COMMENTS ON THE IHRA WORLD NATIONALS F/C FINALE
Torco’s Competitionplus.com caught up with the protagonists
at Indy to ask them what happened.
DENSHAM:
Basically it rained most of Sunday morning, but there was a window of
opportunity to run the cars between about three o’clock and eight o’clock in the
evening. They busted their butts, cleaned and dried the track and did
everything they were supposed to do. They called us up into the lanes and ran
the first two pair of cars. We were the third pair. I did my burnout, backed
up and it was raining on the car. They shut us off, went back to the pits for
about an hour while they dried the track, and we raced.
Then they started
running Top Fuel and in about the third pair they had a massive oildown. So now
we’re sitting around waiting because they’ve got two Funny Cars that haven’t run
for three hours and another pair that hadn’t run for about an hour. We were
ready to run again before they even ran the last pair of Top Fuel. It was
nobody’s fault, that’s just the way it was. They finally finished Top Fuel and
then we went up and ran the semifinals of Funny Car, and after that they got in
the semifinals of Top Fuel about an hour or so later.
Then they asked us
to get in line for the finals. We got up there and waited for about 20 minutes
while they ran some bracket cars, and then it rained again. Basically, it was
just a combination of a bunch of stuff in so much that we were ruining a bunch
of tires on almost every run, and Goodyear had already left. In the semifinals
we ran with a six-run tire on one side of the car and a four-run tire on the
other side. There was no way to buy any new tires because everyone was
gone.
Connie (Kalitta) was very upset that they didn’t run us when they
called us up there, and I probably was a little bit too. We came back to the
pits and tried to figure out what we were going to do about the final. They
couldn’t decide if we were going to run the next day (Monday) or carry it over
to Epping or some other race. None of us knew what they were ging to decide,
and I was trying to figure out financially what was going to happen because two
of my guys had airline flights already booked to go home a six o’clock
Monday morning.
Ya know, you’re sitting there thinking that your car
is running pretty good and that you can win the race. I thought we had a slight
advantage over Scott, but they were running pretty good, too. Then Connie came
over and he was huffin’ and puffin’ and being upset about the whole thing.
They’d hurt their new Toyota body and it had to be at Jack Roush’s place at nine
o’clock Monday morning to get repaired and fixed up for Indy. Well, Connie came
over and after mumbling about the “dirty so-and-sos” he said he was going to go
up there and tell the IHRA officials that we were just going to split
the
money.
I wanted to race because you get to win so seldom. It doesn’t
matter where you’re racing, and I know some people think IHRA is a minor league
compared to NHRA, but it’s not to us because it’s so hard to win anywhere these
days. It’s good for me and good for the team’s morale to win anywhere. They
were looking forward to being in the winners circle and getting their pictures
taken, while I was trying to rationalize that splitting the money would probably
be the best thing for everyone, and I also didn’t want to make an enemy out of
Conrad, so I said, If that works for you, Connie, I’ll go along with it, but in
the back of my mind I really didn’t think IHRA would agree, and yet the weather
forecast said it was going to rain for 40 days and 40 nights.
I figured
Connie would go up there and they’d tell him to go pound sand, that we were
going to run the final and that’s the way it was going to be. I was more
shocked than anyone when he came back and said Here’s your check for half the
money.
It had no affect on the points because I can’t catch Dale Creasy
for the title. They way the IHRA points structure is, they give bonuses for
competing in every race, and I haven’t done that, so it had no bearing on the
points. I think they have a great program and it’s going to do nothing but get
better. Who knows, for all I know Schumacher might have four cars over there
and Force might have four cars over there, too just so they can have eight
teams!
I’d like t thank Even Knoll for putting up the money and giving us
good places to race. It’s a lot better than it was over there before. IHRA
treats the racers really great over there, and I’m extremely pleased to be part
of it over there, even if it isn’t full time.
CONNIE
KALITTA – TEAM OWNER/SCOTT KALITTA F/C: This car (indicating the
Toyota) had a broken front end on it, and they were forecasting rain for
Monday. In fact, after Hillary (Will) ran in the Top Fuel final it rained and
killed the rest of the day.
What we saw Sunday night was that we weren’t
going to see the finale. We split the money because IHRA was all right because
neither one of them, Densham or Scott are not in the points chase. It didn’t
compromise anything in reality.
I was a little perturbed about the whole thing. We sat there in
line for a long time. Gary was in line, too. I went up to the starting line
and told them both cars were ready, should we put the drivers in, and the
official said no, that they knew up in the tower that we were ready. They were
still running doorslammers. It was a poor business decision on their parts not
o get the pros out of the way. That’s what they should have
done.
BILL BADER, JR. – NRP PRESIDENT: I was not
even aware of what was going on with the Funny Cars until that whole deal was
done. I know the drivers were unhappy because they felt they had to sit in the
lanes too long. Connie Kalitta made a call to the control tower, and some
arrangement was made. I don’t know what the financial
arrangement was.
I’m assuming they split winner and runner-up money. For me the difficult part
was the return of Nitro Funny Cars to IHRA, and the fact that it was obviously
going to be our last IHRA race, and we weren’t able t put anybody into the
winners circle seemed a little odd to me.