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SERIES:NHRA-SUMMIT HEADLINE: Transcript from Today's Countdown to the Championship Teleconference Call TEASER: REPORTER:Courtesy of NHRA Communications PHOTO_CAPTION: Photo copyright 2011 Auto Imagery, Inc. TYPE:STORY SLUG: Transcript from Today's Countdown to the Championship Teleconference Call Below is the transcript from today's teleconference call with NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing drivers Jason Line, Del Worsham, Antron Brown, Jack Beckman and Cruz Pedregon. THE MODERATOR: I'd like to welcome the media out to the teleconference call for the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series. I'm Zak Elcock with NHRA media relations. This call is to discuss the final race of the 2011 Countdown to the Championship, the Automobile Club of Southern California NHRA Finals. The drivers that will be participating on this call today are those still in contention for the World Championship. We will also have on the call, our newly crowned Pro Stock World Champion. Joining us today will be Top Fuel drivers Del Worsham and Antron Brown, Funny Car drivers, Jack Beckman, and Cruz Pedregon and 2011 Pro Stock World Champion, Jason Line.
In total, Line has raced to six wins in eight final round appearances and racked up seven number one qualifiers, and following his semifinal round appearance of the recently completed Big O Tires NHRA Nationals in Las Vegas, became the first driver in 2011, to clinch the World Championship.
Jason, what did it mean to clinch your second NHRA Full Throttle Pro Stock World Championship in the hometown of your team owner, Ken Black?
Q. I told you just a week ago you were going to do it, good job. You got the Big Wally, you got the jacket, you've got the Happy Gilmore chat. How much time are you going to take off to relish it after the World Finals?
Q. That means you didn't take any time off if you took the red eye. Greg and I are going on a USO tour to Germany at the end of the season, and that's probably going to be about it for us.
JASON LINE: It was really gratifying. It's kind of a strange deal because I just lost. I red lighted. The story of my life I'm never quite on time. I'm either early or late, one of the two. It's sort of bittersweet. Obviously, we just lost the round and felt like we had a car to go to the final round with and didn't quite do that. At the same time, here across the street Dan Wheldon loses his life less than a week before that. So a lot of those things going through your head at at the same time. At the same time you might be happy, but there is still time to, I guess, think about things and reflect and realize how lucky we are to be doing what we're doing. It was a great feeling, but like I say, it was a little bit bittersweet.
Q. Jason, looking forward to next year, recently Jeg announced they're going to be coming back into Pro Stock and they're going to be in a Dodge. Number one, your comment on that? You're kind of rivalries, but at the same time you're kind of like friends too. What is your take in coming in in a Dodge?
Q. We've got a question regarding the Auto Club NHRA finals in Pomona this is typically a track where KB Racing has done very well, racking up quite a few wins and you yourself being very successful there. How important is it for you to finish this championship season with a win in Pomona?
Q. Jason, what is the shelf life for the Pontiac GXP body style. I've kind of lost count of how many years you have left of that thing. And what is GM looking at for the next generation Pro Stock car? THE MODERATOR: We'd like to thank our 2011 Pro Stock World Champion Jason Line for coming on the call with us. We'll now move on to our second portion of the call, which is our two Top Fuel drivers, and two Funny Car drivers.
Del, you have the momentum, what do you now need to do to win your first world championship? I have a question for you, at the beginning of the segment you said that you had the nitro drivers that were in contention for the championship on the phone. I'm thinking did you guys kidnap Spencer or something, because he's not on the phone? THE MODERATOR: We've got a few drivers that couldn't join us on this call. Obviously we have things going on this weekend that kind of throw a wrench in it. These are some of our drivers we're pretty lucky in the sport to have so many drivers in contention.
Del, you've got a lot of drivers in the Top Fuel category that it's not just one man that you're shooting for. There are plenty of other drivers that can come up and steal this thing.
Antron, of the Top 4 drivers in contention for the championship, you've won in Pomona at Auto Club Raceway three of the last four events. Does that give you an advantage in winning this championship? ANTRON BROWN: No, not at all. To be honest with you, you have to come in there just like when everything's right see, the problem is with this category, there are a million ways to lose, and only one way to win. So you've just got to go in there. We always go in the last race in Pomona with nothing to lose. Then we go out this year and we'll go out and have some fun. The winner's going to have some low scores out there. Everybody's going to be looking at what each other does at the end of the racetrack. It's going to make for a really exciting time. I'm really amped up. I'm pumped. This NHRA Nationals, just to be there at the game to have a chance to win a championship. That is the incentive. We all go in there with our heads held high and give it our best shot and see where we end up at. THE MODERATOR: We'll move to our two Funny Car drivers, starting with Jack Beckman. After finishing fourth in the point standings in 2010, Beckman has come out strong in 2011, racing his Aaron's/Valvoline Dodge Charger to three wins and five final round appearances, including a crucial countdown win in Phoenix that propelled him from fifth to first in the point standings. Following a second round loss in Las Vegas, Beckman sits second in the standings, just one point behind leader and fellow Don Schumacher Racing teammate, Matt Hagan.
JACK BECKMAN: It would mean so much. I won the Super Cup Championship in 2003. And it's interesting, Jason Line will tell you, he was a Stock World Champion, and I don't know, for some reason, with the exception of Shawn Langdon, people seem to forget about that. The pro cars are what most of us aspire to drive, but it's no less competitive in the Sportsman division. In 2003, I had to get to the fifth round to win the championship in Super Cup, and I actually made it to the sixth round and locked that up. So it's a similar position, and I was quite a bit behind there and only one point behind now. But with the way the point structure works for round wins, which are 20 points for round wins, even though we're only one point behind Matt Hagan right now, that means that's an entire round we've got to make up unless we can qualify. So there is definitely pressure there. THE MODERATOR: We'll move to our final driver on the call, Cruz Pedregon. After Cruz's remarks, we'll open it up for questions. If consistency is the name of the game and Cruz has been following those directions all season long, with one win in three final round appearances, six semifinal round appearances, and six number one qualifiers, Cruz has found a way to get as many points possible for his Snap on Tools Toyota Camry. And he's put himself third in the point standings, 26 points behind leader Hagan with one race remaining.
Cruz, you have two world championships to your name, along with two career wins at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona. Does that experience give you the advantage to race to your third world title?
That is something that I'm hoping to have because we're probably going to need it at the Finals. I think we're going to need to have one of our best races. So I'm looking forward to it. I'm really proud that our Snap-on Toyota is in the championship hunt, even though we've had a good year, it could be a great year here in a week and a half.
Q. Del, take us back to the beginning of the season going into the Winter Nationals. What was your year end goal being your first full year in Top Fuel?
Q. Now here we go into the World Finals. You've got a new car that's finally driving a car that was built for you. Is there a big difference in the way the car handles now versus what you've been running?
ANTRON BROWN: What changed is just like you're going through the blues. Like we had a couple new guys on the team, and also we got like two new guys back that we're used to this year, and just gelling. We actually changed our whole combination around to like a DSR combination, and you're running a little more power and your clutch runs different. So Brian and Mark, it just took us all to adapt to running with more power. If you want to run with the big boys, that's what you have to do. If you want to compete against the Al Anabi team and run against our teammates, we stepped up to another level. When you step up to another level, sometimes you never step forward, you step backwards sometimes. Last year we just lost a lot of close drag races. Same thing that happened to our teammates this year. We were on the other side of it. We went to eight finals last year, and probably won the last one last year. We were all racing by .002 or .003 of a second, and this year we've been very fortunate to be on the opposite side of that, winning races by .002 or .003 on the good side. So it shows how tough the Top Fuel class is right now. It's intense. You have no idea if you're going to win and when you're going to win or who you're going to win. You just have to go out there and put your best foot forward and hope it works out in your favor.
Q. Antron, this could be I understand a pretty historic race for you and the NHRA as far as minority drivers go. How do you view yourself? Are you looking at being a trailblazer? Just a guy that has to go fast? How do you see yourself?
ANTRON BROWN: I think the biggest thing in drag racing is also when you come up, like my dad and uncle, I hear all the stories from my grandpa about street racing. Then my grandpa says you want to do it, you want to do it the right way. And everybody familiarizes themselves with drag racing because everybody has had a hot rod car or worked on a hot rod car. They could trade their grocery getters. I mean, we took our cruisers, which is my grandma's station wagon on, and went to the drag race on open night, and we had a blast with it. A lot of people familiarize themselves with drag racing, because there isn't one person that I've known from high school that didn't race each other from one traffic light to the next traffic light and wanted a fast car. That's all about drag racing. That's why I think drag racing doesn't have diversity issues or like blocks because it takes million it doesn't take millions of dollars or to come from a family with a lot of money to go drag racing. When you go go kart racing or any kind of surface racing, it takes a lot of money to do that. But drag racing takes a little know how and initiative, and you can soup you are your Trans Am and go to the strip.
Q. For Antron and Jack because you're team members and if Del and Cruz want to chime in, that would be great. The mental aspects of the sport are really kind of interesting. Kurt Busch over in NASCAR, he races NHRA Pro Stock as you know once in a while, talks about getting into Jimmie Johnson's head. They've got a little feud going on over there. But do you see any of that mental interference or mind games going on in NHRA between competitors? And if so, what is the best way to handle that?
JACK BECKMAN: Yeah, I think one of the biggest differences between NHRA and NASCAR is we're supposed to stay in our lane. NASCAR you're drafting, you're bumping, you're blocking. You're doing so many things that are interactive and dependent on what the other driver's actions are and you're feeding and reacting off of those. I think that just fuels more passion and emotion and intensity and rivalries. In drag racing, when we go out there, I agree with Antron. I absolutely know who is in the other lane. I know their tendencies, and for some drivers I'll make the adjustments. But ultimately, you can kind of put your blinders on, and if it's supposed to be a contact free sport. So I also think that because ours, you go out there, you're strapped in the car for 15 minutes. It's running 2:20 seconds. And if you get that win, you come back to the pits. You've got to come back down off that emotion and interact with the fans a little bit, get suited up and get back into that mode. It's very different. NASCAR, they don't really have to be I hung out earlier this year in Fontana for the race with the rest of the Aaron's team and David Reutimann. We were talking, when they're following the pace car around, they don't really have to have that intensity that we do. By no means am I down playing what their mental capabilities are. When the pace car pulls off, and the lead car throttles down on the green flag, the rest of them are going to follow suit, and they've got to be an even keel for three hours. We've got to be at this super intense level of focus and concentration for roughly about 7 or 8 seconds. The last couple of seconds is staging, and then the run, and then the first couple of seconds of slowing down. So even though they're both loud and they're both Motorsports, I think the differences are huge between the two.
Q. I think it would be interesting if Cruz and Del would want to comment also. CRUZ PEDREGON: Yeah, I think each driver has a very insightful, and very accurate depiction of drag racing versus NASCAR. But I think for me it's a lot like golf. Golf versus other sports isn't really a lot of physical. It leans heavily to the mental side, which sometimes can be the most difficult thing. When you're out there and you're running around, you can try to be acrobatic, and your mind kind of goes into that mode automatically. But when you're sitting there like a golfer trying to putt it, trying to win the championship, all of a sudden somebody takes a picture or somebody yells, all of a sudden that distraction can mean a lot. So I think we tap into the mental side of it a lot more than NASCAR. And like Jack said, not to take anything away from the in a NASCAR guys, but you have an extra lap or two or three to make up for a mistake that you made.
The example that Del mentioned in September in the semis. I'm racing and I thought too much, and I'm thinking about too many things, and I went out there and I screwed up. Actually what happened was I anticipated the light and I started to go. The light wasn't ready to go, so I caught myself. Then pretty soon I'm 40 feet behind the guy. So it's just a lot of mental, and it's really, really intense. I imagine they couldn't imagine, but it's a way different ballgame. There are a lot of good drivers out there, and the three that mentioned what they go through is a good example.
Q. For the nitro guys, the 1,000 feet, there was a little bit of question about whether it would work or not, but you look at how close the standings are in both classes, and the closeness and how many wins everybody has. Do you think you could really call it a success now, and has everybody kind of embraced that distance? So I definitely think it was a win win for the class as a whole and also for competition. We definitely tear up a lot less stuff, and a lot of people are seeing some really, really close drag racing. We've been seeing drag racing won by thousandths of a second in Top Fuel and Funny Car. When you get to 300 miles an hour, it's pretty exciting, and I have to agree even though I'm a true quarter mile fan. JACK BECKMAN: To add to what Antron said, I'm a huge fan of this sport and historian. When I first heard the announcement, I couldn't believe NHRA was doing this to my sport. It would be like replacing a baseball with a softball. I think there are two things that are very difficult with about the different finish lines. One is we have two different finish lines now, and the NHRA crew has to take down and put up when we transition between Pro Stock and Nitro tag. The other thing is the conversion factor. The old numbers at a quarter mile relative to the new numbers at 1,000 feet. However, I've got to agree with everything Antron said. If anything is made for closer racing, we get a little bit more parts life out of the cars. There are no racetracks with the exception of two that have grandstands even down at a thousand feet. So I think if you turn the scoreboards off, fans wouldn't know the difference. At some point though, the crew chiefs being what they are, they're going to make these cars too fast again for 1,000 feet. So, ultimately, we're probably going to have to slow the cars way down and perhaps go back to the quarter mile so we each have the same finish line. But the people that have complained about how this has altered the sport and changed it, my response to them is I'm all for a quarter mile. But recognize you're not going to achieve 337 mile an hour Top Fuel cars if we go back to the quarter mile. NHRA will have to chop us back to that 300 or 305 miles an hour. So those days are gone. Our cars have gotten heavier over the last five years. We've added over 100 pounds to them. We're going ten miles an hour faster, and slowing these things down, especially if you have a chute failure, and at some of these racetracks, it's gotten to be a dangerous proposition. So I think it was actually brilliant on NHRA's part. I think they solved a whole lot of issues with one change there. DEL WORSHAM: I want to add to this. I'll tell you what I've seen especially the last few months is that I think the fans have now embraced the times. They understand when Matt Hagan had the 399, that was a great run. It took a while to transition from a 4.70 Funny Car to a 3.99 Funny Car or from a 4.40 Top Fuel car to the quarter mile. Like when we ran the 3.73, they understand now, and I think they've caught on to the times. I'd rather accelerate as fast as we are right now to 1,000 feet and than have to slow down to a quarter mile. Absolutely, I'm not for slowing down. I'd rather keep going faster. If we have to shorten the track a little more to keep accelerating, so be it.
Q. Jack, how awkward or how cool is it that your main competition going into the final is your teammate Hagan? And what do you guys do for the next ten days? Do you keep your distance and mind your own business? But in Funny Car, John Force has been the best for a long, long time, and in 2005 when Don won his first Funny Car Championship with Gary Scelzi driving, I think if you asked him, that might be one of his proudest moments in drag racing. It looked like the Force cars were going to run away with the championship again this year. I think Neff and Hight have five wins, and without the countdown format, Neff is ten ahead of us in second place, it would be tough to catch them. I think, Del, I remember this distinctly. When you and I won Charlotte at four wide earlier this year, you made the comment I hope we didn't peak too early. And my comment was I just want to peak. It looks like, well, obviously Del's back in the hunt. But it looks like the Schumacher Funny Cars and momentum has shifted a little bit over towards us, which may not be a good thing. Anytime you have John Force up there things happen over there. I'm gratified that we're able to run for the championship. You knew Matt Hagan and Tommy were going to be right back in it. They barely lost the championship on the last day last year, and I think that just motivated them that much more. But don't forget, Neff has super realistic chance. The way he's been qualifying, he could close that up to within one round before we go in to Sunday. Vegas for him put him mathematically back in to it. I mean realistically, not just an incredible long shot. There are six funny cars going into the last day of the season that can walk away with the championship. It's fantastic. As a 7 year old kid when he went to Orange County International Raceway for my first race, and I thought these cars were the coolest thing on the planet. I never would have dreamed I'd get a paycheck to drive one of them and contend for the championship, so this is all good for me.
Q. You've been at this for a long time. How does it feel to be in position when you're still looking for that breakthrough win? And each year you get into a position that you feel the pressure coming on more? It's something when I started driving 21 years ago, I just wanted to get down the track. I never thought about winning a race or a championship. But after my first season, it looked like it was something that was possible, and I thought maybe it was something I could do. I've been trying to do it for the last 20 years, and I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, I definitely feel I'm excited. I'm more excited this year than I have been ever in my drag racing career.
Q. None of this new car was built at that place you have on Glassell, was it?
Q. Jack and Cruz, regarding Alexis DeJorio, and what you think about her potential as a factor next year in nitro Funny Car? I tell what you I like about Alexis, she ran a Super Cup car, and she didn't rush herself. She's got great financial backing behind her, and I think she could have stepped up right away if she wanted to. But she wanted to run until she won a race, and she did. Then she stepped up in the alcohol Funny Car. She told me even when she was getting her license in Chuck and Del Worsham's car. She said I just want to win a race in the alcohol car before I step into the nitro car. So this was during the whole process, and she finally won the national event up in Seattle. She's been her own hardest critic. I don't want to say worst critic, but hardest critic. I think she was ready months ago. I very much appreciate that she's taken her time to get her comfort level to the point where she thought she was going to be okay. She's by far right now going to be the front runner for next year's Rookie of the Year. Which is almost a misnomer, because the amount of laps she's got in an alcohol car, she's not a rookie. I think she handles herself fantastic. I think that car's going to be probably one of the Top 10 cars, next year, and she may even get her first national event winning that thing. CRUZ PEDREGON: I agree with what Jack says. Good backing and the fact that she could pick any sport she wanted to, but she fell in love with the sport we all love. And she's in a Funny Car, which is, to me, we love Funny Cars, and she's with a great team. She's with the Kalitta Team that's going to put her in a good position. So I think it's great for the sport. It's great to bring in other sponsors. The alcohol angle is good, and I hope that will open up some eyes for more opportunities for other sponsors to look at us. So I think from a corporate standpoint, from a fan standpoint and a competitor standpoint, one thing I can say is I appreciate someone that comes in and wants to get into the lower class cars instead of just jumping into a fuel car. That shows she's a smart gal, so I think it's great.
Q. Cruz, you drive the car, you're calling all the shots on the car. You're out there hustling sponsor money to keep the car on the track. Does that put you at a disadvantage to the other groups out there like Schumacher with four cars, and four crew chiefs and the brain trust the Forces? I'm definitely not at an advantage, that's for sure. So somewhere along the line I'm probably at a disadvantage. But for me the hardest thing, and I need to work on this for next year, is to go from thinking about the car day in and day out and then have to get in there and compete at a high level against some of these drivers. I mean some of these guys are really, really good reaction time wise, and I might not have my best. I'll try to bust her up one last good one here for the end of the year, because I think head to head, I like our chances. Our cars run as good or better than these other guys. Give or take there are always those rounds. But I think for sure if I've got to work on something, I've got to work on me. And that is trying to focus my attention on Sunday is to try to be the best that I can be. Because a lot of these guys, that's all they think about, and they're good at it. I'm over there thinking about clothes and timing plots and this and that and oh, I've got to race. So for me I'll try to shore up those weak areas and hopefully we can. So the fact that we're competing for a championship with a one car team, I think it's phenomenal. Nobody wants to hear about phenomenal. My sponsors want me to win just like the other guys. I like the fact that we're in it. We stack all the dice on racing, and we'll see what happens at the end.
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