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Del Worsham would be the first person to tell you that, as far as he\u2019s concerned, this weekend\u2019s Funny Car championship\u00a0is just another set of races that\u2019s he trying to win.<\/p>\n
Worsham has a\u00a0working man\u2019s attitude towards\u00a0the Auto Club NHRA Finals at Pomona.\u00a0 There\u2019s no sense of alarm or panic.\u00a0 He\u2019s been there before.<\/p>\n
Winning the 2011 Top Fuel championship driving for Alan Johnson Racing, Worsham\u00a0entered the race trailing by\u00a0two points and took over the lead going into eliminations, gaining an eight-point separation over Spencer Massey with just the qualifying points.<\/p>\n
Also in contention then were Larry Dixon and Antron Brown.\u00a0 Brown lost first in the quarterfinals to Dixon.\u00a0 Then Dixon lost to Tony Schumacher in the semi-finals, leaving a matchup between Worsham and Massey to decide it all.<\/p>\n
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The AJR dragster delivered a winning time of 3.800 to 3.808 seconds and his first and only Top Fuel crown.<\/p>\n
Heading into the Auto Club NHRA Finals this year, Worsham leads a swift Jack Beckman by 38 points for the NHRA Mello Yello Funny Car championship.\u00a0 His stride is the same and as a true drag racer, he fully understands what\u2019s at hand.<\/p>\n
However, when he reflects about his 2011 Top Fuel campaign, he sees many differences.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing that’s different about it, I’m coming into the finals with a lead,\u201d said Worsham. \u00a0\u201cIn 2011, I don’t believe I came into the race with a lead. There were four of us racing for the championship. \u00a0It was kind of a matter of seeing who was left over in the end, who was left in the final round. \u00a0That’s a little different coming into 2015. \u00a0We’ve won several races; we’ve had a very strong car, probably pretty much the strongest car through the Countdown as opposed to 2011, when we had the strongest car before the Countdown. \u00a0A little different scenario.\u00a0 But a lot of similarities.\u201d<\/p>\n
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In between the long two-week waiting for Pomona to get started, Worsham was buried in the work, but not on his Kalitta Racing DHL Toyota.\u00a0 He stayed over in Las Vegas working with his dad, Chuck, to help\u00a0up and coming coming racers upgrade the license process by driving the Worsham family-owned Funny Car and Top Fuel dragster.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the middle of all this racing and everything else I do, I started this\u00a0program for people who are\u00a0alcohol racers or sportsman racers and want to become a professional racer.\u00a0 I’ve been putting people in my personal Funny Car and Top Fuel dragster\u00a0to give them a chance to test it out,” \u00a0Worsham said.\u00a0 \u201cI’m still drag racing.\u00a0 I’m still involved.\u00a0 My hands are dirty.\u00a0 I’ve been working on the car.\u00a0 It’s nice because I don’t have to sit around and worry about or think about what’s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a buildup to the Countdown, Worsham decided to ride with the team to the Indy test \u00a0after the Brainderd race instead of going home. During the drive, he came up with a performance advantage that his Kalitta team unleashed the first race of the Countdown in Charlotte.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to our team manager, Jim Oberhofer, I said, \u2018We better get straight over to Indy\u2019 and start testing because we don’t have a fast enough car here,\u201d said the 37-time nitro winner.\u00a0 \u201cI I jumped in the hauler, drove with the guys.\u00a0 I was scheduled to go home.\u00a0 We started Wednesday morning, put together a pretty good little combination there, and felt like we definitely closed the gap to a certain degree.\u00a0 Again, Jack still had a little bit of a performance advantage on us.\u00a0 Ran Indy.\u00a0 We had a couple decent runs. Took another hard look at the situation, our car, where we were, knew that some more changes had to be made. \u00a0We’ve been missing one thing on the car. \u00a0We knew a couple things they were doing over there. \u00a0They made this huge exhaust header change on their car and we hadn’t done it. \u00a0Didn’t think too much about it. \u00a0Back in the past, ’95 through 2005, we kind of made those changes on and off, didn’t really see a big change in it. \u00a0After reviewing some video of our car and Jack’s car, his car was definitely leaving the starting line different than ours. \u00a0I believe Monday night of Indy, we got together at JR Todd’s house, called the header manufacturer, said, \u2018Hey, we’re missing something here\u2019. \u00a0Our car is fast, but Jack has five-hundredths on us, we need to do something. \u00a0He built us some headers. \u00a0I’m not sure if he built Jack’s headers or not. \u00a0But they were more of Jack’s design. \u00a0We put them on in Charlotte and it definitely was the missing key. \u00a0Instant results from that point forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally all season long, we were building this combination, the team was getting together, and we were making final rounds. \u00a0I made the comment multiple times a real goal of ours, especially at the beginning of the season, was just to get to the finals with an opportunity to win the championship.\u00a0 The opportunity that if you win the race, you could be the Mello Yello NHRA champion was ours.\u00a0 We accomplished that, got there.\u00a0 If we win the race, we will be the champions, I believe.\u00a0 It’s just kind of in our hands.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Worsham claims\u00a0Funny Car championship,\u00a0he’ll be looking at the payoff of 25 years of effort in the Funny Car division.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will definitely be pretty amazing,\u201d grinned Worsham. \u00a0\u201cWhen I came into Funny Car racing, I was 20 years old, my goal was just to get a license and possibly qualify for an NHRA event. \u00a0I didn’t really start off, let’s say like Antron Brown or Jack Beckman, in a professional race, in a car that could win races or a championship. \u00a0I started off with my dad, one partner, little trailer, one car, one spare engine. \u00a0We went race to race back in the early ’90s trying to get the NHRA money, collect it, go to the next race, just learn how to qualify and win rounds. \u00a0My goals changed as the years went on. \u00a0Finally, 1997 came along. \u00a0We had a little bit of money to play with. \u00a0At that point the goal became not just qualifying for events but to make top 10 and make a run at the championship. \u00a0It would be pretty special. \u00a0From 1997 to today, when we finally have the funding to go out and race against John Force Racing for the championship, that has been going on pretty much the last 20 years of my life. \u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Del Worsham is first in the NHRA Countdown standings, but with Jack Beckman breathing down his neck, can he secure the championship on this 25th anniversary year of his Funny Car debut.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":21028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3470,3399,22],"tags":[1461,3717,79,2,38,1258,3718],"class_list":["post-21025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-nhra","category-event-coverage","tag-2015-nhra-mello-yello-drag-racing-series","tag-aaa-auto-club-finals","tag-del-worsham","tag-drag-racing","tag-funny-car","tag-jack-beckman","tag-nhra-drag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/339-DelWorsham-Celeb-Sunday-Charlotte21_feature.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-5t7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21033,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21025\/revisions\/21033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}