Monday, February 02, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

For owner, it's not only funny business

Schumacher also succeeds with Top Fuel, bikes

By JEFF WOLF
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Don Schumacher winced as the engine in Whit Bazemore's 6,000-horsepower Nitro Funny Car blew up Sunday afternoon near the finish line of Las Vegas Motor Speedway's dragstrip.

"That was expensive," car owner Schumacher said.

Such is life during a professional drag racing season, even in preseason testing.

At least Schumacher could find comfort after another of his drivers, Gary Scelzi, posted the day's second-best run in funny cars with a quarter-mile pass of 4.80 seconds at 311 mph.

Those are only two of the five Schumacher teams that will compete in the NHRA Powerade Drag Racing Series this season. He also fields a Top Fuel Dragster for his son, Tony Schumacher, and Pro Stock Bikes for three-time world champion Angelle Savoie and Antron Brown.

Schumacher pared his operation by one team after the past season when Scotty Cannon opted to leave to run his own Pro Modified team.

But Schumacher is ready to get his program back up to six entries if he can find the sponsorship funds to run a second Top Fuel Dragster.

"You never really want to downsize," he said. "Ideally I'd like to have a second Top Fuel Dragster. You can transfer a lot of information from the funny cars to the dragster but we feel it would be a benefit to have a second Top Fuel car.

"I have most of the parts together from the three fuel teams we run. It wouldn't be a problem to bring another (dragster) out in 30 days. We'll see. Anything's possible."

The team had the hottest Top Fueler over the second half of the season once Schumacher hired Alan Johnson to tune his son's car.

With input and leadership from Johnson, a three-time Top Fuel world champion as an owner, Tony Schumacher drove to four titles, five poles and posted three of the four quickest runs in NHRA history, including a national record 4.441 seconds. But it wasn't enough to catch two-time reigning champion Larry Dixon, who won eight titles last year.

In testing Sunday, reigning Nitro Funny Car champion Tony Pedregon made his first full pass since starting his own team two months ago. Pedregon recorded a run of 4.798 seconds at 313.29 mph.

• ROAD RACING -- At Daytona, Fla., a broken suspension part in the last 20 minutes of the 24-hour Rolex 24 endurance race at the Daytona International Speedway cost a team of NASCAR drivers the overall title.

Instead the title was won by open-wheel driver Christian Fittipaldi and teammates Andy Pilgrim, Forest Barber and defending Daytona Prototype class champion Terry Borcheller.

Tony Stewart was driving when the part failure occurred. It erased a five-minute lead he had built with fellow drivers Dale Earnhardt Jr. and road racer Andy Wallace.

After Pilgrim drove into the lead, he stopped before the last lap to let car owner Barber drive to the checkered flag.

• NASCAR -- At Anaheim, Calif., Honda's Kevin Windham won his second 250cc THQ AMA Supercross race of the season Saturday night, beating series points leader Chad Reed at Edison Field.

Honda's Mike LaRocco finished third. Reed, a Yamaha rider, leads Windham 119-96 in the season standings.

Kawasaki's Ivan Tedesco won his fifth consecutive 125cc Western Regional championship race.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.