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POMONA, Calif. (February 5, 2007) -- Del Worsham finished 11th on the POWERade points chart last year, missing the top 10 for the first time since 1997. He also failed to win a race during the year, going winless for the first time since 2000. To wrap up the campaign, he made the highlight reels from coast to coast with a spectacular crash into, and over, the Pomona Raceway catch fences at the season's final event. What it all added up to were a lot of scribbles on his '06 chalkboard, including a number of formulas started but then scratched out, and at the bottom of the equation the answer was clearly, and simply, wrong.
Over the past three months, Worsham has worked hard to erase, scrub, and otherwise cleanse that slate. He now stands on the doorstep of the 2007 NHRA POWERade season, which begins this Thursday at the same Pomona Raceway track, and as he prepares to open that door and enter the long hallway of a new campaign, he does so with the eagerness of a rookie, tempered by the seriousness of a veteran. The slate is clean, and Worsham is ready to start the new math.
"We're all tied for first, right now," Worsham said. "Nobody is in the points lead and nobody is behind. We've been working hard all winter, we've made as many test laps as we could, trying new things and ironing out new approaches, and there's really nothing left to do but race, for real. Looking back on 2006, it's easier to see how it all went down now that I've had the off-season to think about it. Everything we've done to get ready for 2007 is based on where we got off track last year, and the overall idea is not just to catch up, but to leap ahead.
"Of course, making a big leap back to where we believe we belong, at the top of the points sheet, takes some bold moves. I won't be satisfied with just getting better, and the plan is not to take baby steps. The plan is to take everything we learned and apply it to being a much better team in '07, from top to bottom. We have some new blood, some new parts, and a lot of new energy around here. Everyone is amped up and ready to go."
Fans of the Checker, Schuck's, Kragen team may see a bevy of new faces on Worsham's red squad and figure a major house cleaning had to have taken place, but the truth lies more in the area of natural progression, as opposed to forced changes. Worsham saw no need to radically alter his veteran crew after the '06 season, but some individual personal decisions made that necessary.
"We had a good team, and they had been together for quite a while," Worsham said. "By the time the season ended, though, most of the guys were just ready to move on to something different in their lives. I hated to see them all go, but family is far more important than the race car, so we had to start over in a lot of ways. Fortunately, my most senior guy, Terry Snyder, is still here. We picked up some very talented people, guys we really wanted, and we've ended up with a great mix of veterans and rookies.
"Like on any sports team, that's a good way to go. The veteran guys get charged up having the rookies around, and the new guys have some real leadership to follow. They've all come together very quickly during the preseason, and I'm confident they'll get even better as we go. It does take any team a while to come together as a unit, but these guys are already well down that road."
On the track, Worsham isn't about to give away any trade secrets, but he's open to discussing the new tuning approach his team will take during the '07 season. With a frustrating '06 behind him, including a final segment of the year where Worsham and his team began making big changes in the way they run the car, the CSK driver feels his team has turned a big corner.
"By midseason last year, we were about tapped out in terms of the power we could make, running the car that way," he said. "When you're leaning on it that hard, just to keep up, the window between getting down the track and smoking the tires gets smaller and smaller. The goal we had, when we started overhauling everything after Indy last year, was to get ahead of the curve, so that we could work more on managing our power instead of trying to always find a bit more. When you do that, you can tune more to what the track will give you, instead of having to tune the car up just to have a chance.
"We wanted to make the car less edgy and we wanted to make it more consistent, and to do that we had to start with a clean sheet of paper, really. In the past, we've tinkered with the clutch, messed around with the blowers, and changed the fuel system, but the moves were usually small ones and we didn't make them all at once. By Indy last year, it was time to get to work on this season, so basically we've already been testing for five months. We're getting there. We had a very fast car by the end of the season last year."
Though not many people remember, due to the overwhelming nature of his Pomona crash last November, the bigger story for Worsham, up until the mishap, was the fact he was the No. 1 qualifier at the time. With a career best 4.712, Worsham held the top spot until the final session, and just barely missed his first-ever 4.6 run.
"It may have actually been on a 4.69 when we ran the 4.71, but it blew up before the finish line," Worsham said. "That explosion was kind of 'out of nowhere' but, looking back, it was an indication that it might blow up again, though we just couldn't see that at the time. As it turned out, it blew up again on Friday, we had the big crash, and that's the way people remember our Pomona. This weekend, we're out to create some new memories, and put last year's deal behind us."
A clean slate, a fast car, and a fresh new attitude fueled by an eager crew. It could all add up to the answer Del Worsham is looking for.
WITH SLATE CLEAN, WORSHAM READY TO BEGIN HIS 2007 ASSIGNMENT
POMONA, Calif. (February 5, 2007) -- Del Worsham finished 11th on the POWERade points chart last year, missing the top 10 for the first time since 1997. He also failed to win a race during the year, going winless for the first time since 2000. To wrap up the campaign, he made the highlight reels from coast to coast with a spectacular crash into, and over, the Pomona Raceway catch fences at the season's final event. What it all added up to were a lot of scribbles on his '06 chalkboard, including a number of formulas started but then scratched out, and at the bottom of the equation the answer was clearly, and simply, wrong.
Over the past three months, Worsham has worked hard to erase, scrub, and otherwise cleanse that slate. He now stands on the doorstep of the 2007 NHRA POWERade season, which begins this Thursday at the same Pomona Raceway track, and as he prepares to open that door and enter the long hallway of a new campaign, he does so with the eagerness of a rookie, tempered by the seriousness of a veteran. The slate is clean, and Worsham is ready to start the new math.
"We're all tied for first, right now," Worsham said. "Nobody is in the points lead and nobody is behind. We've been working hard all winter, we've made as many test laps as we could, trying new things and ironing out new approaches, and there's really nothing left to do but race, for real. Looking back on 2006, it's easier to see how it all went down now that I've had the off-season to think about it. Everything we've done to get ready for 2007 is based on where we got off track last year, and the overall idea is not just to catch up, but to leap ahead.
"Of course, making a big leap back to where we believe we belong, at the top of the points sheet, takes some bold moves. I won't be satisfied with just getting better, and the plan is not to take baby steps. The plan is to take everything we learned and apply it to being a much better team in '07, from top to bottom. We have some new blood, some new parts, and a lot of new energy around here. Everyone is amped up and ready to go."
Fans of the Checker, Schuck's, Kragen team may see a bevy of new faces on Worsham's red squad and figure a major house cleaning had to have taken place, but the truth lies more in the area of natural progression, as opposed to forced changes. Worsham saw no need to radically alter his veteran crew after the '06 season, but some individual personal decisions made that necessary.
"We had a good team, and they had been together for quite a while," Worsham said. "By the time the season ended, though, most of the guys were just ready to move on to something different in their lives. I hated to see them all go, but family is far more important than the race car, so we had to start over in a lot of ways. Fortunately, my most senior guy, Terry Snyder, is still here. We picked up some very talented people, guys we really wanted, and we've ended up with a great mix of veterans and rookies.
"Like on any sports team, that's a good way to go. The veteran guys get charged up having the rookies around, and the new guys have some real leadership to follow. They've all come together very quickly during the preseason, and I'm confident they'll get even better as we go. It does take any team a while to come together as a unit, but these guys are already well down that road."
On the track, Worsham isn't about to give away any trade secrets, but he's open to discussing the new tuning approach his team will take during the '07 season. With a frustrating '06 behind him, including a final segment of the year where Worsham and his team began making big changes in the way they run the car, the CSK driver feels his team has turned a big corner.
"By midseason last year, we were about tapped out in terms of the power we could make, running the car that way," he said. "When you're leaning on it that hard, just to keep up, the window between getting down the track and smoking the tires gets smaller and smaller. The goal we had, when we started overhauling everything after Indy last year, was to get ahead of the curve, so that we could work more on managing our power instead of trying to always find a bit more. When you do that, you can tune more to what the track will give you, instead of having to tune the car up just to have a chance.
"We wanted to make the car less edgy and we wanted to make it more consistent, and to do that we had to start with a clean sheet of paper, really. In the past, we've tinkered with the clutch, messed around with the blowers, and changed the fuel system, but the moves were usually small ones and we didn't make them all at once. By Indy last year, it was time to get to work on this season, so basically we've already been testing for five months. We're getting there. We had a very fast car by the end of the season last year."
Though not many people remember, due to the overwhelming nature of his Pomona crash last November, the bigger story for Worsham, up until the mishap, was the fact he was the No. 1 qualifier at the time. With a career best 4.712, Worsham held the top spot until the final session, and just barely missed his first-ever 4.6 run.
"It may have actually been on a 4.69 when we ran the 4.71, but it blew up before the finish line," Worsham said. "That explosion was kind of 'out of nowhere' but, looking back, it was an indication that it might blow up again, though we just couldn't see that at the time. As it turned out, it blew up again on Friday, we had the big crash, and that's the way people remember our Pomona. This weekend, we're out to create some new memories, and put last year's deal behind us."
A clean slate, a fast car, and a fresh new attitude fueled by an eager crew. It could all add up to the answer Del Worsham is looking for.
