Baytown: Whit Bazemore Friday summary

Whit Bazemore just misses no. 1 spot Friday night.

After ending up No. 13 in the first round with a tire-smoking 9.656/89.40 pass, Whit Bazemore came back in the evening session and posted a 4.778/323.89 lap, which was the quickest and fastest until the final pair, when Gary Densham squeaked ahead to No. 1 with a 4.755/325.69 pass. Bazemore was relegated to No. 2.

BAZEMORE: "It was a really good run. It's a good rebound effort by our Matco Tools team. Normally, in a situation where you struggle a little bit in the first run, you don't really go for it on the second run, because you have to be a little more conservative just to guarantee that you qualify and get down the race track. Not (crew chief) Lee Beard; not tonight. He was real aggressive with the car and the tune-up. Before we ran, he said, 'Baze, you've got to keep it exactly in the center of the race track and we'll have a good chance to be on pole.' And it ran a .77 and that was a tremendous job by the guys. It's hard at night. We saw a lot of guys have problems tonight, get out of the groove, hit cones and stuff and these cars are hard to drive to begin with. This race track is very dark and bumpy and the front end gets light and it moves the car around and you simply can't see where you are. With clutch dust in the cockpit and the vibration of the car, you can't see the cones. You can't see anything. It's a little bit scary; but it's the same for everybody so we went down there OK. It's kind of a relief to get to the other end without hitting anything."

ON THE FIRST RUN: "We shook. We were just a little underpowered for the track. The track was pretty good early and so we shook the tires and went into tire smoke and lost traction."

-dsr-