Last weekend’s IHRA World Nationals (hard to believe, with all that’s been going, on that  it was just a week ago) featured a scheduled Funny Car finale between Gary Densham and Scott Kalitta, but the race never came off.  When Sunday’s final rounds were rained out the competitors returned to settle things Monday morning, but Densham and Kalitta failed to appear, forcing the association to simply list things as uncontested.

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.