WORSHAM'S STRONG LAP EDGED IN ROUND ONE
Eight pairs of cars lined up to compete in round one on Sunday, at Bandimere Speedway. Of the eight pairs, seven featured tire smoke or engine failure in at least one lane, and only one pair featured a full side-by-side battle to the finish line by two strong cars. Del Worsham, driving the blue Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Impala, was part of that pair, was the higher qualified driver, and therefore had lane choice and a good dose of optimism heading in. As the No. 5 man on the starting grid, Worsham faced off with the No. 12 driver, who just happened to be POWERade points leader Ron Capps. Oddly enough, had Worsham qualified a little worse at this event, he most likely would have won his first-round race.
The steps that led up to Worsham's strong, but unlucky, No. 5 spot were a pair of fine laps on Friday and Saturday. The event schedule that was in place would have created the now-familiar "one shot deal" on Friday night, but a late afternoon thunderstorm on Saturday pushed Q4 back back to the evening, and Worsham aced both artificially illuminated tests. His 4.897 on Friday put him, provisionally, in the No. 3 spot and his even better 4.893 came on Saturday evening, though with all the shuffling that went on in Q4 it left him No. 5, with that 5 vs. 12 match-up.
"Yes, everybody is tough out here and the only easy opponent in this class right now is the guy who doesn't show up in round one, but it's still pretty rough to run as well as we did in qualifying and still have to run Ron in the first round. It was like having to race the final round in the first round, and you can totally disregard whatever Ron ran in qualifying because they're great on a hot track."
After having made the two stellar runs under the lights, Worsham joined the rest of the pro contingent by having to figure out how to get from A-to-B under the sun on Sunday. Having seen massive amounts of tire smoke during the daytime qualifiers, tuners all over the pit area were taking their best educated guesses as to how to master a hot track, a bright sun, and mile-high altitude all at the same time. Worsham felt confident, but knew it would be difficult.
"We laid out the daytime runs to find the trouble spots, and I knew going up there we'd probably make it to the finish line," Worsham said. "So, basically, I felt really good that we could do what we needed to do, but we don't have any control over what the guys over in the other lane are up to. When you qualify at the bottom of the sheet, it's sortof your own fault when the other guy is faster, but when you're No. 5, what are you going to do? You hope they mess up somehow, or at least the hot track gets them, but when you're racing Ron you don't expect that, and you absolutely can't count on it."
Worsham and Capps pulled to the line as the second pair, having seen Team CSK teammate Jeff Arend drive his Techron car to a win over Kenny Bernstein as the opening duo. At the flash of amber, Capps was away first with a stellar reaction time, though Worsham was well ahead of his season average at .083. Both cars launched hard, with Worsham taking the lead by the 60-foot timer. The CSK Chevy was still ahead at 330 and the pair of machines were basically dead even at half-track. As both cars began to have problems, (Worsham's dropped a cylinder about half-way into the run, while Capps' car started mixing up cylinders, popping and banging as it went) both drivers kept their right foot planted, and at the finish line it was the Brut car out in front, taking the win with a 5.078 to Worsham's strong 5.148. As stated earlier, Worsham and Capps were the only pair of Funny Cars to run side-by-side.
"All we could do was go up there and make sure we went to the finish line. Do I feel good that we did that, and that we were the only pair to run side-by-side? Sure, but I would have felt a lot better if we would've gotten to the finish line first. Ron is just so tough, but we gave them a fight. It's hard, because this was lining up to be a great race for us, but we got stuck with a tough match-up and we just got beat.
"There's nothing you can do about the ladder. You can't sandbag and try to slot yourself into a particular rung on the ladder, you just run as well as you can and take what that gives you. The ladder wasn't very kind to us today, but we have a good race car and we'll go to Seattle and win there."
With the race car he has, and the consistency he's been showing of late, Worsham just might be right.
