Sonoma: Whit Bazemore Saturday summary

Bazemore stays no. 4 with second quickest E.T. of final round.

SONOMA, Calif. (Aug. 2, 2003) - Paired against Tony Pedregon in the next to final pass of the final qualifying session, Whit Bazemore served notice by putting down a quicker elapsed time than his rival for the POWERade Drag Racing Series Funny Car championship. Bazemore's Matco Tools Iron Eagle Dodge Stratus performed another strong run, posting a 4.920 at 310.20 mph to Pedregon's 4.922 at 302.75.

Although he didn't advance in the field, Bazemore set the second fastest e.t. of the round (to Del Worsham's 4.909) and remained No. 4 on the Funny Car charts, based on the 4.845/290.70 recorded last night. This final qualifying effort was held in the early evening, and few cars benefited from cool temperatures, as the sun was still shining on the Infineon Raceway dragstrip.

In today's earlier third qualifying round, Bazemore smoked the tires to a 7.925/101.16 pass.

"We were the second quick e.t. of the final session," he said. "The track is tricky when the sun's out and the heat's on it. It was a great rebounding effort by the Matco Tools Dodge team because of the problems we had last night (a failed attempt to qualify No. 1 when a tire came apart at the finish line). Super job, super job.

"Lately qualifying hasn't really gone our way. We've had little problems. They're just freak occurrences that could happen. Even if we prepared better or we paid more attention to our car - which we can't - these things would still happen. It's kind of a test, I guess. The team is tremendous and (Lee) Beard (crew chief) and the guys did a great job reading the track today, and to come out second low e.t. in this session is good."

Bazemore will face Arnie Karp in the first round of eliminations tomorrow, and, if he wins, has the opportunity to meet up with his teammate Gary Scelzi in the second round.

-dsr-