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Tue, 14 Oct 2003, 11:55 PM

Two Down And Two To Go

By Bob Frey
Photo by:Auto Imagery, Inc.

Larry Dixon

With both Larry Dixon and Greg Anderson clinching their championships this past weekend in Dallas only the Fuel Funny Car and Pro Stock Bike titles are still up in the air and they could both be decided at the next stop on the tour. When we hit Las Vegas next weekend Tony Pedregon will come in with a 114 point lead over Whit Bazemore and Geno Scali will hold a 151 point edge on Shawn Gann. Since the most points you can get at a race is 138 it means that Whit and Shawn both have to score more points than the leaders if they want to keep their slim title hopes alive. The real scenario is a lot tougher for the two and I’ll touch on that next week, but for now let’s congratulate the two champs, one repeat and one first timer, and thank the other drivers and teams for making it a very enjoyable season. Larry, who now joins a host of other drivers who have won the sport’s premier prize more than once, does, however, join a very select group of those who have won it in consecutive years. Did you know that of all the Top Fuel champions since 1970 Larry is only the fifth driver to win the title in back-to-back years? Gary Scelzi, Scott Kalitta, Joe Amato and Don Garlits are the only other ones to accomplish that feat and next year Larry will try to tie Joe as the only ones to win the crown in three consecutive years. From what I hear, and this is only a rumor at this time, but Larry may have some help next year if his car owner, Don Prudhomme, brings out the much talked about second dragster. With the Kalitta clan having a pair of cars, and if Don does bring out a second car, look for at least one other highly regarded team to add another car to their dragster stable in 2004. I can say no more!!....Larry still has another goal this season and that is to set the single season mark for number of round wins. Right now the record is 61 and it’s held by Kenny Bernstein, while Larry has 58 round victories going into Las Vegas….Kenny’s win in the “Big D” was pretty impressive and now gives him 37 dragster wins for his career and it vaulted him into seventh place in the points….Scott Kalitta made the fastest run in the history of the sport when he ripped off that 333.95 shot in the second round. Did you know that this was the first time that Scott set top speed since the spring Topeka race in 1997 when he went a leisurely 315.23 mph?

John Force
With all of the talk in the FC ranks about Tony and Whit and their battle for the championship did you know that John Force is only 177 points out of first place and that he’s only 63 points behind Whit? Still, as good a year as he has had (by most standards it’s been a career year), John could get eliminated from the title chase at Las Vegas….How about this for a scenario? At Dallas, going into Saturday’s qualifying, Tony Pedregon was 5^th and Whit Bazemore was 12^th, meaning that they could have met in the first round and all Whit had to do was pull out of line to make it happen (or at least try to make it happen). Well, since no team has ever done that before and since it didn’t happen in Dallas, I wonder if the Matco Tools team would ever consider jockeying for position in Vegas to try to get Tony early? As strange as it sounds, it may be their only hope of catching him, after all, they trail by about six rounds with only eight rounds to go so what could it hurt? Just something to think about during this very rare off-week of racing…Dean Skuza, Brian Corradi and Don Skuza continue to impress with their performance over the past few weeks, don’t they? Since (and including) Indy, did you know that they have won more rounds than any other Funny Car team out there? With ten round wins over that period of time, Dean and his crew have vaulted themselves into eighth place in the points and have all but assured themselves of a top ten finish for the seventh consecutive year. By comparison, John Force has won nine rounds over that span, Tony Pedregon and Gary Densham have both won seven, Phil Burkart has won six and Whit has won five. Of course Tim Wilkerson has won eight rounds but they all came at two races, Indy and Maple Grove. About the only thing Dean hasn’t been able to do is put the car in the winner’s circle. Did you know that Dean’s last win was at Maple Grove in 1998 when he beat John Force?….Cruz Pedregon’s DNQ and the Skuza final round have combined to push Cruz out of the top ten. This was the first DNQ of the season for Cruz and comes on the eve of his announcement of a second car. Look for that announcement, complete with new sponsor and driver to come at the SEMA show the week before the final race of the year. A lot of speculation is that brother, Tony, will be the driver. Maybe……

Kim and Greg
Greg Anderson’s win in the Pro Stock class was the 500^th in the history of the category and his ten wins this year ties him with Jeg Coughlin for second place on the single-season record list. Darrell Alderman won eleven events in his championship year of 1991, a year that saw Darrell go to the final round at fourteen of the eighteen races. Warren Johnson, Bob Glidden and Jim Yates all had years in which they won nine times. By the way, was I the only one who was surprised by Jeg’s red light in the final round this week? Did you know that in his entire career that is only the fourth red light that Jeg has ever had? Four fouls in 354 rounds of racing, now I ask you, how good is that? And for the record, one of those red lights was actually a “timed out” affair against Greg in Atlanta last year. Jeggie hardly ever beats himself and that’s why he is so good. Of course this year, “Greggie” is hardly ever beating himself and that’s why he’s going to wear the number one next year. Well that and the fact that he has a great team, a tremendous car and a dedicated team owner. How good is Greg’s car? Well, did you know that he has set top speed at thirteen of the last sixteen events this year? And did you know that he has been the number one qualifier twelve times this season? That top speed number is quite revealing because it shows how much power the team is making, and I’m going to tell you something here that not even the staunchest Pro Stock fan probably knows. I mean Alan Reinhart, Kevin McKenna, Lewis Bloom, none of them would probably get the answer to this question (except now that I’ve worded it that way). Since I mentioned Greg’s top speed numbers this year (13), do you know how many times Jeg Coughlin has set top speed in his entire career? How about none? Zero! Zip! Zilch! Nada! Not once has the yellow and black been on the front page of the recap sheet for being the top speed car in the class and I find that simply stunning…Almost as surprising as that little tidbit is the fact that one of the fastest rising stars in the class, David Connolly, keeps running into Jeg in eliminations. Did you know that David, driver of the “Bullet” team car, has qualified for nine races this season and he has faced Jeg in four of them and that he hasn’t met any other driver more than once? Wow, now if only he could beat Jeg. And wasn’t that a neat first round meeting between Mike Corvo in the “Motown Missile” and David in the Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins tribute car? From a real purist’s point of view the only thing that could have been better would have been a final round meeting between the two…..Speaking of the front page stats, did you know that none of the drivers who recorded the low elapsed time in their class won the race this weekend? Doug Kalitta, Del Worsham and Warren Johnson won the stat’s battle but lost the war. Warren lost when he set the low elapsed time of the event in PS but he was stopped in round one by Gene Wilson and his perfect reaction time. Did you know that this was the seventh perfect r/t of the season in the pro classes but only the second one that was a winner?

Marion Stephenson
Marion Stephenson, remember him from last week’s column? Well he did it again, winning Stock Eliminator on Monday in Dallas making him only the fifth driver in the last ten years to go back-to-back in the Stock class….Kyle Fickler won for the first time when he stopped Jerry Helfrich in the Super Comp final while Billy Leber went to the final round in his third class when he beat Peter Biondo in the Super Stock final round….. Morgan Lucas won again, running his consecutive round winning streak to fifteen, including the Jeg’s All Star event in Chicago. Morgan’s car owner, Jerry Darien, will be in Las Vegas this Friday with John Force, daughter Ashley and the A/Fuel car as she tries to get adjusted to the car prior to driving it in 2004…..And major props go out to a couple of the alcohol funny car drivers this week. Robert Lee, coming off a win at the D-4 race in Noble, Oklahoma a week earlier, dipped into the 5.60 zone for the first time (with Randy Anderson’s help), while John Patton and Shawn Jones both had good outings. John went to the semi-finals and recorded his best ever run, a strong 5.67 in the semi-finals, while young Mr. Jones not only dipped into the 5-second zone for the first time, but he went 5.785 at 246mph for his best elapsed time and speed ever. All of them added to the success of the event and I look forward to seeing them all at the D-7 points race in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks.