It wasn't exactly what we had in mind, but a new look adorned the back for Whit Bazemore on the back of the David Powers Motorsports trailer Monday morning in Englishtown. The vandal might have given Bazemore a black eye on the rig, but in all reality, he gave Englishtown one. 

Television coverage of final eliminations of the O'Reilly NHRA Thunder
Valley Nationals presented by Q at Bristol Dragway has been expanded an
extra 60 minutes to create a three-hour block from the highly
anticipated NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series event July 6-8. Sunday's
broadcast on ESPN2 will air from 9:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.

NHRA Top Fuel driver Tony Schumacher, four-time NHRA POWERade Series
Top Fuel world champion, has been nominated for the ESPY Best Driver
award, it was announced today.

The ESPY Awards, for Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly, was
created by ESPN in 1993. Sports fans can vote for Schumacher and other
sports heroes in each of the different categories via an online poll at
http://espn.go.com/espy2007/#

Schumacher, driver of the U.S. Army dragster, finished the 2006 season
in dramatic fashion by winning his third consecutive and fourth overall
Top Fuel championship on the final run of the season. On that final
pass at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona, Schumacher set a national elapsed
time record of 4.428 seconds and defeated final round opponent Melanie
Troxel for the victory to claim the championship title by 14 points
over rival Doug Kalitta. Media quickly labeled his effort “The Run,”
and called it the most meaningful and memorable single performance in
NHRA history.

Schumacher’s historic championship-winning run put the finishing
touches on an unbelievable mid-season comeback, where he was more than
330 points behind the championship leader and basically written-off of
the championship list with less 12 races to go. From there he reeled
off five victories in eight final round appearances to clinch the
championship.

Although he may not be as well known as his counterparts in the nitro fuel
classes, Rob Downing, crew chief on the two KB Racing LLC, Summit Racing
Equipment Pontiacs, driven by Greg Anderson and Jason Line, is arguably
considered one of the top crew chiefs to come down the pike in recent Pro Stock
history.

The unassuming Downing took the longer road through college to
reach the pinnacle of his profession.   From college to Detroit designing
engines to Pro Stock crew chief, this crew chief has learned a lot about success
and winning combinations.  In 2007, he has his team on a strong pace adding (7)
wins to his résumé and leading the points chase for the NHRA POWERade Pro Stock
championship.  Prior to this season, Downing partnered with co-crew chief Jeff
Perley to propel the KB Racing LLC, Summit Racing Equipment Pontiacs, to 51 wins
and 4 championships.  These numbers have only been surpassed by a limited few in
the Pro Stock category and KB Racing with Downing is still counting.  He is
respected by his peers, crew, and most importantly his drivers and team owner
Ken Black.

Three-time NHRA POWERade Pro Stock champion Greg Anderson,
who hired Downing, had the following to say of his crew chief: “Rob is
everything.  He’s the heart of this team.  He’s the guy that makes all of the
decisions.  He is the guy who keeps us as egotistical drivers calm and
grounded.  He’s the captain of the ship and we couldn’t race without him.  We
couldn’t get to the race track without him.  He does it all, from the bottom to
the top.  He has a lot of job descriptions and wears a lot of hats.  We depend
on him an awful lot.

NHRA Top Fuel champion Tony Schumacher had a special guest in his pits
during last February’s season-opening Winternationals. Schumacher had
personally invited his “number-one fan,” seven-year-old Bryce lafler
and his mom Jennifer to join him in Pomona, and through the generosity
of local businesses in their hometown of Amherst, Ohio, they were able
to raise enough money to make the trip.

John Stewart admitted his confidence took
a beating during the last couple of months. Released from the Morgan Lucas team
earlier this year, he bounced around a few teams before finding a home within
the Evan Knoll stable of race teams.

Following the Chicago event, Lucas
and sponsor Knoll made wholesale changes to the two-car team by moving Melanie
Troxel’s tuner Richard Hogan and a portion of the crew over to the Lucas car.
That opened the door for Stewart to move over following a stint on Knoll’s
personal dragster, assisting Mike Kloeber.

Confused yet?

Stewart
was living in a whirlwind, but recent successes working with Scotty Cannon and
Kloeber proved encouraging. The end result was another shot at tuning. This time
he’s assisted by veteran Lance Larsen.

“I was excited for the
opportunity,” Stewart said. “This was a good move and I am reunited with my
former crew and Melanie is a good driver. I’m happy with this.”

Torco's CompetitionPlus.com has obtained this spy shot of Larry Nance's
Pro Stocker scheduled to run during this weekend's event in Norwalk,
Ohio.

Max Naylor, driver of the popular Jagermeister Dodge
Stratus, continues to run well this season. Despite not winning a single round
of eliminations this year, the New Buffalo, Pa., resident has qualified at eight
of ten races in the extremely tough Pro Stock class.

Naylor, who is featured
on the ESPN television series 'American Dragster', was asked if having the TV
crews following him around affected his routine and performance when working on
the car.

Torco Race Fuels, the leader of high quality racing fuels,  today announced that Evan Knoll,
Owner/President received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The
Year® 2007 Award in
the Automotive and Transportation category in the Lake Michigan Area
program.  According to Ernst & Young,
the award recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs who are building and leading
dynamic, growing businesses.  Knoll was
selected by an independent panel of judges and the award was presented at an
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year gala event at Navy Pier, Chicago on June 22,
2007. 

“You just go to work and do the best you can and the
reward is being successful,” Knoll said. “When you are recognized in this
fashion, it is the ultimate pat on the back. In this business you work at a
feverish pace and that leaves really no time to smell the roses. I am grateful
for this recognition and this is an honor I am thrilled to
receive.”

Last year the great divide between the racers and the NHRA was the timing
system. This season’s hot topic (literally) is track prep. During Saturday’s
qualifying the NHRA applied traction compound from the starting line for several
hundred feet out and ceased. They resumed from the finish line and several
hundred feet toward the starting line and ceased. The mid-range of the track was
left as is.

Many fuel teams smoked the tires at that point and a few made
it to the finish line. Those who didn’t make a full pull outweighed those who
did. The second-guessing ran rampant in the fuel pits as the teams wondered
where the consistency they had enjoyed in years prior had gone.

Dan Olson
of the NHRA had an explanation why the sanctioning body did what they did on
Saturday. Olson said the track temperatures climbed as high as 136.

“We
did that because it wasn’t so much over-sprayed as it had gotten soft out
there,” Olson said. “If we had sprayed it any more there would have been a track
problem. There was a little section that we didn’t spray on purpose because it
was coming apart and coming up. The rubber was tearing loose the
asphalt.”