<img src="http://www.nitromater.com/gallery/files/5/D_Worsham07.jpg" alt="D_Worsham07" align="right"borders="0"/>
DENVER (July 10, 2007) -- You won't find ropes, carabiners, pitons, or crampons in Del Worsham's transporter, but as the Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Funny Car driver arrives in Denver for this weekend's Mopar Mile-High Nationals, the popular FC pilot will have his team fully stocked with mountain climbing gear of another sort. As the track with the highest elevation on the NHRA POWERade tour, Bandimere Speedway demands special parts and unique tuning concepts for any driver who plans to tame it, and those piston racks, rear wing plates, and blower pulleys will be matched with one-off tuning calls in an effort to find the maximum horsepower and the best possible downforce in the thin mile-high air.
For Worsham, the annual trip to "Thunder Mountain" has always been a challenge, though he and his CSK crew have found a way to plant their sponsor's flag in the Winner's Circle before. In 2002, it was Worsham who took the trophy, racing on a hot and arid day when his then-toddler daughters were attending their first drag race. In 2004, Worsham revisited the Bandimere Winner's Circle, but only as teammate to the race winner, Phil Burkart, who piloted the blue CSK machine to the victory. In 2007, Worsham hopes to reclaim his stake on the mountain and he may do it by combining the memories of '02 and '04, by driving with a blue CSK Impala body atop his chassis, instead of his standard red Checker, Schuck's, Kragen car.
"The Impalas are new for this year, and it didn't take us long to figure out they work better with our hot weather tune-up," Worsham said. "We've received four of them to this point, but because our blue team needs to constantly recycle one of theirs for special vinyl graphics, we put them ahead of the red team in the receiving line. So, right now they have two Impalas and my second one is still in the paint shop.
"That wouldn't be a big deal, except for the fact we blew our first red Impala to smithereens in Norwalk, and all I have in the trailer right now is an '06 Monte Carlo. With Jeff Arend and the blue team running a Chevron Techron car in Seattle and Sonoma, we thought we'd just do what we did in Bristol and 'borrow' their blue CSK body for those races. Then, we got to thinking about Denver and the real challenges Thunder Mountain throws at everyone, and we asked CSK if they minded expanding the Techron thing to the whole western swing, so that our team could run the blue body this weekend, as well. They were great, and told us to go for it, so we plan to do that."
As he mentioned, Worsham actually competed with Arend's standard blue Impala on his car during round one in Bristol, this past weekend. Arend, who had been the exclusive holder of the title "Only Driver To Qualify At All Races In 2007" for all of one week, saw his streak end that very weekend, leaving Worsham free to use the blue Impala as opposed to his red Monte Carlo. That turn of events also illustrated the depth of the competition in the '07 Funny Car class.
"It's crazy, but it's exactly what we said it would be like," Worsham said. "I really did think that the DNQ deal would finally get around to biting everyone, but when you start the year with John Force still holding a streak that dated back to the late 1980s, it was hard to conceive of that really happening. We were mad and embarrassed to miss the field at the first two races, but now we've seen every single team miss at least one show, and some very big names have missed multiple races.
"Before the world saw Force DNQ, the talk of how tough it is out here was just all talk, I guess. Once he missed a show, and everyone else from Ron Capps to Gary Scelzi, Robert Hight, Tony Pedregon, and every other team in the class started to collect DNQs, it became very real and very easy to understand. Now, each event is like two complete races in one. The first race is just to make the show. Once you've done that, the next step is to win some rounds on Sunday. Both parts of the equation are very hard to do."
In terms of the unique challenges found at Bandimere, the difficult job of creating horsepower on the side of a mountain while also finding a way to keep the rear end of the car on the track, can drive any tuner to the brink of madness, and Worsham knows all too well how hard it is to accomplish both goals.
"You don't have much air to burn, so it's very hard to get the cars up and running," he said. "We can lean all over the tune-up, spin the blower faster, and do all the tricks of the trade to make up for some of the altitude, but then you run into the issue of traction during thelast half of each lap. It's a double-edged sword, because we work so hard to go fast at Bandimere, but then there's no air to push down on the rear wing and it's really easy to spin the tires. Sometimes, it's just about impossible not to spin them on the top end.
"With the downforce issue, there's only so much we can do. We have strict rules on wing height, so there's a real limit on how much air we can grab back there, and no matter what you do in Denver, you're not going to be creating the downforce you're used to. The faster you try to go, the harder it is to keep the rear tires stuck. Because of all that, we felt it was really important to have an Impala on the car, to have the best possible shot at making good laps. We might confuse some people, coming to the line with a crew full of guys dressed in red, who are working on a blue car, but hopefully we'll do well enough so that the announcers will explain it to everyone, over and over again."
No ropes, no clips, no pointy spikes for the toes of his driving boots, but plenty of mountain climbing gear nonetheless. From his base camp in the Bandimere pit area, Del Worsham hopes to make his assault on Thunder Mountain, and will be sure to have his picture taken if he makes it to the summit.
WORSHAM READIES HIS MOUNTAIN CLIMBING GEAR
DENVER (July 10, 2007) -- You won't find ropes, carabiners, pitons, or crampons in Del Worsham's transporter, but as the Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Funny Car driver arrives in Denver for this weekend's Mopar Mile-High Nationals, the popular FC pilot will have his team fully stocked with mountain climbing gear of another sort. As the track with the highest elevation on the NHRA POWERade tour, Bandimere Speedway demands special parts and unique tuning concepts for any driver who plans to tame it, and those piston racks, rear wing plates, and blower pulleys will be matched with one-off tuning calls in an effort to find the maximum horsepower and the best possible downforce in the thin mile-high air.
For Worsham, the annual trip to "Thunder Mountain" has always been a challenge, though he and his CSK crew have found a way to plant their sponsor's flag in the Winner's Circle before. In 2002, it was Worsham who took the trophy, racing on a hot and arid day when his then-toddler daughters were attending their first drag race. In 2004, Worsham revisited the Bandimere Winner's Circle, but only as teammate to the race winner, Phil Burkart, who piloted the blue CSK machine to the victory. In 2007, Worsham hopes to reclaim his stake on the mountain and he may do it by combining the memories of '02 and '04, by driving with a blue CSK Impala body atop his chassis, instead of his standard red Checker, Schuck's, Kragen car.
"The Impalas are new for this year, and it didn't take us long to figure out they work better with our hot weather tune-up," Worsham said. "We've received four of them to this point, but because our blue team needs to constantly recycle one of theirs for special vinyl graphics, we put them ahead of the red team in the receiving line. So, right now they have two Impalas and my second one is still in the paint shop.
"That wouldn't be a big deal, except for the fact we blew our first red Impala to smithereens in Norwalk, and all I have in the trailer right now is an '06 Monte Carlo. With Jeff Arend and the blue team running a Chevron Techron car in Seattle and Sonoma, we thought we'd just do what we did in Bristol and 'borrow' their blue CSK body for those races. Then, we got to thinking about Denver and the real challenges Thunder Mountain throws at everyone, and we asked CSK if they minded expanding the Techron thing to the whole western swing, so that our team could run the blue body this weekend, as well. They were great, and told us to go for it, so we plan to do that."
As he mentioned, Worsham actually competed with Arend's standard blue Impala on his car during round one in Bristol, this past weekend. Arend, who had been the exclusive holder of the title "Only Driver To Qualify At All Races In 2007" for all of one week, saw his streak end that very weekend, leaving Worsham free to use the blue Impala as opposed to his red Monte Carlo. That turn of events also illustrated the depth of the competition in the '07 Funny Car class.
"It's crazy, but it's exactly what we said it would be like," Worsham said. "I really did think that the DNQ deal would finally get around to biting everyone, but when you start the year with John Force still holding a streak that dated back to the late 1980s, it was hard to conceive of that really happening. We were mad and embarrassed to miss the field at the first two races, but now we've seen every single team miss at least one show, and some very big names have missed multiple races.
"Before the world saw Force DNQ, the talk of how tough it is out here was just all talk, I guess. Once he missed a show, and everyone else from Ron Capps to Gary Scelzi, Robert Hight, Tony Pedregon, and every other team in the class started to collect DNQs, it became very real and very easy to understand. Now, each event is like two complete races in one. The first race is just to make the show. Once you've done that, the next step is to win some rounds on Sunday. Both parts of the equation are very hard to do."
In terms of the unique challenges found at Bandimere, the difficult job of creating horsepower on the side of a mountain while also finding a way to keep the rear end of the car on the track, can drive any tuner to the brink of madness, and Worsham knows all too well how hard it is to accomplish both goals.
"You don't have much air to burn, so it's very hard to get the cars up and running," he said. "We can lean all over the tune-up, spin the blower faster, and do all the tricks of the trade to make up for some of the altitude, but then you run into the issue of traction during thelast half of each lap. It's a double-edged sword, because we work so hard to go fast at Bandimere, but then there's no air to push down on the rear wing and it's really easy to spin the tires. Sometimes, it's just about impossible not to spin them on the top end.
"With the downforce issue, there's only so much we can do. We have strict rules on wing height, so there's a real limit on how much air we can grab back there, and no matter what you do in Denver, you're not going to be creating the downforce you're used to. The faster you try to go, the harder it is to keep the rear tires stuck. Because of all that, we felt it was really important to have an Impala on the car, to have the best possible shot at making good laps. We might confuse some people, coming to the line with a crew full of guys dressed in red, who are working on a blue car, but hopefully we'll do well enough so that the announcers will explain it to everyone, over and over again."
No ropes, no clips, no pointy spikes for the toes of his driving boots, but plenty of mountain climbing gear nonetheless. From his base camp in the Bandimere pit area, Del Worsham hopes to make his assault on Thunder Mountain, and will be sure to have his picture taken if he makes it to the summit.
