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Seattle: Whit Bazemore Saturday summary

BAZEMORE STRUGGLES TO QUALIFY 15TH IN SEATTLE KENT, Wash. (July 23, 2005) - Whit Bazemore and the Matco Tools Iron Eagle Dodge Stratus Funny Car team struggled through four qualifying rounds for the CARQUEST Auto Parts Nationals, to earn 15th ...

Published: Jul 25, 2005, 2:56 PM

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BAZEMORE STRUGGLES TO QUALIFY 15TH IN SEATTLE

KENT, Wash. (July 23, 2005) - Whit Bazemore and the Matco Tools Iron Eagle Dodge Stratus Funny Car team struggled through four qualifying rounds for the CARQUEST Auto Parts Nationals, to earn 15th place. Bazemore remained upbeat, nevertheless.

Bazemore's 5.004/312.57, 4.999/310.55, 17.291/81.70 and 6.730/125.10 passes were not characteristic of the progress the "new" team has made since Englishtown, N.J., in June and after qualifying No. 2 in Denver last week.

"Sometimes you have to take a couple of steps back to take a couple forward," said Bazemore, two-time winner this season and Funny Car points leader early on. "We've had some really weird mechanical problems this weekend on the Matco Tools Dodge that have kept us from going down the race track."

"The fact is we still qualified and we've got a car that has a potential to run extremely well, so we're just working hard to reach that potential. Tomorrow we may reach it."

"The first day we had a problem with the fuel system and we had a computer issue the first run that kept us from finding that problem. The first day was basically a write-off, and this morning we had an electrical short that cost us that run. We went into that last session with basically no runs down the race track, with full power. So, you have to find the parameters of what the race car and the track will take in the given conditions. Because of our earlier errors we had only one run to do that in today."

"Like I said, the potential is there, it's making good power; it's just a matter of finding the sweet spot where the car is happy and it's going to go down the track a lot."

Bazemore faces his teammate Gary Scelzi in the first round of eliminations on Sunday.

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