Despite not achieving the desired result Sunday at Bristol Dragway, Whit Bazemore and his Matco Tools Top Fuel team crept closer to a coveted spot in NHRA’s Countdown to the Championship after suffering an early loss at the seventh O’Reilly Thunder Valley Nationals.
After qualifying second with a 4.547-second elapsed time on Friday evening at Thunder Valley, Bazemore was pitted against Kalitta Motorsports racer David Grubnic. The veteran racers used nearly identical reaction times, but the Matco Tools dragster lost traction immediately in the right lane forcing the 2002 Bristol Funny Car winner to coast to a pass of 15.205 seconds at 67.33 mph. The popular Australian driver finished the quarter mile course in 4.659 at 298.01 to advance to the quarterfinals. It was the first time they’ve met this season.
“The car was not tuned-up even close to do what it did today, ” Bazemore said. “It was tuned very safely off the hit of the throttle. It shouldn’t have been close to smoking the tires, but it did, so there’s obviously something going on that we’re not aware of. We’re very disappointed that it would smoke the tires at the hit of the throttle. Because of that we’re making a lot of changes, a new chassis and revised fuel system to try and give us more consistency. ”
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