Departments - Missed Races

While Connie Kalitta's talented NHRA Top Fuel team once again left town with unfinished business, it was business as usual for Tony Schumacher and the U.S. Army Dragster.

Like Schumacher in Top Fuel, Pro Stock's business-like Greg Anderson tightened the grip he has had on the points lead all year (and for that matter, for the last 17 races, since last June 15). He beat nemesis Kurt Johnson in the final round for his third victory in four races this season and his sixth in the last seven.

And Phil Burkart showed that the Checker Schucks Kragen Funny Car team really means business this year. He helped preserve teammate Del Worsham's edge by knocking off three of his four closest competitors while earning just his second career victory and giving GM's new Monte Carlo body its first trip to the winners circle.

This rain-delayed fourth of 23 races in the POWERade Drag Racing Series might be most memorable for Doug Kalitta's desperation dash into the Top Fuel field with drag racing's fastest speed ever recorded at 335.57 miles an hour. He was 17th on the list after Saturday's first qualifying session and had just one more chance to make the field of 16 with the Mac Tools Dragster.

"The car left real strong. I was just trying to keep it in the center of the lane," Doug Kalitta said of his milestone run. "It even sounded good from where I was sitting."

He said the stress of being off the grid after the first and potentially last opportunity of the weekend had him concentrating solely on cracking the lineup. "My knees were shaking," he said. "I was waiting for something to happen -- a 50-cent part could fall off. I was kicking myself for that first run (when he smoked the tires)."

As for the 335.57-mph mark, Kalitta, a Lear jet pilot who owns his own charter airline, said, "There is definitely no airplane that gives you that sensation. It's a good ride. The new Goodyear tire held up. It was like going through the clouds."

His elapsed time wasn't enough to place him any higher than third in the lineup, as cousin Scott Kalitta took No. 1 honors with a track-record e.t. of 4.472 seconds at 333.74 mph in the Mac Tools/Jesse James Dragster, and Brandon Bernstein was second with the Budweiser/Lucas Oil car at 4.479/333.66. Dave Grubnic's No. 7 position put team owner Connie Kalitta's three cars in the top half of the ladder.

The Team Kalitta troika lost in the second round. Moreover, Doug Kalitta dropped from second to third in the standings and Scott Kalitta fell out of the top 10, while Grubnic remained fourth.

Scott Kalitta, leading a Top Fuel field for the first time since the 1999 Dallas race, had said winning his first round of the season was "next on my to-do list." He got past Steve Chrisman in the opener, but he was Schumacher's Round 2 victim as both cars experienced mechanical problems halfway through the quarter-mile run.

Team owner Connie Kalitta talks it over with Doug Kalitta's crew chief, Rahn Tobler

Doug Kalitta's triumph last August at Brainerd was the most recent for Kalitta Racing. Since then, the team has made the finals, set low e.t. or top speed or been No. 1 qualifier (or recorded a combination of feats) at every race except the one at Reading. This year, the Kalitta cars have locked down the top qualifying position at every race: Doug at Pomona, Grubnic at Phoenix and Gainesville and Scott at Las Vegas.

Doug reached the finals of the first two events and lost to Schumacher and Bernstein. So the Kalitta team has put on a shock-and-awe campaign but is losing the war to Schumacher and the U.S. Army-sponsored platoon.

Schumacher, getting off to the quick start this year like Larry Dixon did in his last two seasons on the way to series championships, beat Dixon and the Miller Lite Dragster in the final round of what he called "a very hard day." Schumacher took the U.S. Army Dragster for a winning ride of 4.525 seconds at 331.53 miles an hour against Dixon's 4.571/323.97.

Schumacher, of Mount Prospect, Ill., earned $40,000 and continued dominating the point standings. He has a 110-point lead over Bernstein in the Top Fuel standings. It was the Army team's second victory in a row and third in four events.

Greg Anderson was victim of an odd occurrence in the first qualifying session. A piece of debris covered the staging beams in Anderson's lane. That prevented the timers from starting. Without a recorded elapsed time and speed, officials discarded the pass.

Anderson won for the second straight race and the third this season in the Vegas General Construction Pontiac Grand Am. The reigning Pro Stock champion has won nine of the last 14 events, dating back to last July in Seattle. This victory over nemesis Kurt Johnson, worth $25,000, meant the Charlotte, N.C., resident has been No. 1 in points for the last 17 races and 22 of the last 26.

Anderson's Grand Am recorded a 6.849-second pass at 201.31 against Johnson's 6.908/200.08 in the ACDelco Chevy Cavalier.

So while winning has been nothing new to Schumacher and Anderson, it was an almost-new sensation for Burkart.

Megateam owner Don Schumacher -- who has his son's dragster, two Funny Cars and two Pro Stock Motorcycles in his stable -- missed scoring a double victory when Burkart used a 5.029-second run at 264.03 mph to defeat Whit Bazemore (5.452/189.50) and the Matco Tools Dodge Stratus in the Funny Car final.

Burkart pulled away toward the top end as Bazemore's engine let go. Burkart's second career victory, which came 105 races after his Columbus triumph in June 1999, was the CSK team's third victory in the first four events this season.

By eliminating Tim Wilkerson, Gary Scelzi and John Force, he helped rearrange the standings. Wilkerson dropped from fourth to ninth, and Scelzi fell from fifth to a sixth-place tie with Eric Medlen. Force maintained second place and cut Worsham's lead from 110 points to 71.

"The first two rounds were intense," Burkart said. "I mean, Tim Wilkerson and Gary Scelzi? That's a lot to take on. So we win those and who do we get? John Force! We picked off all the big dogs, one by one."

Burkart, who jumped from 11th place in the standings to fifth with the $40,000 victory, said he is doing more than running interference for boss Worsham. "Don't think I'm not trying to chase him!" Burkart said. He's within three points of fourth-place Bazemore and 194 off Worsham's pace.

Burkart, of Yorkville, N.Y., did it from the No. 12 qualifying spot in the field of 16. Worsham, too, had given CSK victories at Phoenix and Gainesville from the bottom half of the ladder.

"When I won at Columbus, I had qualified 14th," Burkart said. "I guess it's the element of surprise."

He said he wasn't surprised, though, by the job co-crew chiefs Chris Cunningham and Marc Denner did in switching to the new Monte Carlo body and fixing the damage from his first-round engine explosion at the previous race, the Gatornationals.

"We torched it pretty badly, and we broke a lot of stuff," he said. "I feel I owe these guys. I know what it takes to fix a care we mangled like that. Chris Cunningham and Marc Denner are two young crew chiefs who have a long future ahead of them. I'm just the lucky guy who gets to sit behind the wheel and steer their creation.

"We learned a lot this weekend with the new equipment thrown into my lap," Burkart said, referring to the new Goodyear tire in addition to the new body. "Maybe the big boom in Gainesville was symbolic, as a way to say good-bye to the Firebird and say hello to the Monte Carlo."

And maybe a fresh hello to a seven-year veteran who, like Worsham a few years ago, ended a drought and began a march to prominence. Worsham waited 10-plus years after his first two career victories before his win at Seattle in 1999 elevated his status. He has earned 13 of his 15 career victories since then.

Schumacher, hoping to repeat his own 1999 championship, said once again he owes it to his crew and crew chief Alan Johnson. "I have such an unbelievably focused team," he said. "And we all know Alan is the single best guy in the world. Alan learns and he changes things. You say 'genius' only so many times, but 'Genius.' He's a genius. Alan could have picked any team to work for. I'm just glad he picked us, and I'm glad to be a part of it."

Anderson (photo) said he's enjoying his string of success so much that "it's pretty scary -- I'm almost impressing myself, astounding myself." But he went one further than Schumacher, citing the help of "everyone, from owner Ken Black to our truck driver, Brad Campbell."

But mostly, he said, the car takes center stage. "The engine's obviously the best out here. The crew is the best out here. But the car's so crisp, so clean. It will not do anything wrong," he said.

"I'm running out of things to talk about. We're waiting for someone to reel us in and catch us," Anderson said, "but it seems to be going the other way. I thank the good Lord above. I can't imagine what I did to deserve this much good fortune. . . . But right now we have to ride this wave like the best surfer you ever saw."

Del Worsham, who had won the previous two events and entered with a 110-point lead over closest Funny Car challenger, John Force, was a firt-round loser to Whit Bazemore.

His new Chevy Monte Carlo body was ready when he arrived in Las Vegas, but, because rain wiped out the first day of action, he decided to keep the Pontiac Firebird body for the weekend.

"We could have run the Monte Carlo, and planned to if we would've had four runs, but with only two I just felt we had to go with the old reliable," Worsham said. "After all, that Firebird had won the last two races, so we were pretty comfortable with it. We're comfortable with it like it's an old sofa, but we know we need new furniture. We'll just bring the Monte Carlo out in Houston."

Whit Bazemore said his runner-up finish to Phil Burkart was the result of a "freak breakage that made the car drop a bunch of cylinders and then finally kick some rods out." He confessed that if he still had been operating his own team, he would have lifted, "but Don Schumacher is paying the bills and he pays us to win races, so we really don't worry about the car."

Tony Pedregon earned his first No. 1 Funny Car qualifier label as an independent owner. He said his preseason test data from the track proved invaluable, adding "what makes it more astonishing is that we did it in just two qualifying sessions. We tested well here, and it paid off. This is a result of teamwork. I didn't do it alone. But we did it on our own.

He faced former boss John force in the second round, after defeating Jim Head. Force had eliminated Pedregon's brother and business partner, Cruz. He said he was looking forward to the match-up, no matter who won between Cruz and Force.

"I'm a machine," he said. "I've had to race my boss, my brother, total strangers. I treat all my customers the same -- I send them all home unhappy."

The Quaker State-sponsored Pedregon ended up unhappier than he wanted to be. He smoked the tires against Force and said the clutch had gotten too hot when he and the team warmed up the car before the round.

Las Vegas remains the only stop on the 23-race POWERade Drag Racing Series tour at which six-time champion Warren Johnson never has won. Vinnie Fourcade, making his first Pro Stock start, upset him in the opening round.

After Ron Capps defeated first FC opponent Tony Barton, he joked, "I
think it's been 1970 since we won a round."

The Skoal-sponsored driver hadn't won a round with his new Monte Carlo
this year and hadn't advanced past Round 1 since last September's race
at Chicago. He had 11 first-round losses and one DNQ in the previous 14
events. He lost to Eric Medlen in the second round Sunday.