Pomona: Whit Bazemore Saturday summary

BAZEMORE RACES TO NO. 8 IN FINAL QUALIFYING AT POMONA; FACES NEW TEAMMATE CAPPS IN FIRST ROUND

POMONA, Calif. (Feb. 12, 2004) - Whit Bazemore poured it on the final of only three qualifying sessions (Friday qualifying was cancelled because of rain) for the CARQUEST Auto Parts Winternationals today, clocking a 4.785-second lap at 320.97 mph to place himself and the Matco Tools Iron Eagle Dodge Stratus Funny Car into No. 8 in the field of 16.

With the Don Schumacher Racing brain trust of crew chiefs Ed "Ace" McCulloch, Dan Olson, Lee Beard and Mike Neff at full throttle at the start of a new season, this final session delivered positive results for all three Funny Car teams.

"It's good," said Bazemore. "We struggled, all three cars struggled in the second session. So, for the last run to happen the way it did for all of us was really good. It's a real positive move. You don't want to go into Sunday not having made a good clean run down the race track. The .78 is a good run considering where we came from earlier in the weekend (5.055/305.77 and 5.041/312.21 in the first two rounds).

Teammates Gary Scelzi (4.768/328.70) and Ron Capps (4.785/317.72) qualified sixth and ninth, respectively, in their final attempts.

"It's the first race of the year," added Bazemore, who faces his new teammate Capps in the first round of eliminations on Sunday. "It's important to do well tomorrow. It's a shame we have to run our teammate, but Don Schumacher has a lot of cars, so we were bound to run into him sooner or later.

"The Matco Tools team is going to go out and do the very best we can. We're looking forward to a good day. Lee (Beard, crew chief) has a good start, a good baseline and we'll be all right."

-dsr-