Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Bazemore’s losing skid leads to changing of crew chief

Thursday, June 16, 2005 | 9:11 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at bh@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4089.

Whit Bazemore left the NHRA SummitRacing.com Nationals in Las Vegas in April with his second victory of the season and the Funny Car points lead.

In the ensuing five races, Bazemore suffered four consecutive first-round defeats and then failed to qualify for last weekend's race at Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Ill. He has slipped to a tie for seventh in the standings, 205 points behind front-running John Force.

Team owner Don Schumacher had seen enough. He decided to give Bazemore's highly respected crew chief, Lee Beard, some time off and has brought in Dan Olson from one of his other Funny Car teams to serve as crew chief on Bazemore's Matco Tools Dodge Stratus. The move is effective with this weekend's K&N Filters NHRA Supernationals in Englishtown, N.J.

"Lee certainly didn't get stupid overnight or over the last couple of months; things just start to happen with a team and a car and you kind of get caught up with what you're trying to work on and, at times, you can't see the trees for the forest," Schumacher said in explaining his decision.

"I just felt it was best to have him kind of step back and take some time off and see where things were, (to) let another fresh set of eyes step in and take over the car ... and look into every little area and reset everything. I'm confident we will have a successful, good outing in Englishtown."

Schumacher stressed that Beard would remain with Don Schumacher Racing in some capacity after Beard's forced hiatus.

"Lee Beard ultimately is staying with my operation and will continue his employment with me," Schumacher said. "We haven't determined what his role will be today, tomorrow and in the foreseeable future, but he is going to stay with Don Schumacher Racing and he will be an integral part to my operation going forward."

Bazemore said he understood Schumacher's decision to replace Beard.

"It's never good to have a situation like this but Don did, ultimately, what he had to do and it's very unfortunate," Bazemore said. "Lee and I, this is our fifth season as a driver/crew chief combination and I had a tremendous amount of confidence in him. We had a lot of success together and we had some hard times together as well.

"As Don said, Lee is going to stay within the organization and that's extremely pleasing for me because we have a big history together and we've had a lot of success. He is a very, very smart individual and a valuable player to the team and I feel a lot better about the future of our team with him staying involved."

BRIEFLY: Kalitta Motorsports will field a fourth Top Fuel dragster this weekend in Englishtown. Ben Marshall, who serves as the team's test driver and hospitality and marketing manager, will be piloting the StriVectin-SD dragster for the second time this season; he qualified ninth at Las Vegas in April. ... Kenny Koretsky, who drives the Nitro Fish Wear Dodge in the NHRA Pro Stock class, will debut his new NHRA Top Fuel team this weekend. Clay Millican will drive Koretsky's dragster. ... Larry Dixon (Top Fuel), Gary Densham (Funny Car), Jason Line (Pro Stock) and Andrew Hines (Pro Stock Bike) are the defending race winners in Englishtown. ... The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway will host the BFGoodrich Midnight Mayhem Summer Kickoff Party Friday from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m. Admission is $10 to race and $5 for spectators.