Indianapolis: Scotty Cannon Saturday summary

Cannon 13th in Indy's first day of qualifying

INDIANAPOLIS (Aug. 30,. 2003) - Scotty Cannon, in the Oakley Funny Car, ended up No. 13 after today's second qualifying session, after posting a 4.880/313.07 in the first round during the day, which was good for No. 5 at that time. In this evening's session he smoked the tires to an 8.539/94.08 pass.

"It was our third weekend of doing it on our own," said Cannon, who is now also the crew chief. "We were kind of bummed out because we missed the night session. Believe it or not we stepped on it too hard early.

"We went an .88 here testing under the same conditions, so I put it back just like it was when it went an .88. My way of looking at it was to go out there and run an .85 or .86 was not going to get you in the top half of the field. So I was trying to run an .80 flat or .78 or .79. We just missed the first part of the track.

"Even though it didn't go down it I got some good information," he added. "The first run that I made my car I think was the quickest car to the 1000-foot (mark), so we had that part down pretty well. It's probably still one of the quickest cars to 1000 feet even after the night session.

"If we get the first half of it with the back half, we'll be OK."