NHRA Quotes from Bristol
Compiled by Ian Tocher
5/5/04
John Force finally won at Bristol Dragway, and Tony Schumacher and Greg Anderson continued their dominance May 3, at the rain-delayed O’Reilly NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals presented by Quaker State. Here, in their own words, are the thoughts of the winners and the rest of NHRA’s best, taken from NHRA and team press releases.
TOP FUEL
“Qualifying number one is great, but the real prize that everyone wants is up for grabs on Sunday.” -- Tony Schumacher after setting new track records with a 4.523-second run at 327.66 mph in qualifying
“It’s challenging depending on what the weather is like. When it’s cool, the tires will take whatever you want to throw at it. When it starts warming up, it can be a problem.” -- Dick LaHaie, crew chief for Larry Dixon, after Dixon qualified 8th
“We have a unique setup with our experimental Attac chassis and so we tune it differently from what other teams run. Our tune-up is always unique anyway because we baby our parts. It’s no secret that we run this operation on a shoestring, so our tune-up has to take that into consideration—unless it’s Sunday.” -- Howard Weis, crew chief for Scott Weis, before qualifying 10th and making it all the way to the semis
“It carried the front end and it was really hauling down there. It was a lot of fun to drive with the front end up like that.” -- Brandon Bernstein on his first-round win over Bruce Litton
“It may have been exciting for the fans to watch that one but it was frustrating from where I sat.” -- David Baca on losing a smokefest against Scott Weis in round two
“Bernstein made a last second lane change and we were faced with a lane that had too many bald spots at the starting line.” -- Todd Smith, crew chief for Cory McClenathan, after his driver went up in smoke in round two against Bernstein
“I actually felt bad for him, but we’ll certainly take the win light
any way we can get it.”
-- Schumacher on Bernstein’s redlight start against him in the semis
“We are normally very good about going down the race track, but we let that one slip away. This team is really good at what they do, though, and we’re going to get a win soon I think.” -- Clay Millican after going up in smoke in the final round against Schumacher
“Like all my victories, this is for all the soldiers fighting for our freedom. What a great day for the Army team. We worked real hard and achieved the desired results.” -- Schumacher after his fourth event win this year
FUNNY CAR
“Releasing Paul was a difficult decision, and one that I didn’t make lightly. I am grateful for what he has done for the team and me. He tuned me to my career best 4.873, he taught the team how to work together, and we went to race after race and didn’t hurt parts. But exciting things are happening for us, with some announcements coming soon, and we need a commitment from Paul that he can’t give us now that he is with Jeff Arend’s team.” -- Terry Haddock after missing the cut in qualifying, explaining why he’s replacing Paul Smith with Terry Manzer as his new crew chief
“That’s step one. The game plan was to come here and win the race. To qualify number one is always just a little bit of bonus for us.” -- Lee Beard after tuning Whit Bazemore to a field-leading 4.770-secs pass at 321.27 mph
“We are more than ready this weekend, with equipment that I think includes the kitchen sink.” -- Jeff Arend before qualifying 15th, then falling to Cruz Pedregon in round one
“Well you never like to be in the bottom-half of the field, but so far this season there have been a lot of race winners that have come from the bottom half.” -- Tony Pedregon after qualifying 12th
“I hate to make excuses, but this is one of the disadvantages of wearing glasses. My glasses fogged up and I couldn’t see a thing. Rarely does that happen, but it’s hot in the
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“I knew I got out of the groove, and then when the tire caught, it shot toward the wall. I had the wheel turned all the way as hard as I could. I couldn’t tell if I hit the wall or not, until I got out of the car and the word came out that I was DNQd. Well as we all say out here, ‘that’s drag racing.’” -- Tim Wilkerson after brushing the wall with his headers in round one, handing the win to Phil Burkart, who went up in smoke and took nearly 15 seconds to cover the quarter mile
“He was gone. His car got really little, really fast. I never knew he hit the wall, I just came putting around the corner at the end and he was out of his car and visibly mad. I couldn’t believe it, and I’m sure Timmy couldn’t either. These things happen, even to great drivers.” -- Burkart on his view of the race against Wilkerson
“First round is a killer, and I’m always very relieved and very happy
to get through it.”
-- Del Worsham after scoring a narrow victory over Jerry Toliver
“We were just a little too aggressive.” -- T. Pedregon on smoking the tires against Eric Medlen in the first round
“A few pairs before us, the right lane started to get a bald spot near the starting line and we pulled the tires loose early in the run. This is another learning experience for our car.” -- Ron Capps on his first-round loss to Gary Densham
“It’s hard to feel sad, even though I hate losing with a passion, when we ran so well and Baze and his team just ran better.” -- Scelzi on losing a close race in the second round to teammate Bazemore
“When it smoked them, I expected to see him head on down the track, but he wasn’t there. So I hit it again, and they smoked again. I still didn’t see him, so I just kept hitting it and a couple of times was able to feather it about half-throttle, which is really hard to do in a bucking bronco like that. Out at half-track, with the clutch timers now all fouled up and the clutch about locked up, every time I hit it the front end would come up, the horizon would disappear, and all I could see was sky. It was a rush, I’ll tell you that.” -- Burkart after his wild, tire-smoking win over C. Pedregon in round two
“I always listen to the engine before a run and I knew something wasn’t right. Before I knew it the staging lights were on and I was distracted. Then it became a driver’s race. The throttle was touchy and the car was real loose. I noticed Burkart was having the same problems so I just kept at it. We got close at one time but if I had it to do all over again I would’ve done the exact same thing. It was a wild ride but you have to keep trying to get the car to hook back up with the track, especially on race day and it just wasn’t going to do it.” -- C. Pedregon on his view from the left lane against Burkart
“We’re pretty disappointed. We were loaded up for John but had a clutch problem. We beat him at Pomona. He beat us here.” -- Densham after losing to teammate John Force in round two
“I wasn’t trying to saw the tree down, and I wasn’t guessing. My foot just thought it was time to go.” -- Burkart again, on throwing away his chances with a redlight against Force in the semis
“There’s no way tune-up-wise that the car should have done that. There’s something mechanically wrong there. We have to find it. (Crew chief) Lee Beard is somewhat beside himself that we have a gremlin like that, that basically gave this race away.” -- Bazemore on boiling the hides immediately upon launching in the final round against Force
“The throttle response on our engine is very, very good. Sometimes when he (Bazemore) rolls up there to do a burnout it’s hard for him to do a burnout because the thing’s so snappy on the throttle. I’m sure that has attributed to smoking the tires instantly like that. We may have to find a happy medium on the throttle response versus smoking the tires. I’ve got my work cut out for me.” -- Beard on what went wrong in the final round
“[NASCAR driver] Rusty Wallace told me I was a weak dog the other day,
and that I needed to just go out there and win, just get it done. He did it
a few weeks ago in Martinsville [Va.] and I now I finally got my 110th, so I
guess we both still have some left in the tank.”
-- Force after scoring the win on his 55th birthday
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PRO STOCK
“It’s not that there is anything wrong with the car. The chassis design is just so radically different from anything else out there that we have yet to find its proverbial sweet spot. On a standard Haas chassis, you have a baseline set-up from the factory that you tune from, and it works on 99 percent of those cars. Unfortunately, our car, being different, is not completely comfortable with it. Just as Jerry (Haas) didn’t arrive at the set-up overnight, and he was gathering data from more than eight cars. We’re going it alone, and getting closer with every pass, so it’s just taking time.” -- Warren Johnson before qualifying 10th, explaining his uncharacteristically slow start in 2004
“When you’re hanging on by one-thousandth, you can’t breathe until you know for sure you’re qualified.” -- Eddie Guarnaccia, crew chief for Kenny Koretsky, after running 6.880 seconds to beat out Rickie Smith’s 6.881 for the 16th and final qualifying spot
“I’ve definitely got a bull’s eye on my back, and they’re all going to be taking there best shot and gunning for me, so you’re darn right, I can’t back off a bit.” -- Greg Anderson after qualifying on top with a track record 6.790 at a record speed of 202.52 mph
“We had a valve stem go bad.” -- Jeg Coughlin Jr. explaining the hard left his car took before he gathered it up and went on to beat Warren Johnson in the first round
“Shutting off was the right decision without a doubt.” -- Troy Coughlin after getting out of shape in the first round against Jason Line
“It seemed like this was a one-lane track in Pro Stock today. Looking at the track, there’s only about three feet that needs attention, but it really affects these cars.” -- Kurt Johnson after his semi-final loss from the right lane to Line
“I could definitely get used to results like the last two weeks. It might
become addicting.”
--
Line with bad news for the rest of the Pro Stock field after going to his second-straight
final round against teammate and car owner Anderson
“Jason is tougher by the run—not the weekend, by the run. I knew I was going to have to dig deep to get the win away from him. He’s going to be a major player in this category. I thought it was going to take six months or so, but I think it is going to happen much sooner.” -- Anderson on the promise his young protégé is showing
“I can’t believe it’s happening, but it sure is fun. Maybe not for everyone else, but it is for us.” -- Anderson again, on his continuing dominance in the class after qualifying number one for the 11th straight race and winning for the 8th time in his last 9 outings
PRO MOD
“The car was just tired and I shut it off and saved it for another day. I didn’t want to push it past its limits.” -- Ed Hoover after getting loose about half-track during his first-round loss to Al Billes
“When I staged the car, it went in deep and it threw me completely off of my game. I just lost my focus and that was all he needed to beat me.” -- Thomas Patterson on his loss in the opening round to Mitch Stott
“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination. This was a pretty good weekend for our team. We grabbed a place in the field and that was the first battle.” -- Scotty Cannon salvaging what he could after losing to Von Smith in the first round
“It’s great when things are going your way. The car is working well
and our team is performing great. Our car works great and Tim McAmis builds
a heck of a consistent car. The car has been the key to our success.” --
Billes after defeating Stott in the final round
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