Chuck Etchells Racing Saturday Columbus Pit Note

Whit Bazemore recorded the quickest pass in two of the three Funny Car qualifying sessions for the Pontiac Excitement Nationals. After starting off with a 4.993-second effort with his first pass on Friday to top the field, Bazemore closed Saturday's time trials by covering the quarter-mile in 4.950 seconds, placing the Kendall Motor Oil/Matco Tools Camaro Z28 4th for Sunday's final eliminations. Bazemore's opponent in the first round will be thirteenth qualifier Dean Skuza.

"It's a great feeling to perform as well as we did with all that's gone on. I believe the Etchells Racing team's confidence level going into tomorrow's eliminations will be high. We have a tough first round opponent in Dean Skuza. He's got us a couple of times this year, so we're due to punch his ticket. But it's really good for everyone on the team to see the Kendall/Matco Camaro make two out of three runs. In fact, the only time we didn't get down the track was when we were in the bad lane. A lot of cars had trouble over there, so you can almost write that one off. The way we see it, we were two for two in good conditions. We'll have that same good lane tomorrow, and I think lane choice will be a factor, based on what we saw in qualifying. The key will be to make a good solid run out of the box and try to maintain lane choice. If we do that, the Kendall/Matco Tools Camaro can go to the winner's circle, something that will be mean a lot to everyone on this team this weekend."