Madison: Whit Bazemore Saturday summary

Bazemore qualifies No. 5 in final Gateway session (NHRA)

MADISON, Ill. (June 28, 2003) - Whit Bazemore and his Matco Tools Iron Eagle Dodge Stratus R/T crew had one of those moments between qualifying sessions that often proves the mettle of the man, or men in this case. While rebuilding the engine after the third round of qualifying today, in which Bazemore ran a 4.999/300.73 lap, the second quickest elapsed time next to this teammate Gary Scelzi's, the team found a problem. Quick work by Lee Beard and his band of technicians made the repairs in time to warm-up the car and get it up on the starting line for final round of qualifying. It wasn't the quickest run of the round (it was the third), but it was his quickest of the weekend, earning him No. 5 qualifying spot: 4.901/314.31.

"It was a great test for the team," Bazemore said, "not that we're not tested every week. We had a few things, one thing in the pit area before the run that went wrong and the guys did an excellent job. I can't say enough about the team and the leadership and our soldiers and how they performed. And then to go out and run a .90 flat, which was third low of the session, was incredible. They were under the gun but they did a perfect job. That was the easiest pass we made all weekend. It was so easy to drive. It was perfect."

Bazemore faces Ron Capps in the first round of final eliminations on Sunday, which begin at 4:30 p.m. "We've gone down the track repeatedly every run so far and so tomorrow the first round is going to be awfully hard. We're probably going to see the worst track conditions that we've seen all weekend. But we feel very confident that we will be in good shape."

-dsr