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Memphis, TN (8/19/06) -- Del Worsham went into the final qualifying session in steamy Memphis outside the field, but managed to make a full lap at 5.075 to bump his way into the show, temporarily. The next car down the track was that of Ron Capps, and when Capps bettered Worsham's mark the Checker, Schuck's, Kragen driver was unceremoniously bumped right back out of the field for Sunday's race. For the second time in 2006, Worsham will watch Sunday's competition from the sidelines.
"We're paying a very big price for some important progress right now, and nobody hates it more than I do," Worsham said. "I'm sick to my stomach, my head is spinning, and none of it really makes a lot of sense right now, other than I know we have to do this and I know we have to go through the pains of figuring it all out. Why we had to miss the field here, I don't know, but we're doing things that will make us a better team.
"We shook the tires on Friday night, and then just tried to add a little pop to it in today's first session, but you'd have thought we threw the kitchen sink at the tune-up. Instead of shaking, it went out there and just blew the tires off at 60-feet. So we had to go into the last run from outside the field, and that's when you wrestle with both sides of the argument. I know this, because we went around and around on it for an hour. Do you get aggressive, and risk smoking the tires again, or do you plot out a fairly conservative run and make sure you go from end to end? You'd like to find the perfect middle ground, of course, but these cars aren't that easy to tune.
"The goal was to run a 5.00, and get ourselves in up in the 11th or 12th spot, and it was doing exactly what we told it to do. But then, at about 1,000 feet, it put a cylinder out, which pulled me over toward the wall, and then it started to chop the tires down there a little. It picked that cylinder up, but dropped another one. Had it just stayed lit, it was going to run a 5.00, just like we planned. Instead, it ran 5.07 and we got bumped back out just a few minutes later.
"We made these big changes after Sonoma, and we're still fishing for all the answers. You know, nobody hands you the manual when you make changes in the drive line or clutch area. You have to go out there and mess around with it yourself, to learn it the hard way. We haven't had a chance to test at all since Sonoma, but you can bet we're going to make as many laps as we can before Indy. We still have a lot of learning to do, and we need the track time to get this all sorted out.
"Losing a session to the weather here probably hurt us worse than it hurt anyone else, but that's no excuse. We obviously need more time to get a grip on what works and how to make it work, so only getting three runs in Memphis left us behind the curve. We made our best lap on the last one, but it wasn't enough. If you don't run the number, you don't get to race.
"If you're wondering what the mood is around here, I guess you could say it's about rock bottom. We all take this as seriously as anything in the world. It's our lives and our livelihoods, and we let ourselves and a lot of other people down. We'll bounce back, and we'll be out here to work with our teammates and Phil Burkart. But right now, this is hard to deal with."
WORSHAM BUMPS IN, GETS BUMPED OUT
Memphis, TN (8/19/06) -- Del Worsham went into the final qualifying session in steamy Memphis outside the field, but managed to make a full lap at 5.075 to bump his way into the show, temporarily. The next car down the track was that of Ron Capps, and when Capps bettered Worsham's mark the Checker, Schuck's, Kragen driver was unceremoniously bumped right back out of the field for Sunday's race. For the second time in 2006, Worsham will watch Sunday's competition from the sidelines.
"We're paying a very big price for some important progress right now, and nobody hates it more than I do," Worsham said. "I'm sick to my stomach, my head is spinning, and none of it really makes a lot of sense right now, other than I know we have to do this and I know we have to go through the pains of figuring it all out. Why we had to miss the field here, I don't know, but we're doing things that will make us a better team.
"We shook the tires on Friday night, and then just tried to add a little pop to it in today's first session, but you'd have thought we threw the kitchen sink at the tune-up. Instead of shaking, it went out there and just blew the tires off at 60-feet. So we had to go into the last run from outside the field, and that's when you wrestle with both sides of the argument. I know this, because we went around and around on it for an hour. Do you get aggressive, and risk smoking the tires again, or do you plot out a fairly conservative run and make sure you go from end to end? You'd like to find the perfect middle ground, of course, but these cars aren't that easy to tune.
"The goal was to run a 5.00, and get ourselves in up in the 11th or 12th spot, and it was doing exactly what we told it to do. But then, at about 1,000 feet, it put a cylinder out, which pulled me over toward the wall, and then it started to chop the tires down there a little. It picked that cylinder up, but dropped another one. Had it just stayed lit, it was going to run a 5.00, just like we planned. Instead, it ran 5.07 and we got bumped back out just a few minutes later.
"We made these big changes after Sonoma, and we're still fishing for all the answers. You know, nobody hands you the manual when you make changes in the drive line or clutch area. You have to go out there and mess around with it yourself, to learn it the hard way. We haven't had a chance to test at all since Sonoma, but you can bet we're going to make as many laps as we can before Indy. We still have a lot of learning to do, and we need the track time to get this all sorted out.
"Losing a session to the weather here probably hurt us worse than it hurt anyone else, but that's no excuse. We obviously need more time to get a grip on what works and how to make it work, so only getting three runs in Memphis left us behind the curve. We made our best lap on the last one, but it wasn't enough. If you don't run the number, you don't get to race.
"If you're wondering what the mood is around here, I guess you could say it's about rock bottom. We all take this as seriously as anything in the world. It's our lives and our livelihoods, and we let ourselves and a lot of other people down. We'll bounce back, and we'll be out here to work with our teammates and Phil Burkart. But right now, this is hard to deal with."
