Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Funny Car driver Del Worsham knows the
score, knows the drill, and can see the future, to a degree. He
doesn't know how the story will end, come Labor Day when the field is
set for the 2008 NHRA Countdown to the Championship, but he's pretty
sure he can guess how the 10 qualifying Funny Car drivers will get
there. They will race hard, every lap, for every possible point.
Last
year, when the inaugural Countdown was put in place and only the top
eight teams advanced to the playoffs, Worsham missed the cut by just 38
points, and he could easily look back on his season to see numerous
instances where those precious POWERade points were left on the table,
either individually or in 20-point bunches. He knows now, despite the
mid-May date on the calendar, that every single point is critical, on
every day, at every race.
"As far as I'm
concerned, it's crunch time, panic mode, time to put it all out there,
all that stuff," Worsham said. "Last year was a lesson for us, and for
a lot of teams, and we've been focusing on being better at it than we
were. Dealing with the Countdown for the first time, I'm sure a lot of
teams were like us, still a bit insure what it all meant and thinking
of the points more in the old terms, instead of having that desperation
from the first day on. It's hard to feel desperate in February, and I
don't think you have to necessarily be desperate at the first two or
three races, but this is May and we can smell September now.