Championship Drag Racing

O'Reilly Mid-South Nationals
Memphis, Tenn.
(Aug. 20-22)

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Del Worsham Checker Schuck's Kragen Funny Car

Reports: Sunday Saturday Friday Pre-race

Memphis, Sunday: On an oppressively hot and humid Memphis weekend, where even the act of standing still caused clothing to join with skin at something approaching the molecular level, Team CSK overcame the elements, rediscovered their stride, and bounced back with a solid outing. "Competitive" was the operative term, and when the sun set on the mid-south Del Worsham had earned a hard-fought semi-final finish while his Checker, Schuck's, Kragen teammate, Phil Burkart, notched a second round result.

Visiting Memphis in late August is almost guaranteed to be a hot experience, but a creative schedule which featured late afternoon and nighttime racing did alleviate a great deal of the misery. It also gave the professionals a pair of chances to conquer the Memphis track under the lights, instead of the standard single Friday night "home run" session.

Through Friday and Saturday, Worsham and Burkart stayed competitive, right square in the middle of the pack. Though Worsham felt his car improving with every run, as it has been of late, Burkart went from being agitated with an ill-steering car to being fully frustrated when he simply could not keep the blue CSK Monte Carlo between the lines. After losing a strong run on his final qualifying pass when the bratty car would not steer back from the center line, the blue team went to work on giving Burkart a better racecar for Sunday.

"It started a few races ago, and when it just shows up a little bit you start to believe you're not driving very well," Burkart said. "On Friday, it drifted out of the groove and I took the blame for that. I figured I just let it get away from me. But on Saturday night, I was right on top of it and the car simply would not respond to steering. Even after I lifted off the throttle, it still didn't want to come back off the center line.

"The guys took the car out to the track very late on Saturday night to find a level spot. It was just us and a guy repainting stripes for race day, and we found that it was pre-loaded the wrong way. In effect, we were fighting the car every lap. We fixed that, and the problem went away on Sunday."

Considering the frustrating circumstances both Burkart and Worsham had faced recently, a lot of problems went away on Sunday.

Worsham, who had landed in the No. 9 spot when qualifying was completed, had a Sunday afternoon face-off with Tommy Johnson in round one. With an unusual 3:00 starting time, teams had to deal with the hottest part of the day and Worsham and Johnson had to deal with being the first pair of Funny Cars on the track.

"Tommy was eighth qualifier, so they got the final choice as to what pair we'd be," Worsham said, referring to the system wherein the highest qualified teams get first choice for their pairing slots. "Usually, as the eighth and ninth cars, you end up as the last pair because no one else wants the minimum time between rounds. Here, the rest of the pack threw us out there first, because no one had much of a clue what we were in for, running right in the middle of the afternoon."

Leading off for the Funny Car class, neither Worsham nor Johnson had much of a reaction time at the lights, with Johnson getting a slight jump. That was quickly erased as the CSK Chevy caught up and tore away. When Johnson had to pedal his car one time, while Worsham's car powered down the track cleanly, the CSK team knew they had this one. After suffering through a tough western swing and an abysmal Brainerd race, the red team again felt the exhilaration of victory, with Worsham's 5.117 turning on that beautiful win light.

Burkart and the blue CSK squad followed, four pairs later, with the chance to give this program its first "two for two" first round sweep since Columbus. As the No. 11 qualifier, Burkart and his newly "fixed" car had the dubious honor of facing hotshot rookie Eric Medlen in round one. As the most recent winner on tour, driving one of John Force's team machines, Medlen represented a gigantic hurdle for Burkart, who was looking for his first round win since his big victory in Denver, four races ago.

The rookie got a slight jump at the lights, though both drivers left well. Burkart's car, tuned by Chris Cunningham and Marc Denner, took up the chase. This time, with his steering corrected, Burkart had mastery over his machine and when Medlen's car smoked the tires, Burkart was ready. His CSK Chevy soon encountered traction problems of its own on the greasy track, but Burkart manhandled his car and got it to the finish line a full second ahead of Medlen. It was a refreshing "two-for-two" for Team CSK.

In the second round, Worsham had Whit Bazemore to contend with, adding Memphis to the long list of venues where these two veteran professionals have squared off with so much on the line. Burkart earned a date with Gary Densham, trading one Team Force car for another. It would be big round and a huge challenge for Team CSK.

Facing the hottest conditions of the weekend, with track temperatures creeping above 120-degrees, Worsham and the red team went first against Bazemore. Strapping one of his best reaction times of the year on the tree (a .031) Worsham left first, and never looked back. Plowing end-to-end in 5.132-seconds, Worsham was never seriously challenged as Bazemore's car went into serious tire smoke early in the run. The red team's rebound was getting better.

Burkart and the blue team then followed, and this one defined the term "close." While the rest of the class was contesting their races in the high 5.0's or low 5.10's, Burkart tore down the track to a stirring and seriously impressive 5.031. That elapsed time would have easily beaten any other car in the round, except Gary Densham's. Densham's 5.018, countered by Burkart's advantage at the tree, created a near dead-heat, but Densham tripped the beams first, by a microscopic 4-thousandths of a second.

"We've been sneaking up on running this well, and the guys got the steering fixed too," Burkart said. "I didn't know if I had won, but I also had no idea if I had lost. I never saw him, and I knew we had run really well. I thought we might have won this one, but when we came around the corner at the end of the track, they pointed Gary toward the ESPN crew and pointed me to the other side. That was my tip-off that we didn't win. I'm pretty sure that's the closest loss I've ever had in a Nitro Funny Car.

"I'm so proud of these guys, battling as hard as they did. They worked late Saturday night, they sweated their way through shirt after shirt today, and we were good enough to win any race other than the one we were in. John Force won his second round race with a 5.15, but we lost with a 5.03. That's the way it goes sometimes, but it never feels very good. What felt good was being so competitive. Both of our cars were right in it here, and that did feel good."

Worsham had to go it alone in the semi-final, his first appearance in the third round since Englishtown in mid-June. His opponent was Tim Wilkerson.

"You know, Timmy and his team can step it up and run a number at any time, and we knew that," Worsham said. "We'd been winning in the strategy department through two rounds, but that was in the brutal sun and heat. By the semi's, the sun was off the track and the conditions were getting better by the second. We knew a 5.10 wasn't going to cut it. We didn't go nuts, we just tried to lean on it a little bit."

That little bit was just a bit too much for the right lane, and when Wilkerson posted a 5.046, Worsham's tire smoker was out of play. Though disappointed to not make his fourth final round appearance of the year, Worsham was proud of his team's effort.

"This was a tough day, and a tough weekend," Worsham said. "The track and the weather were a huge challenge, and today the heat was sapping the energy out of the guys and the cars. We stepped up, ran well, and got a semi-final out of it. The blue team did great, and they deserved better than a round two finish. We were back in the groove, going rounds, sweating like crazy but working like the tight team we are. It felt good. It felt good to go rounds and be in the mix. It felt good to be so competitive.

"We've got a few more highlights in us before this year is over. I can feel good things happening and I'm excited as I can be to head to the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals in Indy. We're going straight up there to make some test laps this week, and then we'll be ready to go a week later for the race. We're in the Skoal Showdown, we'll be racing a special one-race Mac Tools/CSK Monte Carlo body at Indy, and it's the biggest race of the year. I feel good heading up there. We'll be ready."

Memphis, Saturday: On this final day of qualifying in Memphis, Del Worsham smoked the tires in the first session, but followed that up by driving his Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Monte Carlo to its quickest run of the weekend (a 4.922) on the final run. He will head into the race from the No. 9 position.

"With the start times we have here, this really isn't a night race, it's an afternoon and evening race," Worsham said. "The first run today was pretty much right in the middle of the afternoon, and less than half the cars made anything close to a good run. Tonight, on the final pass, the track did come around and you could run some pretty good numbers out there. We stepped up to a 4.922, and honestly I'm not unhappy with that at all. We found some flexibility in the tune-up, we ran our best lap on our last lap, and we'll head into tomorrow with a real positive flow.

"First round is at 3:00, so when we run it will probably be a lot like what we had today on the first lap. It could very interesting. Depending on the weather, we might even be running in conditions we haven't seen yet here, which could make it pretty thrilling."

Worsham will face Tommy Johnson in round one. He has not faced Johnson all season.

Memphis, Friday: Del Worsham drove the red Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Monte Carlo to consecutive solid laps on a tricky day in Memphis, posting a 4.985 on the first run and then following that up with a 4.991 during the late session. Worsham ended the day in the No. 8 spot, when he exactly matched Jeff Arend's elapsed time, but got the nod for the higher spot based on speed. In a strange coincidence, both CSK cars ended the day with E.T.'s that matched another car, and both took the higher spot based on speed:

"The first run we were fairly happy with," Worsham said. "We were second quickest of the session, but we still felt we were a bit off of what we could have done. So, even though it was great to make another full pull in the late session, when we slowed down to a 4.99 you better believe that we didn't get what we were after. A low 4.90 would have been more what we were looking for, but we weren't tuned up all that differently from the blue car and they ran 4.97. Tomorrow, we run a little earlier than we did today, so unless it cools off around here or the humidity magically goes down, it's going to be a pretty tough challenge."

Memphis, pre-race: Anyone looking for a light-hearted good time might have wanted to steer clear of the Checker, Schuck's, Kragen pit area just after midday this past Sunday. It wasn't as though Del Worsham was in any kind of dangerous mindset, but his crew was collectively in no mood to do much more than pack up and get out of Minnesota. After a fluke oil line leak prohibited them from competing in the first round of eliminations in Brainerd, they became an easy bunch to recognize. You just had to look for the group with tense jaws and the "30-yard stare" that looked right through you.

While Worsham collected himself and tried to remain philosophical, Team CSK crew members took the ouster hard, compounding their frustration over the cracked oil line with the fact opponent Ron Capps then smoked the tires hard in the other lane. Nothing was thrown, no tempers erupted, but every member of the team was seething inside, tense with disbelief over what had just befallen them.

"I always hate to say that stuff like that is just racing," Worsham said. "But really, when an oil line gives up at a time like that, when it could have given us a hint or cracked at any other time during the weekend, you just have to take a deep breath and move on. We were all mad, myself very much included, but we're professionals and we all kept a lid on it. Throwing a fit doesn't help anything, so we dealt with it as best we could."

Eager to put Brainerd's misfortune behind them, Team CSK was rolling for Memphis as soon they could beat an exit from central Minnesota. Much of the motivation to head south came strictly from needing to turn the page. Worsham knows the mood on his team, and knows what his guys need the most.

"They can't wait to get set up in Memphis and get back to racing," he said. "I'm the same way. If we had a week off right now, I'd probably send them all off to do something very physical and demanding, just to blow off some steam. But, we get to head right back to racing and the best therapy for these guys is running the race car. We'll all be very determined to get the red CSK Monte Carlo down the track and in the show. Then, we'll aim to win four rounds on Sunday. If we do that, Brainerd will be a bit more buried in our memories."

Finding the formula for success in Memphis is likely to demand a completely different approach from what the team has dealt with recently on the tour. Memphis, after all, is not exactly known for cool weather and low humidity during the month of August.

"It's Memphis in August, so you know what to expect," Worsham said. "We really hit it lucky up in Minnesota, and the weather there was just about perfect for three days. I don't expect it to be perfect in Memphis. It will be very hot, and you'll feel like you're swimming when you walk around. We had sweatshirts and jackets out in Brainerd, but they won't be needed this weekend.

"What that all means for us is a hot weather tune-up. We've had some success getting down hot tracks, so as much as we'll all be uncomfortable we'll also be excited about our chances. Bring on the heat. We'll be ready."

Worsham and his team will be ready to turn around a recent performance slide which has taken its toll on more than just their collective psyches. Over the course of the past four races, Worsham has won but one round and seen his points position slip to the No. 4 spot.

"The hardest part is, it's been a variety of things that have bitten us lately," Worsham said. "It's not like we just forgot how to tune the car and have smoked the tires every time. We made a first round mistake in Denver, but then we lost in round two up in Seattle on a very tricky track, when both John Force and I smoked the tires. When that happens, it's up for grabs and he got it. That was a big loss, which easily could have gone either way. Had we gotten across the line first, things might be very different right now. It was like a flip of the coin to settle some big issues, and it came up tails.

"Then we went to Sonoma and ran our best lap of the weekend in round one, but we got inched out by a very fast car. We ran great, but we lost. We got to Brainerd, and I knew we had first round covered. We'd run well in qualifying, I was totally confident about the tune-up, but we had to shut off without even running. You begin to wonder why it's all happening, but you can wonder all you want. What you have to do is get back out there and get yourself back into position. We're going to Memphis to win."

Winning in Memphis would be just the prescription to ease those tense jaw muscles, calm those nerves, and alleviate the "30-yard stare" that Brainerd created. And no jacket will be required.