Columbus: Scotty Cannon Saturday summary

Cannon qualifies no. 9 in Columbus

COLUMBUS, Ohio (June 14, 2003) - Scotty Cannon, in the Oakley Funny Car, had three good qualifying runs for this weekend's Pontiac Excitement NHRA Nationals, the 11th round of 23 in the POWERade Drag Racing Series. He posted his best pass in the final round, taking the No. 9 position with a 4.892-second elapsed time at 315.64 mph. A fourth qualifying round was cancelled because of rain.

"It's running better; it's running more consistent," he said. "Counting the three runs in Chicago testing, that's the sixth run it's made in a row. I don't want to get my hopes up too much. We're working at it. We're doing the best we can. We were looking to run an .82 or .83 there. It was a little weak early. It's not because we went up there with it weak, but we've been doing some different stuff with the clutch. We couldn't decide whether to put more clutch in it and a bunch of motor or just put more clutch in it. We thought we had enough motor. We hadn't got it backed down by any means; we've got plenty. We're just trying to run fast and run good all at the same time. Because it looks like -knock on wood - we kind of got five or six good runs back to back and the car's been running good, excellent. It ain't at the top of the pack, but it's right in the middle. We'll just have to peack away at it."