On the run with Whit Bazemore, driver of the Schumacher Racing Matco Tools Dodge Stratus Funny Car

National Dragster, May 16, 2003 by Bazemore, Whit

with Whit Bazemore driver of the Schumacher Racing Matco Tools Dodge Stratus Funny Car

When you race at a lower level or without proper funding, you always dream of racing for a team like the one I drive for now. In my opinion, Schumacher Racing - with crew chiefs Lee Beard, Mike Neff, Dan Olson, Phil Shuler, and Wes Cerny and cars sponsored by the Oakley Mad Science Division, Matco Tools, Dodge, and the U.S. Army - embodies everything a successful and championship-caliber team should: great sponsors, great people, great motivation and expectations, and the resources and tools to achieve unlimited success. Earlier in my career - say the Fast Orange days of the mid-1990s - we were happy to qualify and go a round or two. Don't get me wrong - we were very hungry to win, but there were no expectations for us to do so. Even during the R.J. Reynolds days, our budget was small compared to John Force's and Don Prudhomme's, and Winston had expectations for a top five finish, which we provided along with six wins from 1996 to 1998.

Things at Schumacher Racing are way different. We have the resources, personnel, performance, and potential to win every race we enter, especially now. It's very exciting for me as a driver to know we're in such a position. All of us on the team strive to achieve perfection, and we all work very hard to constantly improve. When we don't achieve the desired result, we suck it up, dissect what happened, learn from it, and move on to the next race, which is something our team has done very well.

Don Schumacher has proven to be the only kind of car owner I would be happy working for. He has a tremendous drive to win, and he supports his hunger for success with unrivaled resources. Over time, he has come to understand better what I need from him in order to do the best possible job, and he has worked hard to provide that for me. The bottom line is that I'm the happiest I've ever been while racing, simply because I know that if we do things the right way, we'll end up as world champions. Of course, that is a big "if," and we certainly can't predict the outcome of a championship - much less a race - but I will say that if we continue to win rounds, we can be right there. Being in contention for the big prize is what's exciting.

My teammates, Gary Scelzi and Scotty Cannon, have struggled a bit, but I know that both of the Oakley teams are working very hard to get their cars back on track. You would think that it would be very simple to make all three cars run the same, but in this sport, it's just not that easy. The team has learned a lot about having multiple cars over the last two years, and I believe that very soon the Oakley cars will produce performances similar to the Matco Tools Dodge. Scotty and Gary have paid their dues in Funny Car to the point that they're destined to have some real success. When either one gets his first win, there will be a huge party, and that's something I'm really looking forward to. Now that we're second in the championship standings, the Matco Tools team is relying on Gary and Scotty more than ever to help crush our competition earlier in the day.

Another cool thing about this year is that as my cycling activity gets more press, many fans want to talk about it with me. Cycling is a sport that seems to draw people together, and cyclists always want to talk and be friendly to other cyclists, which is very cool.

Imagine my surprise a couple of weeks ago when, while doing a three-hour ride up the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina with Mike Dunn, George Hincapie of the UPS. Postal Service team (Lance Armstrong's right-hand man) rode up behind us. This guy is hero-worshipped in Europe and among other cyclists. George is in the States to train after an illness seriously derailed his season, and he's working hard to catch up and join the Postal Service team in Europe in time for the Tour de France.

I quickly latched onto his wheel, introduced myself, and George let me ride up to the top of the mountain and halfway back down with him. When we turned around to go back and meet Mike back at the top, George's pace as one of the best bicycle racers in the world was not really sustainable by me. I told him between breaths that my heartbeat was pegged and I was doing all I could to ride at 110 percent and hang with him; meanwhile, he was sitting up eating an energy bar and chatting with me about drag racing. It was all I could do not to throw up or faint. I told him many times to go ahead and do his ride, and he said, "Oh, no, this is a great pace for me. I'm plenty happy." Not at all what I wanted to hear. We made it back to the top, and Mike and I got to descend at 40 miles per hour with George Hincapie.

There's something about riding with someone like George Hincapie that forces you to dig real deep to push yourself beyond what is normally possible. It's kind of like practicing hitting softballs at a batting cage in the outskirts of some small town when Hank Aaron shows up in the same cage and shows you how to hit the ball. It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience and something that was very, very cool.