Fiorito said the local permitting process has its own, slow prescribed pace and predicted that the red tape will keep people unhappy for awhile longer. He said "by the end of this year" he will have applied for permits to allow dramatic changes in the dragstrip surface, tower, grandstands and the establishment of a 40-plus-acre conservation easement. That, he said, will include lowering the lanes and reversing the start and finish lines.

Fiorito said that when he took over January 1, 2002, from Jim Rockstad, "all of us had an optimistic time frame." He warned that the permitting process and the fact the track is used 275-300 days a year "don't leave a lot of time for construction." He predicted groundbreaking would begin in the winter of 2005.

Fiorito said his family has sunk $10 million into property improvements, but most of the evidence is along the enveloping road course. He said he reached that dollar figure by calculating how much it would have had to spend for dirt and gravel hauling and processing and trash removal, had it not been in those businesses.

THE DRIVERS SPEAK

All of a sudden, the August 2000 Whiticism that "this track is a disgrace to the sport" seemed to be chic. No one batted an eye this year when at least a dozen drivers, including the normally quiet Top Fueler David Baca and top qualifiers Greg Anderson (Pro Stock) and Gary Scelzi (Funny Car) spoke out.

Said Baca, "It's a tough facility here. It has been here a long time. Sometime older isn't better. This is one of those places. I was told a year ago that was going to happen here. Right now, I don't see any thing going on. The fans in the Seattle area are great, but to give the fans these types of facilities, or lack thereof, is not good for the long-term growth of the sport I so dearly love. Nor is the type of show we are giving the fans here."

Scelzi led the Funny Car field for the first time in his career. But the 4.964-second pass at 299.33 miles an hour in the Oakley Dodge Stratus R/T wasn't the fun run a quick qualifier

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should enjoy. It came in the left lane Friday evening, and he said afterward, "I was nervous. The wheelie bar hit two or three times on those bumps."

He said he wished he could climb onto a bulldozer and start ripping up the pavement at the end of the race, like he and Force had the honor of doing to start the recent overhaul at Sonoma's Infineon Raceway.

"I'd love to hear we'll be sitting on bulldozers, tearing up the track after the race," Scelzi said. "That would be a beautiful thing. But unless I get on a bulldozer and destroy it, I don't think we're going to get the problem fixed anytime soon."

Then during eliminations, Darrell Russell crew chief Wayne Dupuy became a cult hero for dispensing with political correctness and spitting out the ugly truth on the national-TV broadcast.