NHRA News: Schumacher staying busy keeping the troops up to speed (12/26/2001)

Schumacher staying busy keeping the troops up to speed

By Rob Geiger, NHRA.com
12/26/2001

"I have friends protecting our way of life. That's pretty cool to me."
-- Tony Schumacher

There's not a lot of down time in 1999 Top Fuel champion Tony Schumacher's life these days. For starters, newborn son Anthony Joseph keeps the first-time father busier than he ever imagined he'd be at all hours of the day and night. He also continues to give several motivational speeches on behalf of his sponsor, the United States Army, which has him scheduled to fire up the country's best high school football players on New Year's Day in San Antonio, Texas, at the All-American Bowl.

But perhaps the biggest and most rewarding project for Schumacher this off-season has been the simplest one -- keeping in touch with his multitude of Army buddies fighting for this country halfway around the world in Afghanistan.

Keeping the home fires burning
"I always thought e-mail was a cool thing but in times like this it has become a huge deal for us," Schumacher said. "And we still have a lot of regular mail coming in and going out too. It's been great.

"The Army has kept us very busy over the last year and a half and I've gotten to meet and become friends with a lot of really cool people. Honestly, it seems like I know everyone over there and my only regret is that I don't have more of their e-mail addresses so I could keep in touch with more of them. We do have a nice little network going though."

Ground troops involved in the conflict have occasional opportunities to log in and send electronic messages back home to family and friends. It's a modern-day way of keeping in touch and a welcome respite from the task at hand.

"It's been a nice break for them," Schumacher said. "We really don't talk much about the war. We talk about sports and drag racing, stuff like that. They love to talk about the car and what we're doing. I get a million questions about what it's like to drive a dragster, about going 330 mph, the sensation of it all. Or the guys that have been to a race, we talk about what happened when they came out.

"I've found there's a real connection between being a driver and being a soldier even though it's two very different things. You can get seriously hurt in a race car and obviously they can get hurt doing what they're doing, but none of us want to sit around and dwell on that stuff. It's like at the racetrack. I don't go over to [Gary] Scelzi's pit and talk to him about the possibility of getting in a wreck. It's the same thing with soldiers. The possibility of bad things happening is there, they just don't talk about it much. It's nice for them to have something to talk about besides the war.

"Here's the way I look at it: This country and all of the citizens of this country, including us, are at war. It's just that the guys doing the fighting on the ground are friends of mine. I have friends protecting our way of life. That's pretty cool to me."

On the home front
When he gets a chance, Schumacher does think about drag racing, his father's newly-expanded three-car team, and what he has to look forward to in his U.S. Army dragster.

Certainly the biggest news of late has been the addition of Funny Car driver Scotty Cannon, who brings his Oakley-backed ride to Team Schumacher for the 2002 season. Cannon will team with Matco Tools pro Whit Bazemore in a two-car Funny Car crusade for the POWERade championship. Since the announcement of this deal, many in the world of drag racing have wondered how two of the sport's more colorful drivers will co-exist. Schumacher thinks they'll be just fine.

"If you think about it there are so many different personalities in drag racing," Schumacher said. "And we have two of the best. Honestly, which two could you put together that wouldn't seem like a very interesting pairing? I think they'll be fine. The long and short of it is that they're teammates now so they need to do the best they can at all times to help one another out.

"The two teams need to work their tails off to get those two cars running the same way. They need to find a tune-up that works for both cars so they can learn and benefit from each other every single round. That's what it's all about. Whit and Scotty need to focus on doing things together.

"Even if two guys hate each other, which they don't, if they're teammates they need to be professional and rise above their personal feelings. But, I'm telling you; we won't have any problems because these guys will get along fine. Everyone outside the team will make a bigger deal out of this then it ever will be internally."

Searching for his own home run
While Bazemore and Cannon come together on one side of the operation, Schumacher will continue his quest to return to the top of the Top Fuel class with the same crew chief and crew that carried him to glory in 1999 and a second-place finish in 2000.

With one runner-up finish and a sub-.500 race day mark in 2001 -- which added up to an eighth place finish in the points -- Schumacher and crew feel as though they've already hit rock bottom. Several late-season forays into the 4.5-second range, including a final lap of the year that registered a '01 best of 4.517 at 329.34, has the Army troops convinced they're officially back in fighting form.

"I think we've got it figured out," Schumacher said, "and we're not telling how we finally got to this point. We struggled big-time this past year and others struggled right along with us. It was a long season. But right towards the end we started coming on strong. It was like we used to run in 1999 and 2000, putting up big numbers and knowing when you roll up to the line you have a car that can win. I made some mistakes as a driver down the stretch but the car was there. Dan [Olson, crew chief] made sure of that.

"I'll be blown away if we don't start 2002 better than any season we've raced. I'll tell you something else: For all the battles we had, good and bad, I'll really miss Gary Scelzi being in Top Fuel. We went toe-to-toe for two years and we each came out with one championship over that time frame. I really wanted to see which one of us would get the next one. I guess that'll have to wait.

"For now, our work is cut out for us. I know Kenny [Bernstein] will want to finish his career with another title, and [Larry] Dixon, [Doug] Kalitta, [Darrell] Russell, [Mike] Dunn, and the rest of those guys will be right there also. It should be another fantastic year for all of us. I just hope we can celebrate another championship with all of my Army friends joining me in the winner's circle, back home safe on American soil. That's my ultimate goal."

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