to backtrack the set-up -- including the chassis configuration, four-link settings, gear ratios and weight distribution -- to what we would have run at other tracks in 1991."
"We left a lot on the table down low and that really took the wind out of our sails. It takes even longer for the car to recover racing at this altitude."
"We tested here a week and a half ago and that definitely helped."
"It's hard to beat a .021 light."
"We will just lick our wounds and head to Seattle."
"Unfortunately, within 10 to 15 minutes of our pulling into the staging lanes, the skies clouded up and the track temperature went down 20 degrees. I guess Mother Nature lost my cell phone number, because she never called to warn me not to set up for a hot race track."
"We've been running on tires that were too small and the engine went through too high; we weren't geared right. This thing is in-between with the gear ratio that we need. We can't really get where we need to be. We ran two thousandths quicker down the back than Greg (Anderson) and that's good."
"We're going after wins; we're going after titles; we're going after history. You don't get a lot of chances like this so you've got to get after it when you can. I've said several times you don't ever expect to do this in a class like Pro Stock. I don't even really know why it's happened for us. We're way beyond our dreams."
"No matter how easy it might look, it's not. I mean, they say I'm dominating and that means I have a hundredth or two on the field. That's nothing. You can lose that at the starting line every race. It's a struggle, but it's so much fun."
PRO STOCK BIKE
"We made a few changes after the first round and it woke up the bike for the second pass."
"Given the thin air up here in the mountains, we did pretty darn good today."
"On the mountain it seems to take forever for the one-two gear change, and I missed it which did cost us some elapsed time."
"The bikes don't run the quick numbers in the high altitude so it puts a lot on the drivers to cut good lights. You'll see a lot of matchups won on the starting-line this weekend."
"That hurts when you put up a better pass, but lose because of reaction time."
"I wanted to cut a good light, but pushed the envelope too far. For yet another race, we had a good bike, but came up short."
"I told them I'd wait as long as it took for them to get ready. I mean, you can't do nothing about a fire. I heard they were thrashing to get done and I told [NHRA officials] they could put us at the back of the pack if they wanted. He'd do the same for me, I know it. But they got there in time. Then they had trouble at the line and just reached a point where I had to put it all out of my mind and just race."
"I know if we had the money we could run with them full-time all year long."
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