Sun, 18 May 2003, 04:55 PM Funny Car Final, Round 4 Eliminations

By Jim Samuel

ENGLISHTOWN, N.J. - Results of final, round 4 eliminations in Funny Car at the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, 34th annual K&N Filters SuperNationals presented by Pep Boys:

 Car#-Driver(Opp'nt)-RT-----ET---Speed-----Car#-Driver(Opp'nt)-RT----ET---Speed
   28 Ron Capps                               5 Whit Bazemore
E4                   0.065  8.300 100.52     ****WINNER****  0.076  4.869 306.81
 Prior rounds:
E3    (T Johnson Jr) 0.035  4.901 316.52      (T Pedregon  ) 0.040  4.824 321.42
E2    (J Force     ) 0.057  4.838 314.90      (D Worsham   ) 0.074  4.813 324.59
E1    (J Gray      ) 0.050  4.885 318.62      (C Pedregon  ) 0.078  4.830 322.88
 Qualified:             #7  4.844 314.17                        #5  4.836 313.44

4:46 PM - The track temperature was 76 degrees, the temperature was 60 with a relative humidity of 33 percent. The barometric pressure was 29.81 inches.

Capps and Bazemore have raced each other 19 times with Capps getting eight wins and Bazemore 11. In final round competition, Capps has two wins to Bazemore's one win. The last time these two met was at Las Vegas last fall when Capps beat Bazemore in the second round. Their last final round competition came at Brainerd in 2001. At that race, Capps beat Bazemore to win the Funny Car division. Capps's last trip to the finals was at Phoenix this year when he beat Gary Densham. Bazemore last made it to the finals at Bristol when he lost to Del Worsham. This is Bazemore's thirty-first trip to the finals and his record before this is 12 wins and 18 losses. Capps has 14 wins and 15 losses in his previous 29 final round appearances.

Capps launched and started to smoke the tires at the 60-foot mark. He pedaled and when he got back into it, he smoked and shook the tires again. That sent his car fishtailing across the track. Capps had to get off the throttle to get the car back under control. Bazemore shook the tires a bit at the start but stayed with it and had a good run going until he lost some cylinders at the end of the track. But with Capps still at mid track and coasting the rest of the way, Bazemore got the win.

Timing data courtesy of CompuLink