DODGING THE WEATHER, WORSHAM LANDS 7th IN NORWALK


Del Worsham would've classified his weather confidence level as "extremely low" during the day on Saturday. Storm fronts and violent weather were splattered across the radar screen like an impressionist painting, with reds, yellows, and greens all marching toward Norwalk, but in the end both Saturday sessions were completed as the storms split and, for the most part, went around the track.

Posting a nice 4.977 on his first pass, Worsham sat 3rd on the ladder after the initial session. After a short rain delay, the teams returned to the line for another lap, and although Worsham clicked his car off early with a sick-sounding motor, he still hung in there for a top-half position. He will race out of the 7th spot, and has the honor of facing a certain John Force in round one.

"The first lap was pretty huge, at the time," Worsham said. "We all had ourselves pretty convinced that it would rain all afternoon and we'd only get the one session in, and when that's the case they institute the deal where all the cars in the Top 10 are guaranteed a spot in the field. Well, we came in here 11th by seven points, so I knew we had to out-qualify those other teams that are also out of the Top 10, because if we did that we wouldn't be the ones to get knocked out. In that first session, we out-qualified all of the other cars in our situation, so we all felt pretty relieved.

"Then, the black clouds rolled in and it started to rain. We all thought it was over, but somehow the whole thing only lasted about 15 minutes and then we could see blue skies. A couple of hours later, we were back out there running on a pretty steamy track, and for some reason the car just was not running well. It sounded pretty sick, and I could just feel that it wasn't improving, so I was off the throttle and had the 'chutes out pretty early. It's always a huge challenge racing Force, but there are no pairings on the ladder that make you feel like you have it easy, so we'll just approach it like any other lap and try to put a good number on the board. If we do our best and he beats us, there's nothing we can do about that, but I think we can give him a good battle."
on Saturday
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