STRONG-RUNNING WORSHAM FOCUSED ON A BIG MOMENT AT THE MOTORPLEX
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DALLAS (September 16, 2008) -- The date was June 7, 2008 and the place was Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Ill. On that Saturday, Del Worsham failed to make the field for the Route 66 Nationals, coming up 15-thousandths of a second short of the 16th spot on the ladder. Since that frustrating day, which marked his fourth DNQ of the season and a clear low-point in his 2008 campaign, Worsham has turned his qualifying numbers around in a startling manner, and as he heads into this weekend's O'Reilly Fall Nationals, at the historic Texas Motorplex, he is on a solid streak of strong placements.
Beginning just a week after the Joliet event, when the tour reconvened in Englishtown and Worsham landed 7th in the field, the popular Checker, Schuck's, Kragen driver has been on his game during the qualifying portion of each race, earning 9th-place or better at nine straight events. That streak includes a No. 2 spot in Sonoma, a No. 3 placement this past weekend in Charlotte, and a No. 4 slot in Brainerd. It has truly been a much better second-half of the season for Worsham, even though his only race victory on the year came back in March, at the Houston race.
"In terms of how the car is running, and what kind of handle we have on it, there's no question we're way ahead of where we were throughout the first half of the year," Worsham said. "Ever since Chicago, we've been doing very well on Friday and Saturday, and we've really been right there with all the best teams in the class.
"That doesn't always translate into round wins, and our lousy habit of landing some huge teams in round one, even though we qualified far better, is kind of well-known. You don't think you're going to have to run guys like Robert Hight or Ron Capps when you're way up on the sheet, but it does happen and we haven't answered the challenge well enough. This past week, we drew Gary Scelzi and his great team, and we were finally on our game enough to put someone on the trailer, instead of having to slink back there ourselves."
With only five races left on the 2008 schedule, Worsham also knows there are only five chances left for him to win another precious Wally trophy for his longtime friends and partners at CSK Auto. After 12 years of sponsorship, and a recent acquisition by O'Reilly Auto Parts, Worsham's business relationship with CSK will end after the final race, but his personal relationships will likely never wane.
"I've said it before, and I'll say it forever, this was not just a sponsorship with CSK; it was relationship," Worsham said. "We got to know so many CSK people so well, as friends not just sponsors, and it's really hard to watch it all come to an end right now. To be brutally honest, I think most of the guys on our team are kind of like me, in that we try to put it out of our minds at the race track, because our first responsibility is to race as well as we can. But, you can't help but think about it every time you put that Checker, Schuck's, Kragen shirt on, and it's a sad thing.
"We know the best thing we can do, to honor all of the great people we've had the pleasure of working with, is to win at least one more race. If we do that, the list of people I'll be wanting to thank during my top-end interview will be too long for our ESPN2 time-slot. They are so many of them."
Thanking those who have supported him is something Worsham has done before at the Texas Motorplex. In 1998, he joined the Castrol 4-Second Club by posting his first run "in the 4s" with a 4.983 during the spring Dallas race. In both 2002 and 2004 he went all the way to the Winner's Circle at the 'Plex, earning two of his 22 career victories. Those were great times in "Big D" for the affable Southern California native, and his focus this week remains strictly on revisiting one of those moments.
"We've done it here before, and we can do it again. We've had great timing throughout our 12 years with CSK, winning when we really needed to give the company, or ourselves, a big boost. We can only do the best we can, and we can't control luck or any of the other factors that go into winning a race, but I know a big weekend would be a boost a lot of people would never forget."
A lot of people, indeed. As Worsham said, the list of those he'd like to thank would likely extend well past the final credits on the Sunday night ESPN2 telecast. In the end, though, he'd like a chance to try to get them all in.
<img src="http://www.nitromater.com/gallery/files/5/d_worsham.jpg" alt="d_worsham" align="right"borders=""/>
DALLAS (September 16, 2008) -- The date was June 7, 2008 and the place was Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Ill. On that Saturday, Del Worsham failed to make the field for the Route 66 Nationals, coming up 15-thousandths of a second short of the 16th spot on the ladder. Since that frustrating day, which marked his fourth DNQ of the season and a clear low-point in his 2008 campaign, Worsham has turned his qualifying numbers around in a startling manner, and as he heads into this weekend's O'Reilly Fall Nationals, at the historic Texas Motorplex, he is on a solid streak of strong placements.
Beginning just a week after the Joliet event, when the tour reconvened in Englishtown and Worsham landed 7th in the field, the popular Checker, Schuck's, Kragen driver has been on his game during the qualifying portion of each race, earning 9th-place or better at nine straight events. That streak includes a No. 2 spot in Sonoma, a No. 3 placement this past weekend in Charlotte, and a No. 4 slot in Brainerd. It has truly been a much better second-half of the season for Worsham, even though his only race victory on the year came back in March, at the Houston race.
"In terms of how the car is running, and what kind of handle we have on it, there's no question we're way ahead of where we were throughout the first half of the year," Worsham said. "Ever since Chicago, we've been doing very well on Friday and Saturday, and we've really been right there with all the best teams in the class.
"That doesn't always translate into round wins, and our lousy habit of landing some huge teams in round one, even though we qualified far better, is kind of well-known. You don't think you're going to have to run guys like Robert Hight or Ron Capps when you're way up on the sheet, but it does happen and we haven't answered the challenge well enough. This past week, we drew Gary Scelzi and his great team, and we were finally on our game enough to put someone on the trailer, instead of having to slink back there ourselves."
With only five races left on the 2008 schedule, Worsham also knows there are only five chances left for him to win another precious Wally trophy for his longtime friends and partners at CSK Auto. After 12 years of sponsorship, and a recent acquisition by O'Reilly Auto Parts, Worsham's business relationship with CSK will end after the final race, but his personal relationships will likely never wane.
"I've said it before, and I'll say it forever, this was not just a sponsorship with CSK; it was relationship," Worsham said. "We got to know so many CSK people so well, as friends not just sponsors, and it's really hard to watch it all come to an end right now. To be brutally honest, I think most of the guys on our team are kind of like me, in that we try to put it out of our minds at the race track, because our first responsibility is to race as well as we can. But, you can't help but think about it every time you put that Checker, Schuck's, Kragen shirt on, and it's a sad thing.
"We know the best thing we can do, to honor all of the great people we've had the pleasure of working with, is to win at least one more race. If we do that, the list of people I'll be wanting to thank during my top-end interview will be too long for our ESPN2 time-slot. They are so many of them."
Thanking those who have supported him is something Worsham has done before at the Texas Motorplex. In 1998, he joined the Castrol 4-Second Club by posting his first run "in the 4s" with a 4.983 during the spring Dallas race. In both 2002 and 2004 he went all the way to the Winner's Circle at the 'Plex, earning two of his 22 career victories. Those were great times in "Big D" for the affable Southern California native, and his focus this week remains strictly on revisiting one of those moments.
"We've done it here before, and we can do it again. We've had great timing throughout our 12 years with CSK, winning when we really needed to give the company, or ourselves, a big boost. We can only do the best we can, and we can't control luck or any of the other factors that go into winning a race, but I know a big weekend would be a boost a lot of people would never forget."
A lot of people, indeed. As Worsham said, the list of those he'd like to thank would likely extend well past the final credits on the Sunday night ESPN2 telecast. In the end, though, he'd like a chance to try to get them all in.
