On the Run with Whit Bazemore driver of the Matco Tools Dodge Funny Car

National Dragster, Jul 15, 2005 by Bazemore, Whit

Each time I sit down to write an On The Run column my first thought seems to be about the up-and-down season we're having, and this year is no different. The Matco Tools Dodge Funny Car has had a roller coaster of a season thus far, and the season is only halfway over. To put it bluntly, we haven't had consistent success.

Early on, we led the championship a few times and won a couple of races, but in doing so we knew we still had performance issues with the car. Our results were better than our performance, which honestly isn't all bad. Usually you can have great performance and still not manage to win.

In an effort to make our team a little stronger, Don Schumacher made what for him I'm sure was a very difficult decision and changed crew chiefs on our car. Lee Beard, for whom I've driven the last four and a half years, was released, and Todd Okuhara was brought in to work with Dan Olson, who has been on the team for quite a while.

It's funny, over the years I've heard the occasional snipe about my relationship with Lee Beard; people always thought we didn't get along. In this business, you certainly won't win 12 races driving for a crew chief you don't get along with. Racing relationships are built on respect, and we always had a lot of respect for each other. Can you imagine being a crew chief or a team member working for a driver whom you didn't respect and didn't believe in 100 percent? It would be impossible to move forward.

Beard and I went through a lot together in those years. There were times when I know he saved my butt, and there were times when I tried to save his.

We enjoyed a lot of success together, and when you look at the scorecard, ours was the most consistent, higheskscoring team over those four-plus years with the exception of John Force's. To me, being the strongest challenger says a lot. The frustrating fact is that we just couldn't quite get the job done, but no one else has either.

People have asked me what really happened within the team. The answer is that when a team gets to be the size of ours, politics begins to play a role. It's not that Lee wasn't a team player; he was. It's just that his thought process was different from the others, which was fine when we had the strongest car, but when we began to struggle, it wasn't so good anymore.

I'm excited to be working with Todd Okuhara and Dan Olson now. They communicate with me a lot. Suffice it to say, I feel very good about what the future may hold for the Matco Tools Dodge team.

NHRA's upcoming Western Swing will be more special for me than ever before. The entire family is going to be traveling in our Marathon coach for the trip, and I can't wait. In the past, the Western Swing has always coincided with my wife Michelle's bike-racing season, and she was never able to do the entire trip with me. This year will be different because we're bringing our young son Dashiell along with us.

The trip is going to be a lot of fun. Believe it or not, even though the schedule is jam-packed, we're going to be doing a lot of fun side trips. On Thursday before the Denver event, Michelle and I, Mike Dunn, and several of our friends, including Jake Gretz of Trek bicycles, Brian Bauer of nearby Boulder, and John Torok of Matco Tools, are going to tackle one of the toughest cycling climbs in the world, Mount Evans.

We start from Idaho Springs in the morning at 7,000 feet and summit Mount Evans 28 miles later at 14,200 feet. It's brutal. Michelle and I rode it a couple of years ago and, I'll say it again, it's brutal. But we can't wait to tackle it again. We hope it's going to be fun. The scenery on the way up is spectacular. To put it into perspective, base camp for Mount Everest is about 18,000 feet. People die there and they're walking. We're only going to be 4,000 feet below that, but climbing on bikes. It's a true test of one's fitness, and I hope I can make it to the top again (it's too tough to worry much about my friends).

We're looking forward to the race in Denver, as always, and turning our season around. We hope to be contenders once again for race wins.