NHRA quotes from Chicago
Compiled by Ian Tocher
5/28/04
Jeff Burk Photo
Via team and NHRA press releases, racers told the story in their own words from the 7th annual NHRA Route 66 Nationals in Chicago.
TOP FUEL
“It ran very well until half-track, and then at about 800 feet a wind gust blew the car over toward the centerline. I had to crank the wheel all the way to the left to keep the car from heading over to the right. I know it cost us some e.t.” -- Scott Weis on the 4.58-secs pass that earned him a 3rd-place starting position
“Every week we work on our car and try to make it one of the top cars out here and we still obviously have some work to do.” -- Larry Dixon after suffering another first-round exit, this time at the hands of Doug Kalitta
“I was out on him until about half track and unfortunately that’s when the wheels started come up off the ground. At that point, I should have tugged on the brake handle slightly and that would have set front end back down. Instead I lifted.” -- T.J. Zizzo on his career-first elimination round, a first-round wheelie loss to Tony Schumacher
“My competitive nature aggravates me when it comes to a first-round loss. However, the realist in me always reminds me that I’m happy to just be out here as part of the show. This is something that only an elite few people get to do and I’m very fortunate to be part of that fraternity.” -- Bob Vandergriff after going out early against Brandon Bernstein
“There is nobody that is kicking himself more than I am right now.” -- Cory McClenathan on his red light loss to D. Kalitta in round two
“I no longer take solace in the fact that we run our program on a tenth of the budget the other teams have. I don’t care if they’ve got 10 million in their budget. We’re going to dip deep and get our first NHRA Top Fuel win.” -- Howard Weis, crew chief for son Scott, after their narrow semi-final loss to D. Kalitta
“Unfortunately, the championship race just got real interesting.” -- Schumacher on losing to Bernstein in the semis and allowing his rivals to close in on his points lead
“Now you’re the ‘King of Speed’.” -- Kenny Bernstein to son Brandon, after Brandon reset the official speed record to 333.41 mph in the semis
“It left extremely hard. It was marching along and it set the front end down and when it really started to pour it to it, it picked right back up. It picked it up so fast, it just kept going. It wasn’t going to go down. There wasn’t anything I could do but lift it and try to get it back toward the center. It was a wild ride.” -- Bernstein on his big wheelstand in the final round against D. Kalitta
“It threw the belt off just before the finish line and I was just hoping like heck I wouldn’t see Brandon blow by me. They’d been running so well I figured he was right there.” -- D. Kalitta on his first final-round win this season
“I knew we were going to have to put up a big number against Bernstein, but making that kind of run in the finals is incredible. We went for it and got it. That’s a tribute to how good Rahn (Tobler, first-year co-crew chief on the Mac Tools dragster) and (team owner) Connie (Kalitta) and everybody on this whole team is.” -- D. Kalitta again, after winning the final with a quickest-ever 4.420-secs pass
FUNNY CAR
“I promised that I’d get my focus back where it belongs if everyone else would, too. It was a big wake-up call. Sometimes you forget why you’re here.” -- John Force on the meetings he had with all his crew chiefs and team members before qualifying began in Chicago
“This is the second time this year that the rain has bitten us.” -- Tommy Johnson Jr. on missing the cut after the last round of qualifying was washed away
“The car was actually going a little slower in the first half of the track than we normally run. I think we could have run 332 or 333. You know, it was stunning to make the run, but with Tony doing what he did, I didn’t have much time to let it sink in.” -- Gary Scelzi on being the first F/C pilot to surpass 330 mph (330.15 in qualifying)
“A little of the thunder was lost with Gary accomplishing the feat first. It would have been nice to be the first one to do it, but that is all hindsight and overall it was an awesome run and all the credit has to go to my team.” -- T. Pedregon on eclipsing Scelzi’s speed in the next pair down the track with a 331.28-mph blast
“I knew at about half-track that it was going to do something. At the end of the track the parachutes didn’t come out right away and I was thinking ‘great now I’m going to hit the
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“Right now we’re extremely happy, we’re pleased the car is doing everything it needs to do; it’s drivable and it’s fast. And it’s really fast, which is a beautiful thing.” -- Scelzi again, after backing up his 330.15 with a 330.55-mph pass in the third qualifying session
“Put it this way, we were nine miles per hour ahead of our 315 mph run at half track … We were on a great one.” -- Del Worsham on his 6th-place 4.771 qualifying pass despite losing the blower belt about 1,000 feet out
“I used to say it’s early in the year, but now that we have our eighth race this week and ninth next week (Topeka, Kan.), it’s definitely time for us to find the consistency necessary to win rounds and races,” -- Jerry Toliver before qualifying 16th and falling in round one to Tony Pedregon
“It burned up a piston and I saw fire so I shut it off early.” -- Cruz Pedregon on his loss in round one to Tim Wilkerson
“It was a good drag race. I had a pretty big starting line advantage on Medlen. I didn’t see him until about the 500-foot mark then he put a fender out in front of me and it stayed that way to the finish line.” -- Jeff Arend on his .074 to .108 holeshot, but subsequent loss to Eric Medlen in round one
“It’s just a helpless feeling to be out there smoking the tires at 800 feet and not see a guy like Bazemore next to you. They’re a top-notch crew. I thought maybe he had problems, and as our luck would have it lately, he came around me at the end.” -- Ron Capps on his first-round loss to Whit Bazemore
“It’s very frustrating, but it is what it is. I’m not going to cry about it, and I can’t do anything about it, so we move on and we go for it all next weekend. At least when we run three races in a row we don’t have time to stew on it. We just load up and go.” -- Worsham on hitting the mid-track cones and giving away his first-round match to Bob Gilbertson
“I thought I’d won. I never saw Eric, but when I made the turnoff, the TV crew waved me on. I couldn’t believe it.” -- Gary Densham on losing another close one to teammate Eric Medlen in round two
“We made some adjustments to the wing and we think it might have made the front end a little too light. It was on a 4.71 run but then made a hard move to the right and it was all over. It’s something I’ve never encountered before as a driver. The car just wasn’t
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“We had a little divine intervention against Tony [Pedregon] in Round 2. It was over for us. The car wouldn’t fire and we had all kinds of trouble. I was hoping it would rain again. Then it started for the burnout and I did a big, ol’ long one to try to spark it to life. That didn’t work and Coil told me to shut her off. I said, ‘Let’s give her 100 feet.’ Then I see Tony cross the line and I just got it down the track.” -- Force on getting lucky in Chicago
“We were looking to go a little faster than we did in the first round. But it was good enough to get the win and we were happy with that. Then second round we just hopped it up enough that we thought it would go down the track faster, but we wouldn’t have beat a 76.” -- Wilkerson on the 4.847 he ran against C. Pedregon and his losing 4.818 against Bazemore in round two
“I think we’ve turned our whole program around.” -- Tony Bartone after going to his career-first semi-final round, but losing against Bazemore
“The national record is fine for your ego and it’s cool, but what’s
more important, I think, right now, is being able to go down the track on a
hot track and being competitive there.”
-- Bazemore on officially setting the national e.t.
record to 4.713 seconds in the semis (backed up by his 4.731 in qualifying)
at a world’s fastest 333.25 mph.
“It’s disappointing to lose. No matter how good the rest of the weekend is, you come to win the race.” -- Bazemore on going up in smoke against Force in the final round
“We had a strategy. We talked and knew that Bazemore was gonna be the points leader because he had the national record. So [crew chief Austin] Coil says. ‘Go in shallow and we can get it and then we’ll be in the lead.’ I said, ‘No, let’s get the win,’ because I know that you’re on the edge when you run for the national record.” -- Force again, on playing it safe to win his second event of the year
PRO STOCK
“This afternoon we discovered a very unusual problem with one of our rear shocks, which had contributed to the phenomena of our car pulling to the right during the last two races. We replaced the set with another that we had a good data set on, and actually improved our sixty-foot time.” -- Warren Johnson on improving in each qualifying pass until ending up 6th for raceday
“I went through my normal starting line routine but I think I put the car in deep (too close to the starting line), and when I let out the clutch, it was just a tad too soon. … You can blame that one on the driver.” -- Kenny Koretsky on his .006 red light loss to Kurt Johnson in round one
“Even if I’d cut a perfect light, it wouldn’t have made difference.” -- Jim Yates after his opening-round loss with a .009 red light against Jason Line, who went 6.833 secs
“We were expecting to go a couple of more rounds today. We made a couple of errors that prevented us from being more of a threat on race day.” -- Jeg Coughlin Jr. after losing to Dave Connolly in round two
“We’re still looking for that proverbial sweet spot in the first sixty feet, because we are starting to outrun the competition in the back half again.” -- W.J. after his semi-final loss to Greg Anderson
“Sure I wanted to win - that’s why I tried so hard, and that’s why I red lighted. I just flat tried too hard. You don’t have that luxury when you run up against a lot of the guys, but you do when you have a team car in the final, and that’s what happened. I just tried too hard and went over the edge.” -- Anderson on leaving .042 too soon in the final against teammate Line
“I wish Greg wouldn’t have red lighted, but other than that, it was awesome. It was everything I could have hoped for.” -- Line on his career-first win in Pro Stock
“Tomorrow I might change my mind about liking to work on the car more than driving, but I’ve got to let it sink in first.” -- Line again, on winning his first final round after three attempts this year
PRO STOCK BIKE
“If I can get by both Karen and Angelle tomorrow in eliminations, I will paint my toenails in celebration.” -- Craig Treble after qualifying number four—and before defeating Karen Stoffer and Angelle Savoie in rounds one and two, respectively
“It’s hardly a secret formula. Hard work and lots of money will equal results and now we have some.” -- Steve Johnson on qualifying 6th
“Simply put, I hate to lose the race before it starts. But it’s hard to be really upset at being too quick. We just need to slow down my reaction time a little more so we can depend on green lights during eliminations.” -- Johnson on his first-round loss via a red light against Antron Brown
“Michael Phillips’ margin for error was a hair. If he was a nanosecond quicker, he red lighted. If he’s 15-hundredth later, he loses. But none of that happened.” -- George Bryce, team owner for Fred Collis, after Collis lost with a .004-secs reaction against Phillips’ perfect .000 light
“Quite obviously, I don’t like to give away races like that.” -- Brown on going red against Andrew Hines in round two
“I cut it way too close on the tree. We had a good bike today and to go
out the way I did is not acceptable.” -- Savoie
stating the obvious after fouling out against Treble
“When he unloaded a best-of-weekend 7.093 elapsed time on me in the semi
finals, it didn’t really give me much room too work with.” --
Treble on his loss to Hines in the semis
“This is racing. You can red light or break. You never know. We were there to take it when he red lit just like he would’ve taken it from us if we had red lit.” -- Shawn Gann on winning the final after Hines left .035 secs too soon
PRO MOD
“Running on the NHRA side is a tough challenge and I guess we didn’t have what we needed to grab the win.” -- Thomas Patterson on falling to Zach Barklage in the first round
“We always want to win every time we come out to race, but you just can’t greedy. You have to be content to get a base hit as opposed to hitting a homerun.” -- Mike Ashley after red lighting in the semis against Mike Castellana
“Winning’s always good and this one was no exception.” --
Castellana on defeating Fred Hahn in the final round 
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