6/4/04

For many Midwesterners, their main activity over the Memorial Day weekend consisted of weather watching and storm dodging. It was no different for the racers and fans at Heartland Park Topeka, as storm clouds, rain and high winds swept through the Central Kansas area. At meet’s end, some changes had swept over the Professional points standings as well. The points lead changed in Top Fuel, while Nitro Funny Car and Pro Stock saw those at the top remain there, with a couple of new faces making an impact.

TOP FUEL

The Brandon Bernstein “era” may have already arrived. Derailed by last year’s crash at Englishtown, he now sits atop the Power Ade Top Fuel points chase, a result of his win at Topeka. coming in to the event, Bernstein trailed Tony Schumacher by forty-three points, but Schumacher lost in round two to Scott Kalitta. With the door opened, the Bernstein train barged on through to the points lead. Of his win, Bernstein said, “The crew did a great job. It was nice and cool early on, and then it got hot later, which really says a lot about Tim Richards and his ability. He has a great tune-up for hot tracks and He’s just as good when it’s cold. It’s great to win races any time and I’m still just as excited about this as I was about the first. It’s an awesome feeling to go through the field and run like we did today.” No win is easy, especially in Top Fuel. But his Topeka win puts Bernstein into the early season favorite’s role to be the newest Power Ade Top Fuel champ. Now if we can just get ESPN’s Marty Reid to stop calling him B-Squared, we’ll be all set.

FUNNY CAR

Whit Bazemore is no stranger to the Points leader position in Funny car. It’s just that he has never been there when the final bell rings. This might be the year that changes everything for Whit. His win was surprisingly straightforward, with Bazemore leading qualifying and pretty much sweeping aside his four opponents on race day. He put up bracket racer style consistency until the final round, where he fell off his earlier 4.70 second pace, but Final round foe Eric Medlin lost traction, and the race.

Bazemore, a winner at the 1997 Topeka race said, “To be here in Heartland Park again and to be in the winner’s circle again is great. It feels good. Some words I never thought I’d say-we extended our points lead. I’ve never said that. It kind of rolls off the tongue.” Bazemore has spent a lot of time getting to this stage of his career, and has been crashed, burnt up and out of money enough times for several lifetimes. More and more, it looks like those days are over for good.

PRO STOCK

Yes, Greg Anderson won again. And it looked pretty easy, at least from the outside looking in. But you have to give him this-despite Beryllium-Gate, Employee-Gate, Tire-gate or Whatever-Gate, GA delivers on race day. And at the end of the day, that’s all anybody remembers anyway. He didn’t qualify on the pole however, that honor going to Steve Johns. Johns parlayed some newfound Bill Jenkins horsepower in to his first Pro Stock low qualifier effort.

On race day it was Anderson time, for the seventh time in 2004 and the 23rd overall. Coupled with his win in Saturday’s special King Demon Shootout (over Dave Connolly), it was an especially profitable weekend for the current King of Pro Stock. Between Prize money, King Demon bucks and a “double-up” bonus from NHRA, Anderson took home in excess of $100,000.

Of this largess Anderson said, “... This is more money than I ever thought I could win at a drag race! To come out on top and win all this money without out-driving people feels almost better than when you crush them. Every race I won this weekend it seemed like you couldn’t tell who won when we went through the lights. We saw a lot of teams step it up.”

Maybe so, but from the looks of things at Topeka, those same teams, and others will have to keep stepping on it to catch up to the Greg Anderson express.

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