BERNSTEINS, WORSHAM, EDWARDS 86 FELLOW PROS AT ROUTE 66

Photos by Jeff Burk

Kenny Bernstein scored his third straight NHRA Top Fuel victory at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals at Route 66 Raceway. Del Worsham, Mike Edwards, Antron Brown and Scott Perin also won their respective categories at the $2 million race, the 10th of 24 races in the $50 million NHRA Winston Drag Racing Series.

Bernstein's fourth victory of the season and 57th of his career came when opponent Gary Scelzi lost traction and Bernstein blasted down the track in 4.546 seconds at 322.81 mph. Scelzi's dragster couldn't catch Bernstein, slowing to 7.197 at 109.25. Even though Scelzi smoked the tires in the final, Bernstein knew there were going to be no freebies on Sunday.

"We had it tough today," said Bernstein, a five-time NHRA Winston champion. "It was a good race for everybody. With conditions like this a lot of cars run very well because you can really get after the program and you probably won't smoke the tires. Every time you went up there today you better have it together because it was going to be tough."

Bernstein took out John Smith, Doug Kalitta and Doug Herbert before meeting Scelzi in the finals. This is Bernstein's fourth win this season in as many finals but his recent hot streak is not convincing him to put off his announced retirement after the 2002 season.

"I'll give (crew chief) Tim (Richards) every bit of the credit for making it easy for me to make the announcement to go one more year," said Bernstein. "If we weren't winning or having success or even being competitive, I'd probably take a hard look at it (early retirement). It's going to make it easy this way for us to go another year."

Bernstein came into Chicago as the NHRA Winston Top Fuel points leader and extended his lead over Larry Dixon to 80 points.

Worsham won his fifth career NHRA Funny Car event beating John Force with a quicker starting line reaction time, running a 4.811 at 314.39 to Force's 4.805 at 321.19. The margin of victory was .006 of a second and Worsham needed every bit of a reaction time advantage for the win.

Worsham defeated Bruce Sarver, teammate Frank Pedregon, Jim Epler and finally Force in the closest Funny Car race of the day. Worsham moved up from seventh to the fourth spot in the NHRA Winston Funny Car point standings. Force's runner-up finish in Chicago extended his NHRA Winston points lead over Ron Capps to 198.

Edwards earned his ninth career Pro Stock victory with a pass of 6.848 at 200.23 while Pontiac driver Jim Yates ran 6.888 at 200.11 and couldn't catch Edwards' Chevrolet Cavalier. Edwards qualified in the top spot and had no complaints about his weekend in Chicago.

Edwards faced Darrell Alderman, Larry Morgan and Warren Johnson before outperforming Yates in the final. Edwards made the jump from tenth to fifth in the NHRA Winston Pro Stock point standings. Yates' runner-up finish pushed him just two points past Mark Pawuk for the lead in the Winston point standings.

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