<img src="http://www.nitromater.com/gallery/files/5/d_worsham.jpg" alt="d_worsham" align="left"borders="0"/>
Del Worsham attacked Saturday's two qualifying session just as every other professional competitor did, knowing these two runs alone would set the field for the 2008 Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Nationals. In an unfortunate moment of deja vu, Worsham not only duplicated his '08 start in Pomona just two weeks ago, he also managed to clone his 2007 start to the season, with his second consecutive DNQ. Worsham also failed to make the field at both Pomona and Phoenix last year, and then went on to finish 9th in points, despite not winning a race throughout the rest of the season.
In the "here and now" sunny skies and temperate conditions greeted the teams on Saturday, after Friday's drizzle washed out all racing, and although records were never threatened, solid laps did pop up on the board throughout the day. Worsham, however, quickly overpowered the track on his first run, and then suffered through what appeared to be a series of malfunctions on the final lap, causing him to again lose traction early in the run. He pedaled his CSK Impala on both attempts, and was actually 12th on the board after the first one, with a pedestrian 5.929.
After the failed final run, Worsham landed 19th on the ladder, and will not race on Sunday.
"This is about the worst I felt driving a race car, and that final lap was about the worst I've ever felt in the car," Worsham said. "It didn't feel right from the moment I rolled forward for the burnout, and things only got worse from there. On the first run, we were just completely over-center, probably still caught up in over-compensating for what happened in Pomona where we were down on power and blower boost. We fixed that problem testing, but then found, and fixed, another little issue with the blower before the run and the added motor just drove the car right into smoke.
"We knew we were over-center on that run, and you need to back the car down to get it down the track, but the sun was off the track and the conditions were getting a lot better. You don't want to do that classic deal where you try to use the late run tune-up on the sunny track, and then fall all the way back to the early run tune-up on the cool track. It's not an easy tightrope to walk, and I thought we had the right numbers in it for that last pass, but my bet right now is that we'll find more than one thing wrong when we start dissecting everything, and plus we may have just been too conservative trying to make sure we went down the track. I know it had at least one cylinder out at the hit of the throttle, and the thing had basically no chance to make it."
Worsham was alternately angry and depressed after the run, clearly frustrated by this misfortune at his sponsor's race, for the second consecutive year.
"I'm sure you can imagine how much we want to do well at every race, but especially this one," he said. "There are always a million reasons to want to have a good race at the CSK Nationals, but this year there are even more, and we let a lot of people down. We let ourselves down, too, but that's not what's important here. We let CSK down, people who support us all year and look forward to this weekend with so much excitement. I want to scream, for sure, but I did learn a long time ago that you can't yell at the car. It just doesn't care, and it doesn't listen. You have to support your guys, and you have to keep some calm around you because you need a clear head to analyze it all. If you can't do that, you can't fix what's wrong, and we really need to fix what's wrong.
"We bounced back from this last year, coming all the way back to 9th after doing this at the first two races. We put ourselves in a huge hole, and we had the strength to slowly dig out of it and make a year of it. We sure didn't want to start the same way, believe me, but we know we can bounce back from this and still be right in it. We can do it."
DEJA VU OF THE WORST KIND: WORSHAM GOES 0-FOR-2
Del Worsham attacked Saturday's two qualifying session just as every other professional competitor did, knowing these two runs alone would set the field for the 2008 Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Nationals. In an unfortunate moment of deja vu, Worsham not only duplicated his '08 start in Pomona just two weeks ago, he also managed to clone his 2007 start to the season, with his second consecutive DNQ. Worsham also failed to make the field at both Pomona and Phoenix last year, and then went on to finish 9th in points, despite not winning a race throughout the rest of the season.
In the "here and now" sunny skies and temperate conditions greeted the teams on Saturday, after Friday's drizzle washed out all racing, and although records were never threatened, solid laps did pop up on the board throughout the day. Worsham, however, quickly overpowered the track on his first run, and then suffered through what appeared to be a series of malfunctions on the final lap, causing him to again lose traction early in the run. He pedaled his CSK Impala on both attempts, and was actually 12th on the board after the first one, with a pedestrian 5.929.
After the failed final run, Worsham landed 19th on the ladder, and will not race on Sunday.
"This is about the worst I felt driving a race car, and that final lap was about the worst I've ever felt in the car," Worsham said. "It didn't feel right from the moment I rolled forward for the burnout, and things only got worse from there. On the first run, we were just completely over-center, probably still caught up in over-compensating for what happened in Pomona where we were down on power and blower boost. We fixed that problem testing, but then found, and fixed, another little issue with the blower before the run and the added motor just drove the car right into smoke.
"We knew we were over-center on that run, and you need to back the car down to get it down the track, but the sun was off the track and the conditions were getting a lot better. You don't want to do that classic deal where you try to use the late run tune-up on the sunny track, and then fall all the way back to the early run tune-up on the cool track. It's not an easy tightrope to walk, and I thought we had the right numbers in it for that last pass, but my bet right now is that we'll find more than one thing wrong when we start dissecting everything, and plus we may have just been too conservative trying to make sure we went down the track. I know it had at least one cylinder out at the hit of the throttle, and the thing had basically no chance to make it."
Worsham was alternately angry and depressed after the run, clearly frustrated by this misfortune at his sponsor's race, for the second consecutive year.
"I'm sure you can imagine how much we want to do well at every race, but especially this one," he said. "There are always a million reasons to want to have a good race at the CSK Nationals, but this year there are even more, and we let a lot of people down. We let ourselves down, too, but that's not what's important here. We let CSK down, people who support us all year and look forward to this weekend with so much excitement. I want to scream, for sure, but I did learn a long time ago that you can't yell at the car. It just doesn't care, and it doesn't listen. You have to support your guys, and you have to keep some calm around you because you need a clear head to analyze it all. If you can't do that, you can't fix what's wrong, and we really need to fix what's wrong.
"We bounced back from this last year, coming all the way back to 9th after doing this at the first two races. We put ourselves in a huge hole, and we had the strength to slowly dig out of it and make a year of it. We sure didn't want to start the same way, believe me, but we know we can bounce back from this and still be right in it. We can do it."
