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Then they turned their talk to Garlits and Muldowney. "Is she a spunky broad, or what?" Prudhomme said, as Dixon quickly insisted that the quote not be attributed to him. Then LaHaie indicated he wasn't overly exercised about Big Daddy's comeback or Muldowney's pink Cha-Cha car splash: "We didn't like them then (when he and Prudhomme were driving), and we don't like them now." Said Prudhomme, "For sure, we didn't like Garlits, and Garlits didn't like us. And Shirley hated everybody. In fact, when I asked LaHaie to come and work for me, he said, 'You know, I never liked you much.' I said, 'I never liked you much, either.' So we found out we had a lot of things in common." Bazemore, the source and target for countless barbs, addressed his relationship with John Force after beating the 10-time champion's protege, Tony Pedregon, in the Funny Car final. "If you can't race Force (who lost in the opening round to Jim Epler), you want to race one of his boys. We raced part of him in the final, but he wasn't there. He's a good guy. They're very hard to beat. You have to do everything they do, then take it up a notch. That's what we're trying to do." Bazemore, who is Force's closest challenger but 243 points off the pace, said racing for second place is no fun. "We're racing to win races," he said. "The goal is that championship ring. I would love to win one. A lot of great guys never get it. I may be a not-so-great guy who never gets it, I don't know. "People say John Force has won 10 (NHRA Winston) titles -- how many have you won? Well," Bazemore said, his thumb and index finger forming a zero, "I've won this many. But we're trying." The Indianapolis resident easily defeated Pedregon with a 4.971 e.t., 298.14 mph to 5.123, 275.06. He and his Matco Tools Pontiac Firebird led the field with a 4.756-second run at 325.69 miles an hour -- the quickest and fastest in NHRA history -- Friday night but said, "Having the quickest and fastest car at nighttime doesn't mean anything. I went into the finals thinking we're a serious underdog. Tony ran a 4.82 in the first round (to beat Scotty Cannon). Just a tremendous effort. I'm just glad Lee (crew chief Beard) forgot about that." The $85,000 U.S. Nationals triumph was Bazemore's second, but he treated it reverentially. "To win Indy . . . this is everything," he said. "You struggle, you dream, you think, you look and you ask, 'What do they (winners) have that I don't have? You keep plugging away. And then you win Indy and you pinch yourself." Anderson definitely is pinching himself. He called his Pro Stock efforts against Hurley Blakeney, Mike Edwards, Bruce Allen and Mark Osborne "probably the worst I've ever driven. The two races I've won, I sucked! I blew it all day at the starting line. But when it's your day, it's your day." He said his Pontiac Firebird, which ran a 6.958-second elapsed time at 198.58 miles an hour to runner-up Mark Osborne's 7.016/198.70 Dodge Neon, "was awesome. Awesome. We knew we had a good horse." Still, the $25,000 victory had Anderson puzzled. "I didn't back into it, but I'm just shaking my head. We didn't expect anything like that to happen. It's incredible," he said. "How could this happen? It's in the record book; it's official. It'll always be there." Then, referring to event sponsor Mac Tools, the Jacksonville, N.C.,
driver quipped, "Every tool in my box that's not a Mac Tool is out of
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