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6/4/04
Photos by Jeff Leonard
For many Midwesterners, their main activity
over the Memorial Day weekend consisted of weather
watching and storm dodging. It was no different
for the racers and fans at Heartland Park Topeka,
as storm clouds, rain and high winds swept through
the Central Kansas area. At meet’s end,
some changes had swept over the Professional
points standings as well. The points lead changed
in Top Fuel, while Nitro Funny Car and Pro Stock
saw those at the top remain there, with a couple
of new faces making an impact.
TOP FUEL
The Brandon Bernstein “era” may have
already arrived. Derailed by last year’s
crash at Englishtown, he now sits atop the POWERade
Top Fuel points chase, a result of his win at
Topeka. coming in to the event, Bernstein trailed
Tony Schumacher by forty-three points, but Schumacher
lost in round two to Scott Kalitta. With the
door opened, the Bernstein train barged on through
to the points lead. Of his win, Bernstein said,
“The crew did a great job. It was nice
and cool early on, and then it got hot later,
which really says a lot about Tim Richards and
his ability. He has a great tune-up for hot
tracks and he’s just as good when it’s
cold. It’s great to win races any time
and I’m still just as excited about this
as I was about the first. It’s an awesome
feeling to go through the field and run like
we did today.” No win is easy, especially
in Top Fuel. But his Topeka win puts Bernstein
into the early season favorite’s role to
be the newest POWERade Top Fuel champ. Now if
we can just get ESPN’s Marty Reid to stop
calling him B-Squared, we’ll be all set.
FUNNY CAR
Whit Bazemore is no stranger to the points
leader position in Funny car. It’s just
that he has never been there when the final
bell rings. This might be the year that changes
everything for Whit. His win was surprisingly
straightforward, with Bazemore leading qualifying
and pretty much sweeping aside his four opponents
on race day. He put up bracket racer style consistency
until the final round, where he fell off his
earlier 4.70 second pace, but Final round foe
Eric Medlin lost traction, and the race.
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