WORSHAM SINGS THE BLUES IN MEMPHIS, WITH DNQ
Del Worsham was, if nothing else, the picture of consistency on a sunny Saturday in Memphis. He ran two clean laps, putting a 4.234 and a 4.232 on the board in qualifying sessions three and four, but the awful sticking point was the number attached to the bump spot. Bob Tasca ended up anchoring the field from the 16th position with a 4.197. Just a few races short of the end of his historic tenure as the driver of the Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Funny Car, Worsham had to swallow the ignoble reality of a DNQ.

"When we were a little too aggressive on Friday night, which is something we've done a great job of avoiding for about three months, I had a feeling this was going to be really tough," Worsham said. "The problem wasn't so much that there were 20 Funny Cars here, so four would have to DNQ, it was that all of us on the outside looking in, after Friday, were pretty tough teams. There were four new spots for people to occupy on Saturday, but after Friday night it was obvious that some very good teams were going to be crying on Saturday night. I was just hoping it wouldn't be us.

"After being too aggressive on Friday, we tried to just put a decent number on the board in Q3, to give us something to work with, but we put a cylinder out early and a 4.23 was all it had. We came back for the last run kind of backed into a corner, and we knew we couldn't be passive about it. We definitely tried to be aggressive, and we put a tune-up in the car that we thought would be a solid 4.18, or something like that, but it just didn't go. We don't know why yet, but the thing never really got up and running at all. It was soft at the hit, slow in the middle, and slow at the end. Let me tell you, that's a bad combination when you're trying to qualify. We weren't unlucky, or unfortunate, or any of that stuff. When it came right down to it, when we had to run fast to get in the show here, we were just slow. We got what we deserved, so we'll have to figure out why and come back stronger in Richmond."