Slick Willie Brainerd took the win Sunday (10/7)  during the O'Reilly
Super Chevy Show  presented by JEGS - Aeromotive Nitro Coupe Challenge at
San Antonio Raceway, but  Willie couldn't gain enough ground in the points
to join Missouri brothers Cody and Zach Barklage and Tennessee's Tony
"Sandman" Williams as the front-runners for the 2007 world championship. 
After San Antonio and with just two national events to go, Cody Barklage has
a 20 point lead on Tony Williams with brother Zach 25 points behind Williams.

As drag racers in the eastern U.S. prepare to head down to Florida to finish
off the season, they might do well to bear this in mind: the Florida DOT is
intent on enforcing section 390 of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.
While most race rigs probably already comply with this national statute
regarding commercial vehicles, a few circle track racers were caught unawares a
couple months back.

As reported in the August 22 issue of National Speed Sport News by NSSN staff
writer John Clayton, a group of racers traveling through Florida turned around
and went home, apparently facing heavy fines for not being in compliance with
commercial vehicle requirements.

According to Keith Johnson, director of the American Sprint Car Series
Coastal Region, this action nearly killed attendance for his event at Southern
Raceway in Milton, FL.

“It had something to do with the length of the trailer behind the axles,”
Johnson reported, “the (graphics) on the trailers, if you had any kind of
sponsors on the trailers…You had to have a CDL (commercial driver licenses)
whether it was their motorhome type or not… I cancelled my race there for next
year; I’m not going to go back.”

Chuck Worsham, founder of
Worsham Racing and father of Funny Car star Del Worsham, underwent
successful surgery on his left shoulder Wednesday, during an out-patient
procedure in Southern California. Both of Worsham's shoulders have been
causing him major discomfort for some time, and the right shoulder will also
need work at some point in the future, but he chose to have the left
shoulder operated on first. Doctors repaired a major tear in Worsham's left
rotator cuff and also
removed a bone spur during the arthroscopic
procedure.

An avid left-handed bowler, Worsham spent Tuesday night
rolling as many games as he could at the team's in-house alley, knowing it
will most likely be a long time before he can bowl again.   His son Del, CSK
blue team driver Jeff Arend, and other friends joined him for what turned
out to be a late-night bowling marathon.

"Hey, it was my last hurrah
for a while, and it wasn't like I could tear it up any worse than it was, so
we had fun until we were all too tired to bowl anymore," the elder Worsham
said, prior to his operation.

The opposition turned out in force last week for a town council meeting
for the City of Concord. The source of their ire was the potential drag strip
that Bruton Smith has planned to build on the property of his Lowe's Motor
Speedway, located outside of Charlotte, NC.
 
Donnie Faulkner,
proprietor of the Rolling O Store, said he felt an obligation to attend the
meeting in defense of drag racing.
 
"Drag racing could have done a
better job of representing itself," Faulkner said of the meeting where
opposition to the project attended in an 80-20 majority. "Bruton Smith had one
of his representatives there and she did a great job of representing him and the
project."
 
Faulkner said the majority of those residents wouldn't be
against the track if they were better informed.
 

There were dramatic storylines in every category on the final Sunday of
the Countdown to 4, the first round of the NHRA Playoffs, but none
moreso than what unfolded in Funny Car.

After Brandon Bernstein’s Budweiser team finally rid itself of the
pesky, upstart UPS team and Richie Stevens knocked off Kurt Johnson to
clear the way for Mopar teammate Allen Johnson to secure the final bid
in Pro Stock, all eyes turned to Funny Car.

At the center of the chaos were the three Don Schumacher Racing cars competing for the last two Countdown to 1 spots.

For most of the day, it looked like Gary Scelzi and Ron Capps were competing for just one spot.

Jack Beckman began the day in third place and he came within a single
round of clinching one of the four berths in Funny Car, but he was
upset in the quarterfinals by Tony Bartone.

The unemployment line now
includes a 20-time NHRA national event winner.

Whit Bazemore, driver of
the David Powers Motorsports, Matco Tools-sponsored dragster was relieved of
his duties via a phone call from Powers this afternoon.

“I had no clue it was
coming,” Bazemore said. “I’m surprised because I had been talking to David for
the last couple of months about getting our handshake agreement in writing. I
thought we were making headway but this comes out of the blue.”

Bazemore said he was given
no real reason for his dismissal.

The family of the late NHRA founder, Wally Parks, who died Sept. 28, announced
the first of what is expected to be several tributes to the motorsports legend,
beginning at the NHRA California Hot Rod Reunion and at the Automobile Club NHRA
Finals. A short tribute will be held at the NHRA California Hot Rod Reunion at
the Auto Club of Southern California Raceway in Bakersfield, Calif., Oct. 12-14. NHRA also will have a
special trackside ceremony honoring Parks on Sunday, Nov. 4, prior to the final
round of eliminations at the Auto Club NHRA Finals at Auto Club Raceway at
Pomona.

Tony Schumacher has a
message to the media, “Get off the fact the points reset and I got the lead
after Indy.”

That was his response when asked Saturday during the post-qualifying press conference in Richmond, if
he was focused on battling with Fuller for the top spot in Top Fuel pointsenabling Larry Dixon to pass them both.

Schumacher praised Dixon’s efforts but wasn’t
as complimentary towards Fuller.

“I think one of Hot Rod’s primary
defects as a driver is that he’s so focused on our car,” Schumacher said. “You
hear him and all he says is, ‘We have to get around
Schumacher.’

“There are a lot of great cars out
here. Forget it. How about trying to win a championship? I wasn’t surprised that
Dixon drove
around us. He is a great driver and that’s a great car. I didn’t get passed
because I was focused on Hot Rod. We got passed because we broke first round. He
went a few more rounds and that’s how drag racing goes.

Larry Morgan was once an accomplished Competition
eliminator racer and even though he ran the class at the RECENT Jeg's
Northern SportsNationals in Columbus, Ohio, he has no desire to run the class on
a regular basis.
 
Morgan said that he was preparing a car for Nick
Morgan, his 18-year old son, to drive in future competition.

NHRA
Senior Vice President, Race Operations Graham Light walked into the
control towerat Virginia Motorsports Park on Saturday morning of the
NHRA Torco Race Fuels Narionals and greeted his staff in the usual
manner. He didn’t say a word, but you could see on his face the desire
for an easier day.

Light hoped the day would be a
smoother day than Friday presented. In one day, Light survived inclement weather
which altered the schedule, a racing surface that refused the adhesive process
and a power failure that left the racers and thousands of race fans in the
dark.

“We’ve had tougher days, trust me,”
Light said. “We are fortunate to have a lot of good people that know what to do
– some of them twenty and thirty years.”

Light said sometimes you just have
to step aside and let those you have in place handle the
situations.

“You immediately try and figure how
you can juggle the schedule to make everything fit,” Light explained. “You want
it to be as fair as it can be for both the professional and sportsman racers.
Darryl Zimmerman and his crew do a great job of making all of that
work.”