On Tuesday Whit Bazemore announced that he would be leaving Chuck Etchells' team at the conclusion of the current season. The following day Etchells named Tommy Johnson Jr. as his driver for 2001. Etchells also noted that there would be further announcements regarding the team as some personnel issues were addressed. Those issues do not involve crew chief Terry Manzer who joined the team at mid season and will be back next year.
Current speculation has Etchells returning to the wheel to drive a second team car.
After smoking the tires on his first three attempts Bazemore appeared to be on his way to a spot in the show when the car nosed over with fuel spewing from the pipes. As to Bazemore's future, the currently hot rumor has him re-uniting with Tim and Kim Richards at the wheel of the upcoming funny car entry from the Schumacher team. That car will reportedly have major backing from Matco Tools which, if true, will have Dean Skuza searching for a sponsor for next year. Exactly where this leaves the Amoco team of Allen and Roy Johnson is open to conjecture as that operation is still using the wedge configuration powerplant and the ruling ratifies only the block and head package used by the factory teams, listing the specific part numbers. There appears to be something in the way of politics involved here as in the case of the GM teams the older parts generally trickled down to the less well funded teams without being declared obsolete and thus illegal.