Hale celebrates win.

Larry Dixon

I also said last week that Kenny Bernstein would win and he didn’t, and I said that Doug Kalitta needed to pick up at least a round a race on the western swing if he wanted to keep his title hopes alive and he didn’t. What did happen was Larry Dixon in the “Miller Lite” car swept the race, qualifying number one, setting low elapsed time and top speed in addition to the win. It was the second time that Larry beat Doug Kalitta in the final in Denver, having done it previously in 2001. Now Larry goes to a place where he has never won before, in fact, did you know that Larry Dixon has never even gotten to the final round in Seattle? But, as surprising as it may be, two of Don Prudhomme’s drivers and Larry’s teammates have won in the Top Fuel class in Seattle. Did you know that both Ron Capps and Tommy Johnson got their first professional wins in Seattle and they both did it in the dragster class? Ron won his first pro race in 1995 in Seattle while Tommy Johnson got his first taste of victory two years earlier. And did you know that they both did it in the dragster class and they both beat the same guy, Cory McClenathan to get their wins? Sounds like it’s Larry’s turn to me, or maybe it’s Cory’s turn. Whatever…Kenny Bernstein, who has never won in Seattle in a dragster (he did in FC back in 1988), was looking good for a while in Denver but the brightest spot of his weekend had to be the return of his son, Brandon, to the track. Brandon had a body brace on from the waist up, but looked good and moved well (all things considered) and it was great to see him back at the track and the Denver fans gave him a warm reception. I understand he did well on the television show, too. Kenny did everything but win the Seattle race last year, qualifying at the top, setting low elapsed time and top speed before losing to Darrell Russell in the money round. Did you know that the Seattle race last year was the last race that Russell won? Amazing, isn’t it?....Melanie Troxel, whose dad, Mike, was inducted into the Division 5 Hall of Fame on Sunday, also had a nice outing making it to the semi-finals before losing to Doug Kalitta.

Warren Johnson

Warren Johnson helped himself and his son, Kurt, by winning the Denver race for the fourth time. WJ earned his 91^st national event win while beating the point’s leader, Greg Anderson, in round two and the reigning Pro Stock Champion, Jeg Coughlin, in the final round. With Kurt also losing in the second round (to Jeg), Greg’s lead over KJ is now 71 points, or about three and a half rounds of racing. For his part, Warren is 250 points back and only a major collapse at the top would give him a chance at a 7^th championship. Still, the “Professor” is plenty tough and whether it’s the new LED lights or what, he has never driven any better. By the way, it almost went unnoticed (but not by me) that Warren won the race at the age of 60!! Way to go, Warren. Eddie Hill, at 60 years, four months and fifteen days remains the oldest driver ever to win a professional class but that record won’t last for long thanks to Mr. Johnson. Ironically, Eddie set that mark when he won at Denver in 1996… Warren qualified 9^th in Denver and it was only the sixth time in his career that he has been ninth, but did you know that he had never won as much as a round of competition when he started ninth? Not a round. Two of those number nine spots had been in Denver and both times he was beaten by Bob Glidden. And did you know that the last time Warren qualified 9^th was also in Denver back in 1994 when he was just a kid of 51 years old.

With his win in Denver, young John Force finally got a victory in the 2003 season and that runs his consecutive streak to seventeen years in a row with at least one win. John also moved into fourth place in the points with the win, passing both Ron Capps and Gary Densham in the process. Amazing that he is that high in the standings, isn’t it? Gary is now 5^th while Ron is in sixth and that’s the lowest for either of them since the first race of the season. Ron, if he wins two rounds in Seattle, will hit the 200 mark and that’s quite an accomplishment, so good luck to him. It was interesting to note that John won after beating Johnny Gray in the first round, just like he did in each of the last two years at Denver. John then beat Cruz Pedregon in the final round to pick up his 107^th national event win. Did you know that Cruz is the guy whom John has beaten the most times in the final round (13) and he’s also the guy whom John has lost to the most times in the final round (8)? Cruz made a real race of it, though, and it brought back some thoughts of some of the great final rounds that those two have given us over the years. Let’s hope we have more of them in the future. Cruz’s runner-up finish, by the way, moved him into the POWERade Top 10 for the first time this season. Way to go, Cruz….Even though he lost in the second round, Whit Bazemore did manage to pick up a round on Tony Pedregon. Did you know that this was the first round-one loss for Tony in over a year? He last went down in round one at St. Louis last year, but keep this in mind, that came on the back on another first round loss the race before, so let’s see how Tony responds in Seattle. Whit is now 124 points behind Tony, or about six rounds, but he still needs to gain a round a race over the next two and he can’t let chances like Denver slip away. Tony’s not going out in round one very often and when he does, you have to take advantage of it.

Sportsman winners.

One thing that I did get right last week was the sportsman classes, where I mentioned how the cream-of-the-crop always seem to do well in Denver. Well, I think that David Rampy, Dan Fletcher, Toby Lang and Gary Stinnett certainly fall into that category, don’t you? Congrats, also, to Craig Anderson and John Tripp, the other sportsman winners in Denver. Now it will be interesting to see how the west coast drivers, like Morgan Lucas, Bucky Austin and Jeff Lane, to name a few, do at the national event. All of them have title aspirations but all must do well on the national level if they want to be number one at the end of the season. Speaking of which, Peter Biondo didn’t hurt his chances any when he “doubled up” in Super Stock and Stock at the Lucas Oil Division race in Bristol, Tennessee, did he?

By Bob Frey