Author: Todd Veney (Page 1 of 39)

TAFC – POMONA

November 18, 2024 / Todd Veney

The final race of Annie Whiteley’s season ended just like literally 90 percent of her other NHRA national event starts this season: in the second round. The six-time winner never lost in the first round, but for the ninth time in 10 nationals in 2024, she was gone in the quarterfinals.

Whiteley, who went all the way to the final round at the other one, the Pep Boys Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway in Reading, Pa., ran an outstanding 5.43 but fell to Ray Martin’s almost identical 5.44. “I’m trying to practice going in [staging] second,” she said, “but I’m not there yet. I’m still a little behind. Now that half the cars out here have a two-step, everybody wants to get in there first. So do I. Everybody’s doing it, and some of them are double-bulbing me, and I have to be ready for it.”

The J&A Service/YNot Racing team didn’t make a bad run all weekend. Whiteley clocked a 5.47 at 266 mph right off the trailer and a 5.49/267 in what turned out to be Top Alcohol Funny Car’s only other qualifying session. A 5.42/268, her best run of the whole season, easily eliminated Christine Foster’s backpedaling 6.04/190 in a first-round clash between the only female drivers in the field, but a similar 5.43/268 wasn’t quite enough in the quarterfinals when Martin, driving the Miner Brothers car fielded by third-generation racer Greg Miner, made the best run of his career, a 5.44. (It was no fluke, either – he ran another .44 in the semi’s.)

“I need to get better at going in second, that’s all there is to it,” said Whiteley, who was hardly late with a .065 reaction time; it just wasn’t in the .020s, as Martin’s was – and as Whiteley has been numerous times since crew chief Mike Strasburg made the move to the two-step early this season. “I don’t want to have to race the other guy to get in to the pre-staged light first every time. I want to be good either way – staging first or staging last – and I’m getting my composure and getting my steps down, but Ray’s out there bracket racing when he’s not running Alcohol Funny Car and he’s getting really good at it.”

PRO STOCK – LAS VEGAS

November 18, 2024 / Todd Veney

Qualified in the fast half for the first time since Sonoma, where he ended up a career-best 6th and made his first Pro Stock final, Cory Reed didn’t have to do anything special to go rounds. This time, he just needed to do his thing. But how was he supposed to know?

No one has any idea what kind of light the other driver is about to cut or how his or her car is going to run. This would have been a perfect time to be late, short-shift, or make a bad run. Anything would’ve done – anything but a red-light, which, unfortunately, is exactly what happened. Gunning for a killer light, Reed came within thousandths of a second of a perfect one. But instead of a near-perfect .006 light, it was a near-perfect -.006 foul.

Then Camrie Caruso, who could have survived even with a lousy 10-second run, advanced with a 10.86, coasting silently behind Reed while he blasted across the finish line at 204 mph thinking he’d won. “I was really trying to kill it that time,” he said. “.010, .012 – something like that. I figured if I went .010 all day long I could win the race. I knew it. It wasn’t a mistake. I wasn’t like, ‘How did I just do that?’ It felt good. I’ve had enough good lights – about 15 now – that I can tell if it’s a good one, and that really felt like one.”

Reed vs. Caruso shaped up to be a close matchup – the closest possible, actually. Not only was it No. 8 against No. 9; both ran exactly the same e.t. right down to the thousandth of a second at almost identical speeds: 6.631s at 205 mph. Reed got eighth and Caruso ninth because on the speed tie-breaker, 205.57 to 205.38

The foul made it a moot point and Caruso’s shake-riddled shutoff pass made it that harder for the J&A Service/YNot Racing driver to swallow. “I knew going up there it was going to be the flip of the coin, .00 green or .00 red,” Reed said. “That’s how that game is played.”

PRO STOCK – DALLAS

October 14, 2024 / Todd Veney

Cut a good light, make just about your fastest run ever, and still get smoked in the first round … that’s what competing at drag racing’s highest level can be like, as Cory Reed is learning on a weekly basis. He was off like a shot and still got sent home by the legend Jeg Coughlin the last way any driver would ever want: on a holeshot.

It’s just what happens when you face one of the truly great drivers in the history of sport. Reed cut a serviceable .035 light, nailed his shifts, and still barelylost in the first round of the Texas Fall Nationals. “I left pretty good – I knew it when I let the clutch out – but when I peeked over around half-track, there he was,” he said of the many-time world champion, who’s won NHRA national events in a record-tying seven different categories.

Mired in the back half of the field, as he’s been since the first two races of his burgeoning Pro Stock career this summer, Reed made a run quick enough to beat Coughlin, who not only survived the round but went on to win the event, keeping alive his remote championship hopes. “I didn’t just see him, I saw him the all way through high gear,” Reed said. “Somewhere around the eighth-mile mark, I thought, ‘Get out of here, Jeg,’ but he never did.”

The Texas Motorplex scoreboards showed a 6.58 at just over 208 mph in Coughlin’s lane and a quicker 6.57 at more than 210 mph – the second-fastest speed of Reed’s young Pro Stock career – in the right. The margin of victory was an agonizingly close eight-thousandths of a second, which, at more than 200 mph, is less than two feet.

Reed’s run was the third-quickest of the round, better than championship contenders Dallas Glenn (6.582), Erica Enders (6.579), and a dozen other drivers and bettered only by the other two contenders for the 2024 title, Aaron Stanfield (6.559) and Greg Anderson (6.543). “I told Jeg at the top end he was one of my all-time heroes,” Reed said. “He told me, ‘You’re doing good, stay at it. You’ll get there.’ “

TAFC – DALLAS

October 14, 2024 / Todd Veney

With both engines screaming at 7,000 rpm, one car fully staged and one about to be, the stage was set for Annie Whiteley. Then she rolled in, the Tree flashed, opponent Shane Westerfield streaked for the finish line in the left lane, and she sat there flat-footed at a dead idle in the right.

“All four [stage] lights were on, and … I have no idea why … it just didn’t register,” Whiteley said. “I thought, What the hell’s going on here? Your foot’s supposed to be going down now.’ All of a sudden, Shane’s seven cars out there and I haven’t left the starting line. I thought, ‘Come on [Westerfield’s] blower belt – break. Please break.’ It didn’t. Of course. So I took off after him, but it got to the point where I realized, ‘Even if it breaks right now, I’m not going to catch him.’ “

Up to that point, everything was right on schedule for Whiteley’s J&A/YNot Racing team. She qualified in the top four, at the Texas Fall Nationals, held at the original supertrack, the Texas Motorplex, just outside Dallas in tiny Ennis, Texas, as she has in 80 percent of her starts this year. She’d already knocked off one of Top Alcohol Funny Car’s top young drivers, Hunter Jones, despite his great light (.027) and solid run (5.54), outperforming him with a perfectly fine .061 light of her own and a superior 5.47 that just missed Low E.T. of the Meet, at a booming 268.29 mph, which came up just short of Top Speed.

“The car was running good, it really was,” Whiteley said. “We ran a 5.49 in qualifying, which just shows that [crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] and the guys are onto a tune-up for places like this. We got back after that run and Mike said, ‘We might’ve just figured something out. I think I know how to get down these hot tracks.’ “

Then came the quarterfinals, and an abrupt, bizarre end to what to that point had been a great weekend. “It sucks,” Whiteley said. “We were doing so good. Then second round I see Shane out there and think, ‘What are you doing that far ahead of me? And why the hell am I still on the throttle?’ “

PRO STOCK – ST. LOUIS

September 30, 2024 / Todd Veney

Cory Reed’s disappointing first-round loss at the Midwest Nationals wasn’t the result of iffy conditions, a dearth of power, or bad racing luck as much as it was a product of where he qualified: 14th, after being 12th at Indy, 14th at Maple Grove, and 10th at Charlotte.

“We have to stop qualifying like this,” said Reed, who, like everyone, got half as many attempts as usual (two) because Friday was completely washed out. “My team is really, really good at getting a car down the track. They’re smart. They always have a plan. But sometimes I’d rather not get down the track because we were trying to run great than get in near the bottom of the order again and not have lane choice first round.”

Reed made solid runs in both qualifying sessions Saturday, a 6.62 and a 6.61, both at 206 mph. Problem was, 13 other cars were faster than the J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro and he got stuck in the dreaded right lane first round while his opponent, K-B/Titan team leader and racing legend Greg Anderson, lined up on the smoother, much preferred left side. Vastly experienced, utterly impervious to pressure, he had every advantage.

“It’s not like these guys would throw a race to make sure Greg wins because he’s running for a championship,” Reed said. “We’d never do that. And it’s not like I don’t have great equipment – I do. But that’s a hard guy to beat. Nobody is more dedicated than Greg is, and nobody spends more time at the track.”

It showed on the scoreboards. Reed made his best run all weekend, just missing the 6.50s with a 6.600, but with a 6.567, low e.t. of eliminations, Anderson would not be denied. “We made a decent run, but against him, what are you going to do?” Reed asked. “We always work our way up, taking it easy to make sure we get down the track, sneaking up on it and getting faster all weekend. Four or five runs in, we haul ass. But here, we only got two shots. I’d rather be aggressive the entire time instead of building up a baseline of usable, successful laps. If we don’t qualify sometime because the car is spinning or shaking, I won’t care.”

TAFC – CHARLOTTE

September 23, 2024 / Todd Veney

TAFC – CHARLOTTE

After perhaps the most consistent three runs any Alcohol Funny Car driver ever made anywhere and an even better one first round, Annie Whiteley blew the tires off second round. And it wasn’t just a barrage of E.T.s with the consistency of a metronome; it was all the progressive times, too. Thousands of horsepower to control and varying, ever-changing track and weather conditions to account for, yet every run looked exactly like the last one: smooth.

“I knew we were consistent,” Whiteley said, “but I didn’t realize we were that consistent. I never paid attention to the little numbers [the thousandths of a second]. You look back on it, and it’s like, ‘How did we do that?’ “

At each increment down the zMax Dragway quarter-mile, Whiteley’s times got infinitesimally quicker and faster as the race went on: 2.497, 2.491, and 2.490 to the 330-foot mark; 3.679, 3.673, and 3.668 to the eighth-mile; 209.98, 210.64, and 210.97 mph half-track speeds; and 1000-foot times of 4.683, 4.676, and 4.671 led to increasingly quicker E.T.s of 5.530, 5.522, and 5.520, the last of which left her No. 3 in the final lineup.

After progressively better reaction times of .077, .054, and .033 in qualifying, Whiteley left on first-round opponent Chris Foster, the former U.S. Nationals winner, by more than a tenth and got the best of a 5.50/266.58 (top speed of the meet) to 5.575/261.83 decision not nearly as close as the E.T.s alone would indicate.

In the quarterfinals, Whiteley, who scored here in 2018, faced three-time national event champion D.J. Cox, who won this race in 2016. That’s when the J&A Service/YNot team’s unerring consistency vanished, tire smoke billowed from behind the car, and the weekend ground to a premature, unceremonious halt.

“This car has kicked our ass a couple times now, hasn’t it?” she asked. “It takes the tire off and you think, ‘Why did that happen? There’s no way that should have happened.’ “

Now Whiteley and crew head west, where they’ve traditionally been at their best, ranked fourth in the national standings heading into the home stretch, just behind Bob McCosh and ahead of veteran Brian Hough.

“Fourth? That’s nice, but I never want to know where I am in the points,” Whiteley said. “I remember one year at Pomona [2015], right before we ran they told me, ‘If you win this round and the two other guys [Jonnie Lindberg and John Lombardo Jr.] lose, you win the championship by one point.’ I never want to know stuff like that. Who needs the extra pressure?”

PRO STOCK – CHARLOTTE

September 23, 2024 / Todd Veney

Pro Stock rookie Cory Reed got quicker and quicker on the Tree in qualifying, culminating in a perfect .000 reaction time, but ultimately took himself out of the Carolina Nationals with his first red-light in years.

“I’m not discouraged,” he insisted. “Disappointed, sure, but not discouraged. The thing is, after you get to the final at your second race [Sonoma], your perspective changes a little because now you know you can win. I didn’t think I’d feel this way until next year. When I started this deal, I was like, ‘Pro Stock? Yeah, that might be fun. Let’s do it.’ No expectations, no pressure. But then you get out there and do well right away, and you’re like, ‘Hey, I can win one of these things…’ “

Reed had a .057 light on his first qualifying run, a .025 on his second, and a perfect trip-zip .000 on his third. First round the car lurched through the beams when he decked the throttle and opponent Cristian Cuadra inherited an easy win. “My foot got kicked off the pedal,” Reed said. “I was floating the clutch, maybe cheating the pedal a little. We were on our third different engine, so I didn’t know if the car was going to run good or not. I figured the least I could do was give us a chance with a .010 light.”

Cuadra, another young driver with quick reflexes on the cusp of his first major victory, scooted to a winning 6.67 while Reed clicked it early and still coasted to a 6.76 at 178 mph. “I moved my foot to a different place on the pedal,” Reed said. “The pressure point was right on the tip of my toes, so the pedal was barely pushing back. I did it in qualifying and it worked great, so I tried it again first round. I really thought I’d found something.”

Instead, Reed got a red-light, which, until this weekend, he never had, even in qualifying. “As soon as the car started to move, I knew I was screwed,” he said. “I thought, ‘You dumbass, what was that?’ and stayed in it just to see what the car would run, and I was all over the place. In 5th gear, I was like, ‘What the hell are you doing? You know you red-lighted – why are you still on it?’ I just drove the hell out of it for no reason. It would have been a good run, too, because I lifted before the 1,000-foot mark and still went a 6.70-something. But you know what really sucks? He only went a .67, so my normal light would’ve been just fine.”

TAFC – MAPLE GROVE

September 16, 2024 / Todd Veney

When you’ve been running 5.40s all weekend and leave on a final-round opponent who just blew the tires off in the semi’s and is about to run a 5.50-something, you’re probably going to win, and at Maple Grove Annie Whiteley absolutely was – for about 5 feet.

Then she found the cockpit enveloped in a cloud of tire smoke and could only look on helplessly as Phil Esz shot ahead for an easy win. “I left pretty low [6,400 rpm] and it still took the tire off,” she lamented. “Instantly. The 60-foot time was 1.23. [Crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] lowered the leave 100 rpm because I was already leaving so low, but maybe we should’ve lowered it 500. Who knows? All we were looking to do was repeat. Anything from .47 to .49 would’ve been fine…”

In her first appearance at historic Maple Grove Raceway in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania Amish country, Whiteley was locked in the 5.40s on two of three qualifying attempts and all three preliminary rounds of eliminations. Nestled into the No. 3 spot with an aggregate best of 5.46 at 268.92 mph (top speed of the meet), she faced returning veteran Kris Hool, who hadn’t been seen at an NHRA event in years, in the first round. She left first by a mile with a .061 reaction time that was, by far, her slowest all weekend, and went on to a lopsided win with another 5.4s, a 5.49 at 266.85 mph.

“Annie’s gotten really good on the lights since we went to this two-step,” Strasburg said, “.030s and .040s all the time and .020s when she really needs one.” Brainerd winner Bob McCosh learned that firsthand under the lights Saturday night when Whiteley beat him in round two, 5.49/266 to 5.46/265, with a .022 holeshot leave. Then Phil Burkart, making his only national event start this season for Jay Blake’s Follow A Dream team, narrowly fouled in the semi’s, sending the YNot team to its first national event final of 2024 with another great light (.025) and great run (5.47).

“That’s got to be the first time I’ve ever noticed the scoreboard when the other driver red-lighted,” said Whiteley, who moved up to fifth in the NHRA Top Alcohol Funny Car standings. “It hit me – ‘Oh, hey, I just won.’ Then the motor hit the [rev-limiter] chip and I thought, ‘What the hell are you looking at? Shift!’ “

PRO STOCK – MAPLE GROVE

September 16, 2024 / Todd Veney

FFor a minute there, it looked like Cory Reed might just get his first DNQ as a Pro Stock driver.

In the first qualifying session, Reed’s car made a hard move toward the wall and he had to lift, and a subsequent 6.59 Friday evening got him in for the moment but left him just outside the field when qualifying resumed Saturday morning. “I wasn’t that worried,” said Reed, who reached his first NHRA final here as a Pro Stock Motorcycle rookie in 2016. “It wouldn’t have upset me that bad if we didn’t qualify. Spinning and shaking doesn’t upset me, either – that’s going to happen from time to time. This team has a qualifying game in place. You just don’t want to make a soft run, and we didn’t. When it got right down to it, I knew we’d squeak in there.”

With a clutch 6.57 at 208.62 mph early Saturday, he did, and after a 6.60 at 208.49 mph in last-ditch qualifying Reed found himself stuck racing the driver he always looked up to as a kid in the first round: K-B/Titan team leader Greg Anderson, the winningest Pro Stock driver of all time.

“First round is so much easier when you’re in the top half,” said Reed, who was eighth in Seattle in his Pro Stock debut and sixth in Sonoma, where he made it all the way to the final. “Greg and [KB/Titan teammate] Dallas [Glenn, the early season points leader] probably have half a tenth on me right now, so I knew it was going to be tough, but I honestly I thought if Greg went a .52 I could go a .55.”

Instead, Reed ran another 6.60-flat that left him no chance when Anderson moved first and laid down low e.t. of the meet, 6.52. “A .020 light is my goal every time I go up there,” he said. “.060? That’s never going to win. So that was my fault. I got too much sleep. Sounds stupid, but it’s true. You know why? I was too relaxed up there. I’m never gonna let that happen again.”

TAFC – MARTIN

September 8, 2024 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley qualified last and got beat first round at the Mid-West Drag Racing Series’ Funny Car Nationals yet walked away from historic U.S. 131 Dragway upbeat, and rightfully so.

The J&A Service/YNot Racing driver was fifth of five on the qualifying grid despite a more than competitive 3.69, then lost by just about the smallest possible margin, which, after the dismal weekend she’d endured, didn’t seem too bad. “This is probably the most excited I’ve ever been to barely lose,” she said of her narrow loss to family friend Steve Macklyn. “After the way this weekend was going, I almost didn’t care. But then I started thinking, ‘Wait a minute … point-zero-zero-eight of a second … damn, I could have won.”

Both drivers cut uncharacteristic .100 lights and both ran 3.58s, but Macklyn, who went on to make the final, where he was trounced by Annie’s husband, event winner and team leader Jim Whiteley, was slightly quicker at both ends of the track. Had either she or Macklyn cut any kind of a normal light, they’d have won on a holeshot.

“The whole way down the track, I never saw him,” Whiteley said. “We looked at our E.T. slips and were both like, ‘Nice light.’ I mean, .104 and .109 – neither one of us was too happy. We both thought the same thing: that was the quickest Tree ever. The second we staged, the Tree was on. Normally, you’re up there on the chip for a second, but not that time… Neither one of us was ready.

“We struggled and struggled and struggled to get the car down the track all weekend,” said Whiteley, who barely squeaked into the 3.60s on the perfectly manicured U.S. 131 surface with a 3.697. “Then, first round, bam, 3.58. We never thought the car would run that good. We moved some weight around, changed a few things, and the car picked up the front end and carried it out there. And kept right on carrying it. And I thought, ‘Oh, yeah – that’s why I love doing this.’ “