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BAYTOWN, Texas - Good morning from a sunny Houston Raceway Park, where sunrise brought a rare sight in this area, clear blue skies overhead. Today's scheduled activities should go off according to plan - more on that later. The final Friday night qualifying session of the year turned out the way everyone wishes all night qualifying sessions would be - with terrific performance, several career-best runs, and no serious oildowns or accidents. Cruz Pedregon just missed being the second Funny Car in the seventies with a 4.807 at 319.60 mph, both career-bests. Randy Anderson wasn't far behind Cruz, his 4.848 at 318.92 also both career-best numbers. It was so spectacular that John Force's 4.876 at 313.15 and Tony Pedregon's 4.875 at 311.31 were almost "yawners." In Top Fuel, Gary Scelzi came close to his already sparkling career-best numbers with a 4.549 at 322.23, with Joe Amato right on his heels at 4.565 at 318.02. But the crowd's cheers were the loudest when Eddie Hill posted career best marks of 4.574 at 313.91, with the side-by-side 4.601 at 313.37 and 4.603 at 313.15 run by Cory McClenathan and Kenny Bernstein coming in second. In Pro Stock, Kurt Johnson outdid his father, Warren, in both qualifying sessions, afterward crediting Warren's testing at Ennis this past week - in Kurt's car! In all, fifteen of the sixteen qualifiers were under seven seconds despite the warm temperatures and high humidity. The only disappointments came in Pro Stock Bike, where both Angelle Seeling and Matt Hines made off-pace runs, but both expect to pick up the pace this morning. All Matt has to do to clinch the 1998 championship is qualify at this event and right now he's atop the order. Today's schedule originally called for Super Street and Stock eliminations to open the day, followed by the final round of Federal-Mogul qualifying. The third round of Pro qualifying is slated for 11 AM and should be under almost perfect conditions, except for the humidity. Then it's Super Stock eliminations, followed by first-round eliminations for Competition Eliminator and the Federal-Mogul cars. Then, at 3 PM, the Pro categories will make their final qualifying runs. Eliminations for Super Gas and Super Comp (two rounds each), Stock, and Super Stock were supposed to close the day. That was before the updated forecasts. Though it's still blue overhead, clouds are gathering on the horizon and the local radio stations are now forecasting an 80-percent chance of rain tomorrow. With the rain expected to move in late tonight, NHRA officials revised the schedule in order to minimize the potential effect on the Sportsman competitors should weather delay Sunday's eliminations. They added an additional round of Sportsman eliminations to the end of today's schedule, for Comp Eliminator, Stock, and Super Stock. That will leave 12 cars or less in all of the Sportsman eliminators for Sunday's rain-threatened eliminations. If the weather forecasts are wrong, then we'll have a lot of spare time tomorrow - but that's better than trying to shuffle another hundred Sportsman cars around if the expected actually comes true.
Rumor control - yesterday we mentioned that rumors run rampant this time of
year. One of those rumors dealt with Exide Battery's sponsorship of
motorsports programs. Those rumors spread so widely that Don Schumacher took
the unusual step of releasing a press release to quash the rumors, about his
team and two others. "We have a three-year deal with Exide Batteries. With
a recent realignment in their top management positions, the company has not
folded...Exide has not stopped producing a quality product...they have not
cancelled their racing programs with NASCAR's Jack Roush Racing, Exide
Batteries Ford Taurus driven by Jeff Burton, or the NASCAR Truck Series Exide
Batteries Ford Ranger driven by Joe Ruttman and finally...they have not
cancelled their contract with the Exide Batteries/Schumacher Racing Top Fuel
Dragster driven by my son, Tony. We anticipate a long relationship with this
highly respected corporation and after out initial four month testing
program, we expect to chase the NHRA Winston point series in 1999 for the top
spot. We are continuing to solicit associate sponsorship and should an
additional major corporate deal come our way, we would consider forming
another team."
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