Seattle: Whit Bazemore Friday summary

Bazemore No. 8 after chute deploys in Seattle

KENT, Wash. (July 25, 2003) - Whit Bazemore had a surprise in the first round of qualifying today when the parachute deployed at the hit of the throttle on his Matco Tools Iron Eagle Dodge Stratus Funny Car, which virtually aborted the run, resulting in a non-qualifying 10.863/74.74 pass. In the second round, Bazemore pulled off a 5.030-second elapsed time in the fourth pass of the round, which was low e.t. at the time. However, seven cars that followed him bettered his score, dropping Bazemore to No. 8.

Bazemore's Don Schumacher Racing teammate Gary Scelzi, in the Oakley Time Bomb Dodge Stratus, was low qualifier for the day.

"We had a part of the parachute mechanism break on the Matco Tools Dodge in the first run, so the 'chute came out and that run was trash," said Bazemore, second in the POWERade Drag Racing Series Funny Car point standings. "That put us in the front of the line for the second round and we were actually tuned up a little bit more. Then we saw one good strong car go down there and smoke the tires so we made a decision to back it off a little bit. It was so critical that we go down the track and get qualified, we were conservative and at the time we were low e.t. We weren't that conservative until Gary (Scelzi) ran. We were only a half a 10th off of low, basically, so we're not too unhappy. It's going to be tricky tomorrow."

Bazemore was pleased for his teammate and the Oakley Time Bomb team. "They deserve it. They've worked hard all year. They've had limited success and it's great to see them be No. 1 and hopefully it will last for them tomorrow. That would be a great thing. Hopefully we can catch up a little bit and be 1-2, which would be nice. Tomorrow's going to be hard. We'll just have to see what the conditions will let us do."

-dsr-