<img src="http://www.nitromater.com/gallery/files/5/d_worsham.jpg" alt="d_worsham" align="right"borders="0"/>
Del Worsham knew, on Saturday night once the field had been set, that his first-round assignment was an unenviable one. After running well, with great consistency, during qualifying, Worsham was paired with No. 6 qualifier Ron Capps in round one, and that's never a situation that causes one to jump for joy. In the end, Worsham's red Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Impala put up a valiant fight, and had it run the full lap on eight cylinders (rather than just the front half of the track) it's likely he would've beaten Capps, kept his streak of consecutive round wins alive, and after that, who knows.
Instead, Worsham's mount left hard and was running well until cylinder number eight lost fire and one-eighth of his power was instantly erased. Capps drove around him and took the win with a 4.973 to Worsham's 5.046, but there were many positive signs on this bright and windy weekend in the desert and Worsham was far more optimistic about the future than he was disappointed in the day.
"We really have a great race car, and it's just a pleasure to drive, so I'm seriously excited about our chances for the rest of the season," he said. "The thing just wants to go straight, stay together, and not hurt parts. I'd have to say it's been probably since 2005 that we had a car I liked and trusted this much. It's too good, and our team is too good, to let this one round disappoint me at all. People do drop cylinders out here, it's just kind of a fact of life in fuel racing, and we dropped one a bit more than 2-seconds into that run and it cost us. We would've won that round had it not, but that's why we race these things for real, on the race track, and not just on the computer."
During qualifying here in Vegas, Worsham stumbled in session one, as did almost all of his Funny Car colleagues, but then put three consecutive fine runs together, posting a 4.941 in Q2, followed by a 4.930 in Q3 (which was the quickest run of that session) and a 4.916 on his final lap. When all the shuffling and brain-twisting gyrations of qualifying were over, Worsham sat 11th while John Force, Jerry Toliver, Scott Kalitta, Tony Bartone, and Terry Haddock were all relegated to the DNQ list. No one, at any time, said it would be easy.
"Saturday was really a pretty good day for us, and I think about any team out here would've taken what we did," Worsham said. "We weren't fortunate enough to be at the back of the line for the final run, when the sun was off the track and the big-time runs were getting posted, but in the heat we did great. Because of that, I was really confident that we could come out here and just repeat what we'd done in Q3, running a 4.93 or something in that neighborhood. I figured if we did that, we could not only win that round, but win this race."
The plan was a good one. The execution was near perfect. And, the inevitable gremlin was found during the team's warm-up, when the burst panel on the manifold split open.
"That was one of those deals where you think you've just gotten your bad luck out of the way," Worsham said. "It must have developed a hairline crack that we couldn't see, because as soon as we started the car it split open and we had the chance to replace it. It could've done that during the lap, and when that stuff happens I cry. We replaced it, and went out there to run a 4.93."
After the lap, and the dropped cylinder, Worsham returned to the team transporter and downloaded the data from his car. His first stop was the tuning office and his racing computer, and once the data was displayed, and laid over his 4.93 lap from Saturday, the evidence of what he was after was clear to see. Up until the 2.4-second mark, when the cylinder flooded and died, this run and the 4.93 were identical. One, quite literally, could not be discerned from the other.
"That's why I'm not too upset right now, as much as I love to win," Worsham said, referring to his computer data. "We made the right call, we had the right tune-up in the car, but we dropped a hole and we got spanked. I don't care if all the other winners smoked the tires or won on red-lights, we raced Ron Capps and we had to outrun his 4.97 if we wanted to win, and we didn't do it.
"We've also almost always been a good hot weather team, so this weekend was a great opportunity to make sure we still have a handle on that, and we do. We go from here to Atlanta, and then to St. Louis, and from then on out it should be pretty hot wherever we run. I'm pretty stoked about that, and excited to get out there with this sweet race car. It's going to be fun."
And if it runs on all eight, it's going to be exciting.
DROPPED CYLINDER DROPS WORSHAM OUT IN ROUND ONE
Del Worsham knew, on Saturday night once the field had been set, that his first-round assignment was an unenviable one. After running well, with great consistency, during qualifying, Worsham was paired with No. 6 qualifier Ron Capps in round one, and that's never a situation that causes one to jump for joy. In the end, Worsham's red Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Impala put up a valiant fight, and had it run the full lap on eight cylinders (rather than just the front half of the track) it's likely he would've beaten Capps, kept his streak of consecutive round wins alive, and after that, who knows.
Instead, Worsham's mount left hard and was running well until cylinder number eight lost fire and one-eighth of his power was instantly erased. Capps drove around him and took the win with a 4.973 to Worsham's 5.046, but there were many positive signs on this bright and windy weekend in the desert and Worsham was far more optimistic about the future than he was disappointed in the day.
"We really have a great race car, and it's just a pleasure to drive, so I'm seriously excited about our chances for the rest of the season," he said. "The thing just wants to go straight, stay together, and not hurt parts. I'd have to say it's been probably since 2005 that we had a car I liked and trusted this much. It's too good, and our team is too good, to let this one round disappoint me at all. People do drop cylinders out here, it's just kind of a fact of life in fuel racing, and we dropped one a bit more than 2-seconds into that run and it cost us. We would've won that round had it not, but that's why we race these things for real, on the race track, and not just on the computer."
During qualifying here in Vegas, Worsham stumbled in session one, as did almost all of his Funny Car colleagues, but then put three consecutive fine runs together, posting a 4.941 in Q2, followed by a 4.930 in Q3 (which was the quickest run of that session) and a 4.916 on his final lap. When all the shuffling and brain-twisting gyrations of qualifying were over, Worsham sat 11th while John Force, Jerry Toliver, Scott Kalitta, Tony Bartone, and Terry Haddock were all relegated to the DNQ list. No one, at any time, said it would be easy.
"Saturday was really a pretty good day for us, and I think about any team out here would've taken what we did," Worsham said. "We weren't fortunate enough to be at the back of the line for the final run, when the sun was off the track and the big-time runs were getting posted, but in the heat we did great. Because of that, I was really confident that we could come out here and just repeat what we'd done in Q3, running a 4.93 or something in that neighborhood. I figured if we did that, we could not only win that round, but win this race."
The plan was a good one. The execution was near perfect. And, the inevitable gremlin was found during the team's warm-up, when the burst panel on the manifold split open.
"That was one of those deals where you think you've just gotten your bad luck out of the way," Worsham said. "It must have developed a hairline crack that we couldn't see, because as soon as we started the car it split open and we had the chance to replace it. It could've done that during the lap, and when that stuff happens I cry. We replaced it, and went out there to run a 4.93."
After the lap, and the dropped cylinder, Worsham returned to the team transporter and downloaded the data from his car. His first stop was the tuning office and his racing computer, and once the data was displayed, and laid over his 4.93 lap from Saturday, the evidence of what he was after was clear to see. Up until the 2.4-second mark, when the cylinder flooded and died, this run and the 4.93 were identical. One, quite literally, could not be discerned from the other.
"That's why I'm not too upset right now, as much as I love to win," Worsham said, referring to his computer data. "We made the right call, we had the right tune-up in the car, but we dropped a hole and we got spanked. I don't care if all the other winners smoked the tires or won on red-lights, we raced Ron Capps and we had to outrun his 4.97 if we wanted to win, and we didn't do it.
"We've also almost always been a good hot weather team, so this weekend was a great opportunity to make sure we still have a handle on that, and we do. We go from here to Atlanta, and then to St. Louis, and from then on out it should be pretty hot wherever we run. I'm pretty stoked about that, and excited to get out there with this sweet race car. It's going to be fun."
And if it runs on all eight, it's going to be exciting.
