Bazemore, in the Matco Tools Dodge Stratus,
earned the national e.t. record with a 4.713-second
pass in a no-contest victory over Tony Bartone.
His 333.25-mph speed was fastest in NHRA Funny
Car history, but he did not back it up within
the required one percent in the final. His
run overrode Pedregon’s top-qualifying
effort of 4.716/331.28.
That blast guaranteed he would overtake Del
Worsham for the Funny Car points lead. Bazemore
came into the Chicago fall race last year
as the points leader for the first time in
his career but lost it there, so he had a
measure of redemption there. But the promise
that he also could own the national speed
mark, if he posted a 329.92 mph next, supercharged
his final-round meeting with Force. He responded
with a woeful 8.034-second run as Force denied
him back-to-back triumphs.
“What matters is winning the race and
beating John Force, and it didn’t happen,”
Bazemore said. “The national record is
fine for your ego and it’s cool. The
more important thing to me is that we won
last week in Atlanta on a hot race track,
and that’s what we’re going to be
faced with the next three or four months.”
He said against Force, the set-up was “a
touch too aggressive.” Crew chief Lee
Beard, going for his milestone 50th tuning
victory, said of himself, “Lee Beard
is a swing-for-the-fence kind of guy. It means
a lot to me to break barriers. They’re
hard to come by in your entire career. We’re
going to look back and say, ‘Gee, we
could have won the race with a running a low
4.70.’ But we’re in the points lead.
We did set the national record. We do
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have
the quickest and fastest Funny Car in the
history of the sport. So all in all it was
a pretty good weekend for us.”
Bazemore, who has been vocal about surface
conditions in the last few years, said, “This
is a great, great facility. They repaved it.
I think they proved something to the NHRA
that you can actually repave a track and have
it be a good race track.”
Scelzi, Bazemore’s teammate at Don Schumacher
Racing, became the first Funny Car driver
to break the 300-mile-an-hour barrier in his
Hemi-powered Oakley Dodge Stratus earlier
in the weekend. He did it with a 330.55 (on
a 4.732-second pass that was third-quickest
in the field) during Friday night qualifying.
It came in a tiny window between a rain delay
and a severe weather alert that cut short
the first day’s action.
Like Bazemore, Scelzi praised the racing
surface, calling it “absolutely perfect”
and “a crew chief’s dream.”
He said NHRA should pass around the blueprints:
“The asphalt is really tight so the rubber
sticks to it. The concrete doesn’t get
bald spots even when it gets hot. It does
everything right ... and it’s flat.”
