Whit Bazemore drove his David Powers-owned Matco Tools dragster to the provisional No. 11 qualifying position Friday evening at Texas Motorplex to kick off qualifying at the 22nd annual O’Reilly Fall Nationals.
The 20-time NHRA winner enters the third race in the Countdown to Four ranked eighth in the NHRA standings. The veteran racer used a tune-up from crew chief Lee Beard to race his Matco-backed rail to a pass of 4.662 seconds at 319.52 mph on an extremely hot Texas Motorplex quarter mile to finish ninth following Friday’s opening session. The former Funny Car pro then bettered his mark under the lights at the Motorplex. Bazemore traversed the right lane in 4.595 at 300.46 to clock the 11th quickest pass of the day. He earned the pole at the Dallas race in 2001.
“It was going to run a 4.55 or 4.56, but it got down track and spit a spark plug out, ” Bazemore said. “We were fortunate to get in the show. Going into that run, we were 16th. We made two good runs and Lee (Beard) is confident we can run harder and better tomorrow. It will be challenging because of the heat. ”
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