FUNNY CAR
WORSHAM WINS
Del Worsham overcame a 16th-place qualifying
spot in his Checker, Schuck's, Kragen-backed
Firebird, to win the Fuel Coupe final in St.
Louis against John Force.
"[Force is] the greatest in the history of
the sport in the Funny Car class, and he's looking
for a win in the worst way," Worsham said. "We
were so wound up, but in a weird concentrated
way. Our guys were just focused, and my dad,
Chris Cunningham, Marc
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Denner,
Garry Kennedy, and I sat in the computer room
and talked for 30-minutes about how we could
beat them. We shared ideas, agreed on them,
put the tune-up in the car, and towed it up
there. We buttoned it up and went up there,
because we didn't want to second guess, or make
any changes. That was our best idea, and that's
what we were going with."
FORCE FALLS SHORT
John Force, drag racing's biggest winner with
106 NHRA tour victories, sped to his best performance
of the weekend in the final at St. Louis when
his Castrol GTX High Mileage Ford Mustang was
clocked at 4.936 seconds, 314.09 miles per hour.
After qualifying for his 312th straight event,
it was Force's 165th career final but that was
little consolation to the 12-time series champion
who is trying to fight himself back into contention
for a record 11th straight championship.
"You've got to give credit to the Worsham family,"
Force said. "To run low ET in the final, we
didn't expect that. We knew they'd make a run
at us, but we thought 4.93 would be good enough.
It wasn't." -- Dave Densmore
BAZEMORE BOUNCED
Whit Bazemore and his Matco Tools Dodge Stratus
failed to advance past the first round of eliminations
for the first time this season. The Indianapolis
resident, who ran a 5.220-second lap at 271.30
mph, lost to Ron Capps and his 5.078-second
elapsed time at 297.35 mph.
"Things just didn't go our way today," Bazemore
said. "We were the quickest to the 330 (foot)
mark and we had the quickest eighth-mile run.
But, it was already smoking the tires pretty
heavily at that point. For some reason, we overpowered
the track -- and we knew where we were with
the tune up. We were very conservative on that
run. The Matco Tools Dodge is an animal sometimes
and it just reared up and bit us." -- David
Harris
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