NHRA Quotes and Photos from Dallas

Compiled by Ian Tocher
Photos by Ron Lewis
9/29/04

The NHRA made its annual stop in Dallas Sep. 24-26, for the 19th annual O'Reilly Fall Nationals presented by Castrol Syntec. Here, in their own words, are the stories of the racers as told through NHRA and team press releases from the Texas Motorplex, which features the only all-concrete quarter-mile on the NHRA trail.

TOP FUEL

"The bottom line and one reason we've added additional races is that we're not learning much sitting at home. We're working forward with improving our tune up, while working forward on getting ready for next year. Also, we hope the additional exposure will impress a potential company or more from corporate America and we can enter into a dialog regarding sponsorship for next year and beyond."—David Baca on the recent decision to add the Dallas and Chicago events to his team's limited schedule this season

"You can't win a race if you can't get to the finals, so we're happy with our performance as a team to give ourselves those opportunities to win. I really wish we had more trophies in the case from this streak, but we are happy with the way all of our cars are running."—Jim Oberhofer, team manager for Kalitta Motorsports, on his three-car team's impressive 13 final round showings in the first 18 events in 2004, resulting in four wins

"From this point on, every round we can pocket is one less Kalitta or any of the contenders can take from us. That's how you have to look at it. But, understand, we do want to win races and that's always the objective."—Tony Schumacher before the race, on the championship points chase he leads

"If it's cooler and there's a cloud cover, it will be good for us. The hotter it gets, the slower it becomes."—Doug Herbert on how the weather affects track performance

"It seems like every time we run good enough to win, our opponent goes us one better."—Baca on the very respectable 4.69 he ran to Larry Dixon's stellar 4.59 in round one

"We didn't quite have enough to match Tony today, but we sure didn't go down without giving him a good fight."—Andrew Cowin after losing by about a tenth of a second to Schumacher in round one

"The incremental numbers show us slightly ahead at the 1,000-foot mark, but that's about where we dropped a cylinder and encountered engine problems. When we crossed the finish line we were running on six cylinders instead of eight."—Brandon Bernstein after losing by just .0063 to Scott Kalitta in the first round

"Drag racing is about winning and losing and we got beat."—Dixon on falling to an uncanny .012 reaction by David Grubnic in round two

"Just when you think it can't get any better, it does."—Schumacher on winning his 8th race this year

"Alan Johnson had this U.S. Army dragster running flawlessly all day. In fact, we just got better and better as the day wore on. I can't say enough about how brilliant he is."—Schumacher again, giving the credit for winning to his crew chief