Championship Drag Racing

O'Reilly NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals
Bristol, Tenn.
(April 30-May 2)

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Del Worsham Checker Schuck's Kragen Funny Car

Reports: Monday Saturday Friday Pre-race

Bristol, Monday: It was a weekend race contested on Monday. It was the month of May but it felt like November. In the end, for Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Monte Carlo Funny Car drivers Del Worsham and Phil Burkart, it was just plain bizarre.

To quickly summarize, Worsham ran 4.830 in round one, and 4.805 in round two, but found himself on the trailer when he lost the second rounder by two thousandths of a second. It was the second straight race at which Worsham was eliminated by that miniscule margin. Burkart, on the other had, ran 14.898 in round one, then 9.254 in round two, and found himself advancing to the semi-final. When he got there, he red-lit. It was all a little strange.

Friday and Saturday's qualifying sessions were odd enough to have given everyone an indication that this was not an ordinary deal. Worsham did claim his highest position of the season when he landed in the fourth spot with a 4.821. Burkart ran 4.865, a strong number, but in this tightly bunched field that was only good for 10th. Neither team was able to string four consecutive runs together during qualifying, but each managed to rebound from a Saturday morning tire smoker to run competitively on Saturday afternoon.

"The best thing about that is that it sends you into Sunday on a positive note," Worsham said. "If you run a good lap on Saturday afternoon, under normal circumstances you'd be running under the same conditions you're going to see on Sunday morning. The weather, though, didn't read the script."

Indeed, after the professional teams and a capacity crowd arrived at Bristol Dragway early Sunday morning, the 12:00 noon start time approached and many of the Top Fuel teams began to warm their engines. Perhaps the nitro fumes "seeded" the low hanging clouds, because the first whiff of nitro was accompanied by rain drops. The rain stopped, for good, sometime around 9:00 pm. It was a very long day, spent doing almost nothing.

When the teams, and a surprising number of hardy and avid race fans, reconvened at the track on Monday morning the first noticeable change was the temperature. The cold front which had caused the rain had passed through eastern Tennessee overnight, and the temps had dropped from the low 70's to the low 40's. It was brisk, to say the least.

Such a change can throw the best tuners for a loop, and throughout the day on Monday it was clear this was going to be an eventful day. Tire smoke, exploding engines, red lights, cars hitting walls, cars hitting cones, and other general mayhem was accompanied by other cars streaking to track records and super-low elapsed times.

Worsham went first for Team CSK, and he got things going in a very positive direction. His 4.830 was stout, and just edged Jerry Toliver's 4.865.

"Big time draggin', right there," Worsham said. "We needed to run a solid lap, and we did. Jerry ran well, as they're fully capable of doing every lap, but we kept a half a car length on him the whole way. First round is a killer, and I'm always very relieved and very happy to get through it."

Burkart followed against Tim Wilkerson, who had come into Bristol as the most recent winner on the tour (as Worsham clearly remembers thanks to Wilkerson's two-thousandths win over him in the Houston semi's.). Burkart hit the throttle and felt his car go straight into tire smoke (not an uncommon occurrence at this track on this day) while Wilkerson tore for the finish line on a big run. With no hope of catching him, Burkart could only coast down the track to a 14.898, expecting to take the loss. Almost unbelievably, however, Wilkerson's car made a hard move toward the left-side wall and finally brushed the wall with its header pipes. Contact with the wall is, of course, a disqualification foul, and Burkart took the win running exactly 85.78 miles per hour.

"I was shocked how fast we smoked the tires, but the left lane seemed a lot better and he had lane choice," Burkart said. "He was gone. His car got really little, really fast. I never knew he hit the wall, I just came putting around the corner at the end and he was out of his car and visibly mad. I couldn't believe it, and I'm sure Timmy couldn't either. These things happen, even to great drivers."

In round two, Worsham moved on to face upstart Eric Medlen, from the John Force camp. Worsham left first, with a .091 light to Medlen's .105, which gave the red CSK car a head start of 14-thousandths of a second. At the other end, Worsham crossed the line with his best e.t. of the event, posting a 4.805. Medlen's e.t. was 4.789. Combined with the reaction times, the e.t.s created a margin of victory of exactly, precisely, two thousandths of a second. For the second straight race, Del Worsham's day ended after a great run, which he lost by an inch.

Now carrying the banner for Team CSK, Burkart lined up against Cruz Pedregon in a battle of the auto parts retailers. What it really was, was a battle of the drivers as both cars went into nearly instantaneous tire smoke. Burkart, surprised by the tire smoke and by not seeing Pedregon tear off down the track, began a monumental pedaling duel.

By the time the blue CSK machine crossed the finish line, 9.254-seconds later, Burkart had hit the throttle nine times. On a couple of occasions his stomp back on the gas caused large wheel stands. To add to the incredible and weird nature of the race, though Pedregon nipped a timing block near the finish line (which disqualified him) the scoreboards lit up with Burkart's win light and two elapsed times that showed, amazingly enough, a hole-shot win. Burkart's 9.254 was slower than Pedregon's 9.239, but Burkart's .086 reaction time, compared to Pedregon's .150, was enough to cover the difference.

"Okay, that's probably the wildest ride and most incredible round win of my career," Burkart said. "When it smoked them, I expected to see him head on down the track, but he wasn't there. So I hit it again, and they smoked again. I still didn't see him, so I just kept hitting it and a couple of times was able to feather it about half-throttle, which is really hard to do in a bucking bronco like that. Out at half-track, with the clutch timers now all fouled up and the clutch about locked up, every time I hit it the front end would come up, the horizon would disappear, and all I could see was sky. It was a rush, I'll tell you that."

It was also a win. And, one terrific job of driving.

The victory sent Burkart on to his third semi-final in a season six races old. There, he would face John Force.

After a major thrash in the pits was completed, with a new ignition timing system installed, the blue Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Monte Carlo line up next to Force's Ford. When the cars staged, and the ambers flashed, the win light went on in Force's lane, as Burkart jumped the gun by 69-thousandths of a second.

"I wasn't trying to saw the tree down, and I wasn't guessing," he said. "My foot just thought it was time to go. You feel awful for your guys when you do it, but it's over the split second it happens and you can't get it back. Force ran great too, you have to give him credit for that. At least we didn't hand it to him on a platter while he was smoking the tires or blowing up. Our luck ran out."

Odd? Yes, nearly all of it. Successful? To a great degree, as Team CSK managed to win three combined rounds on the day and Del Worsham left yet another race with the points lead. To simply add more odd fuel to the weirdness fire, Burkart's semi-final finish didn't move him up on the points sheet. He actually slid down one position, into seventh.

But, yes, it was odd. Very odd.

Bristol, Saturday: Del Worsham shook the tires and then pulled over without completing the lap, leaving him in the No. 4 spot with one session remaining:

"Well, I guess you can say that all of us here at Worsham Racing and Team CSK will call this a session we'll learn from and then forget about. Both of our cars shook, and mine shook so hard it actually set the fire bottles off. That's why I just pulled over and got it stopped. It was violent. We dropped a cylinder right at the hit, which really made us under-powered and that's when you shake."

Worsham then rebounded to a 4.874 and held on to his No. 4 spot (his highest qualifying effort of the season:)

"I feel pretty good about that, actually. We were right there in the mix with the quickest cars of the session. If one or two guys would have gone out there and put a 4.76 on the board or something, that would be a different thing, but most of us were running in the 4.86 to 4.88 range so we're right there. We can tweak on this a little for race day."

Worsham will face Jerry Toliver in round one. He is 1-1 versus Toliver this season.

Bristol, Friday: Del Worsham posted a solid 4.960 to land in the No. 6 spot after one session:

"We got the benefit of seeing our blue car run a couple of pairs ahead of us, and at the time they ran hardly anybody had done anything spectacular out there. I think we were just a little soft, but when you have to deal with one night session and you know that may be the one where you have your one chance to hit a home run, you sure don't want to smoke the tires in session one and get put at the front of the line in session two. So we went for nice run, which will put us near the back of the pack, and we'll do the best we can tonight, from there."

Worsham then streaked to a stout 4.821, in a very quick and competitive session, to grab the No. 4 spot overnight:

"I have absolutely no complaints about that run. We knew we were soft this afternoon and we wanted to step on it a bit without tipping over the line with it, and that's just exactly what we did. We're rarely known to be big 'Friday Night Heroes' around here, as our qualifying record will prove, so it's nice to put a pretty nice one on the board."

Bristol, pre-race: One year ago, Del Worsham brought his Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Funny Car team to Bristol searching intently for a win. The CSK red team driver had earned his way to a pair of final rounds in the season's first five races, but had come up empty each time. When the weekend came to a close and the sun set on Thunder Valley, Worsham had his first win of the '03 campaign and he climbed to third place in POWERade points, the high water mark for a season in which he went on to finish fourth.

Now, five races into the 2004 season, Worsham heads into this weekend's O'Reilly Thunder Valley Nationals just as intent upon finding the Winner's Circle in his CSK Chevy Monte Carlo, but far better situated to take advantage of every round he can win. Just like last year, he has been to the final round twice in the season's early going, but in '04 he has capitalized on both occasions with back-to-back wins in Phoenix and Gainesville. And, unlike '03 when he came into the Bristol race in fourth place, Worsham comes to eastern Tennessee this year as the points leader, having taken over the top spot for the first time in his career after his Phoenix win.

Though the venue and the ultimate goal are exactly the same, Worsham is well aware that much is different as he attempts to take the Bristol crown for the second straight year.

"Over the last few years we've gotten off to good starts, but there would always be some other teams doing a little better," Worsham said. "You get into a frame of mind where you want to do well, and you know you're good, but it seemed like a few really elite teams were playing at a different level. We could get close, close enough to see the mountain top and count the rounds it would take to catch the top guys, but we never could close the gap.

"This year, we've just maximized a couple of opportunities, and in the three races we didn't win we ran well enough to take two of those as well, but just missed. The bottom line is, our red team has had two great races, two very good races, and one bad race. Now we come to Bristol as the defending champs, and we want to put one more notch in the very good column."

When Worsham earned the win in Phoenix and took over the top spot in points, he was quick to deflect talk of a points chase, as the season was all of two races old with 21 yet to go. When he then went straight to Gainesville and won again, he repeated that he was happy to be on top, but there was long way to go. Now, though the season is still very young, the schedule clicks past the first quarter mark in Bristol, and Worsham knows the questions will only intensify.

"Never having been in this position before, we used to try to figure out how to get here, how to somehow get in front of all these great teams," Worsham said. "Heck, in 2002 we were runner-up in Pomona and then won Phoenix, but we still came out of Phoenix in second place because John Force had been to both finals too and had out-qualified us each time.

"It was easy to dismiss the points deal after Phoenix. I still think it's crazy to talk about because the season will just be one-fourth over after Bristol, and there will still be 17 more races to go after we're done this weekend. I've already learned that it doesn't really matter what I think, though, because everyone else wants to talk about it. With the monopoly John Force has had for more than a decade now, not too many people are trained to know what to say from the top spot. We're kind of learning on the job right now."

As the 2004 season began, Worsham knew his team had the stuff to be in the thick of the chase, and he thought the overall parity in the Funny Car class might give the CSK group a chance to compete at the highest level.

"I thought the parity in the class might really help us this year, and so far it has," he said. "Anybody can beat anybody these days, so it's hard for any one team to dominate. No one else put two good races together to start the season, so our semi-final in Pomona and the win in Phoenix put us out front for the first time ever. Since then, we've just concentrated on going rounds, and we've been able to hold on to it."

Though both of Worsham's wins this season have come at races where he qualified in the bottom half of the field, he knows the formula for continued success includes qualifying well. He and his team plan on executing that part of the equation when qualifying begins on Friday afternoon.

"We have been successful from the bottom half but, believe me, we much prefer starting out on Sunday with lane choice," he said. "Even if the lanes are totally equal, being in the top half is still an advantage. For one thing, it means you ran better than the team you're facing, and they have to worry about how they're going to pick up the pace to race you. That's when people make mistakes, when they try to make big performance leaps. We can win from the bottom half, we've proven that, but our goal is to get well into the top half and then try to make people beat us."

And, in addition to qualifying, racing, and those precious POWERade points, Worsham simply looks forward to another weekend in Bristol.

"It's an awesome place, and a great venue," he said. "There's so much racing history here, both on the drag strip and the circle track across the parking lots. The valley, the fans, and the atmosphere are all great. The crowds were amazing last year, pretty much standing room only all weekend, and I expect the valley to be rocking again this weekend."