Facing oppressive, draining heat and a touchy, temperamental track surface, Annie Whiteley and the J&A Service/YNot Racing team hit Woodburn Dragstrip, that rare race track with the best kind of owners: racers. The venerable family-owned facility hosted a huge contingent of Top Alcohol Dragsters and a small but fierce assortment of Top Alcohol Funny Cars in a “double” – back-to-back Western Regionals held on a single weekend.
After an up-and-down day of testing, Whiteley had to shut off on both qualifying attempts, eventually plopping into the fourth spot with a disappointing best of 9.72 at just over 100 mph. “It was hot as hell and the track was really tricky,” she said. “Even the Top Dragsters were struggling to get down it. At one point, the track was 146 degrees and the temperature gauge on the car read 156.”
Whiteley’s “Shattered Glass” Camaro took the tire off on the first test pass, setting off a troubling trend that would persist all weekend. “The only thing we could think to do is switch back to our two-run tires,” she said. “The guys backed the car down, worked their magic, and it ran a 5.61, so, naturally, we thought, ‘We’re good. Now we know what the car wants.’ But on the first qualifying run it was a weak shake – the clutch showed that we actually didn’t give it enough.”
Well aware that the conditions were only going to get hotter, crew chief Mike Strasburg tweaked the tune-up for Q2, but the car smoked the tires anyway and a setup for Whiteley’s first-round opponent, No. 1 qualifier Brian Hough, was anyone’s guess. “We figured, ‘OK, let’s just go halfway in between,’ ” Whiteley said. “Nope. Smoked the tires anyway. I pedaled it, and for a minute there, I didn’t see him and thought I had chance. Then he blew by me. I hit the bump, and he was gone.
“Driving back down the return road, I yelled, ‘Hey, maybe it’s the tires – that’s the only thing we haven’t changed.’ The same thing happened in Mission a few years ago. Something wasn’t right, so we put on a set with 56 runs on them and set the track record. So for Race 2, we changed the tires and kept the same tune-up and things worked out a lot better.”