Author: Todd Veney (Page 1 of 38)

TAFC – SEATTLE

July 22, 2024 / Todd Veney

It was one 5.46 after another for Annie Whiteley at the NHRA Northwest Nationals, where she won in 2015 and nearly did again last year. The first one, a 5.469, came right off the trailer Friday morning, and she got only quicker from there with an even better 5.465, her quickest run all year, at 270.05 mph (top speed of the meet) that afternoon.

Following a shut-off 10.48 at 114 mph on an aborted shoot-for-the-moon blast Saturday morning in last-ditch qualifying, Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing team was back in the 5.40s with another 5.46 that evening in the first round – right when it didn’t matter. It came on a bye she earned by qualifying No. 1, so any old run would have been more than enough to win.

Sunday in the semifinals, when all four cars ran in the 5.40s, Whiteley missed what would’ve been a fourth 5.46 by the closest possible margin – one-thousandth of a second – with a 5.470 that left her just short of Brian Hough’s nearly identical 5.48. Nine-thousandths of a second quicker at the Tree or on the quarter-mile and Whiteley, who finished second to outgoing world champion Doug Gordon here last year, would’ve been part of the first all-female final round in Top Alcohol Funny Car history. (Gordon’s daughter, rookie phenom Maddi Gordon, went on to beat Hough in the final and became the 100th different woman to win an NHRA national event.)

With an .088 light Whiteley wasn’t exactly late, but if she’d had another .077 like she did on her first-round single, or Hough had had another .121 like the one he had last weekend at Woodburn, where she left on him and beat him in the first round, and she’d have been in her 22nd career national event final. “With this two-step, you really want to get in there first,” she said. “Hough always used to want to stage last, but now he always wants to go in first – everybody who has a two-step does. That is a crappy way to lose, but the guys really have the car running good right now.”

TAFC – WOODBURN 2

July 15, 2024 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley and team picked up the pieces from the frustrating first leg of Woodburn Dragstrip’s Western Regional “double” with their first final-round finish in NHRA competition this season, qualifying atop the Top Alcohol Funny Car field and storming to the final round. “The track changed a lot for the second race,” she said, “and that made all the difference.”

Whiteley shot to the top of the qualifying grid right off the trailer Saturday morning – much to her surprise. “The track was bald,” she said. “Literally bald, just perfectly smooth. They work so hard to make this place perfect, but when it gets that hot, what can you do? Brian Hough ran right in front of me and just annihilated the tires, so we thought for sure I was gonna smoke the tires, but it made it.”

Whiteley’s “Shattered Glass” Chevy Camaro did more than just make it – it made it to the other end with low e.t. and top speed of the event, a 5.66 at 266.42 mph. “We couldn’t believe it,” she said. Hers was the only car in the 5.60s, comfortably ahead of Ray Martin’s 5.72 and miles ahead of veteran Bret Williamson, who ran a 6-flat and Hough, who never got down the track.

With a 5.70 at 265.95 mph, Whiteley also had low e.t. and top speed of the first round, easily turning back Hough’s 5.70/262 after drilling him on the Tree. “It didn’t smoke the tires that time, but it was kind of slow,” she said. “I mean, 5.70? The clutch was back to being super light. We thought it would be way hot again and the figured the clutch would come to us, so we hardly changed anything for the final.”

It made perfect sense, but when the car launched, Whiteley blew ’em off again, and though Martin, now driving the Miner Bros.’ retro-styled Camaro, did too, her car lost traction first and it cost her the race. “Ray pedaled,” she said. “I did too, but I guess I held it too long. It was like, ‘Hey, good job against Brian, but this time … no.’ I pedaled one more time just to feel like I was doing something, but there was no way I was going to catch him.”

TAFC – WOODBURN 1

July 13, 2024 / Todd Veney

Facing oppressive, draining heat and a touchy track surface, Annie Whiteley and the J&A Service/YNot Racing team hit Woodburn Dragstrip, that race rare 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 four Top Alcohol Funny Cars in a “double” – back-to-back Western Regionals over a single weekend.

After an up-and-down day of testing, Whiteley had to shut off on both qualifying attempts, eventually settling into the fourth spot with a disappointing aggregate 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 there. 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 change to our two-run tires,” she said. “The guys backed it down, worked their magic, and the car 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, it’s the tires – that’s the only thing we haven’t changed back.’ 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.”

TAFC – KANSAS CITY

June 2, 2024 / Todd Veney

At the Mid-West Drag Racing Series’ Summer Smackdown, the first major event at drag racing’s next big-time track, Flying H Drag Strip, Annie Whiteley went out early for the first time all year. The driver of the 276-mph “Shattered Glass” Camaro was nipped by defending MWDRS Funny Car champion Steve Macklyn in the first round but still enjoyed the J&A/YNot Racing team’s first trip to the all-new Midwestern facility just east of Kansas City in Odessa, Mo..

“It’s a nice track,” Whiteley said. “They’re still working on it but I think it’s going to be a really nice facility. They ran out of time to finish the asphalt in the upper pits before this first race and there was still a lot of gravel because everything is so new, but the Funny Cars and Pro Mods we were all on asphalt.”

Whiteley started from the fourth position, behind husband Jim, who led all qualifiers with an outstanding 3.61, perennial NHRA championship contender Bob McCosh, and Macklyn, who joined Jim in the low 3.60s. Veterans Mark Billington (3.68) and Lance Van Hauen (3.78) rounded out the field.

When eliminations got under way, Jim was upset by Van Hauen and Annie came out on the wrong end of a tough first-round match with Macklyn. She was on time with a .066 reaction time, but Macklyn, whose car is equipped with a trans-brake, got off the line with a telepathic .007 reaction time and led from wire to wire in a great race, 3.64 to 3.66. Still, there was reason for optimism with the newfound promise of Whiteley’s two-step setup.

“I miss revving the car up on the starting line like I used to, but I have to say I like this thing because, let’s face it, it’s definitely helped,” Whiteley said. “Without the two-step, whenever it smoked the tires, I’d be panicked, like ‘Did I just mess up the foot swap?’ Now, I’m not. Like [brother-in-law] Jeff [Strasburg] says, there is no foot swap, so how can you mess it up?”

TAFC – DALLAS

May 21, 2024 / Todd Veney

A semifinalist, at least, at every race this year, Annie Whiteley plowed forward at the Central Regional at Dallas with yet another final-four performance. At the original supertrack, the world-famous Texas Motorplex, she just missed low E.T. in qualifying and just missed her second final-round appearance of the season, which, had she gotten that far, would have, without question, resulted in a second straight win.

There was no final-round opponent, and, thus, no chance of a runner-up finish – Whiteley was either going to lose in the semifinals or win the event. Unfortunately for her, she lost in the semifinals to Kyle Smith, whose reaction time just missed costing him the race.

Three-thousandths of a second quicker than his near-perfect .002, and Smith would’ve red-lighted, handing Whiteley a final-round berth and, ultimately, a final-round win because Bryan Brown, who needed only to stage in the other semi to secure a berth in the title round, was sidelined by a broken crank. “It was doubly bad,” said Whiteley, who blew the tires off immediately and coasted silently across the finish line at 96 mph while Smith shot ahead with a beatable 5.57.

“We all knew Bryan wasn’t going to be there for the final,” Whiteley said. “He’d already come by and told us. People offered to help him put something together so he could run, but he just said, ‘We’re done,’ so the semifinal was basically the final.”

Whiteley had driven the “Shattered Glass” Camaro to the No. 2 spot in qualifying, behind only Bob McCosh (5.52 to 5.53), and had strapped a huge holeshot on returning veteran Mark Billington in the first round, .014 to .102, for a lopsided 5.55/264 win. He lost traction immediately and coasted through the traps with an E.T. and speed both in the 20s.

“This two-step really helps,” Whiteley said of her telepathic .014 light. “The funny part is, I don’t know why. I never wanted it. They put it on the car right after they were made legal, and I wanted no part of it. I postponed it and postponed it and postponed it. I just didn’t like it – to me, it takes away from the integrity of the class – but Jim said, ‘Just try it. I know you see the light and leave better than what your reaction times say. If it doesn’t work, we’ll take it off, so let’s see if it helps.’ It does, but if I can react like this now, why couldn’t I cut decent lights the old way?”

In the semifinal/final, Whiteley was right on time with a solid .064 light, but reaction times proved immaterial when she went up in smoke at the hit. “It spun the tires instantly [60-foot time: 1.16], which probably hurt my reaction time too, and when it blows the tires off that early, there’s nothing you can do. The car kicked sideways a little, and I saw Smith out the window and thought, ‘Damn, he’s really hauling ass, isn’t he? This is over.’ “

TAFC – TULSA

May 13, 2024 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley’s first victory of 2024 was just her latest triumph at Tulsa Raceway Park, where she’s been winning since she started racing Funny Cars back in 2012. Her final-round victim this time: husband Jim Whiteley, who just missed a perfect light with a -.002 red-light that handed the Mid-West Drag Racing Series’ Throwdown in T-Town title to his all-time favorite opponent.

“I was late going down on the pedal, which usually means you’re going to be late, and I had my worst light all weekend,” she said. It was, but even it was pretty good, a .060. “I was excited to win, but it sucked because I don’t like to see Jim lose – especially like that.”

Annie, who’d qualified second, fourth, and third in her previous 2024 starts – all on the quarter-mile in NHRA competition – reigned supreme at Tulsa, where she locked down her first No. 1 of the year with an outstanding 3.62 at nearly 212 mph, top speed by more than three and a half miles per hour. Driving a matching J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro dressed in white, Jim tied friend Steve Macklyn right down to the thousandth of a second for No. 2 spot with identical 3.632 E.T.s but got the higher position on the basis of his faster speed, 208.30 mph to Macklyn’s 207.59.

In the first round, Annie ripped off a 3.63/211, nearly matching her Low E.T./Top Speed marks from qualifying, to erase veteran Lance Van Hauen, then breezed through the semifinals to meet Jim in the final. He had a much tougher road, topping Bryan Brown in the opening round, 3.64/206 to 3.87/200, and surviving a memorable matchup with Macklyn in the semifinals. Both cut near-perfect .00 lights and both ran 3.66s, but Jim was a tick better on both ends of the track – .003 to .006 and 3.664 to 3.669.

“You get down to the final at these Mid-West races and you’d better bring everything you’ve got,” Annie said. “The track can be kind of iffy for testing on Thursday, it gets pretty good on Friday, and by Saturday it’s a lot better. I don’t know what they do or how they do it, but they just keep working on it all weekend and by the finals, it’s perfect.”

Annie ran a 3.63 and Jim a 3.65, but their E.T.s meant nothing when he went red by 1/500th of a second. “I don’t know why, but I always seem to do my best against him,” said Annie, who had a perfect .000 light in qualifying. To cap a memorable weekend, grandson Breccan won the Jr. Dragster title and shared a toast with dad Steven – a Dr. Pepper for him and a beer for Dad.

TAFC – LAS VEGAS

April 15, 2024 / Todd Veney

Quietly putting together a solid season with one late-round finish after another, Annie Whiteley kept the ball rolling at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, always one of her favorite tracks. Fourth in the standings and third in final qualifying coming into eliminations, she moved first with a .052 light and charged ahead of bucks-down upstart Charles McLaws and second-generation driver Will Martin in the first round, advancing easily with a 5.49/267 over McLaws’ 5.62/257 and Martin’s 5.60/260.

With three or four cars on the track at the same time, it isn’t necessary to “win” – to reach the finish line before every other car – in the preliminary rounds. You just have to finish in the top two, but Whiteley had the best reaction time and the best E.T., leaving first and easily outdistancing the others despite her unfamiliarity with (and barely disguised disdain for) her new two-step.

“With this thing, I still have to tell myself not to go up on the throttle when I’m pre-staged,” she said. “I did it the old way so many times, muscle memory still tells me to start revving it up to 7,000, and I really have to go out of my way stop myself from doing it again.”

Whiteley’s new setup proved to be her undoing in the semifinals, where she lost to eventual winner Sean Bellemeur and Hunter Jones in a race not nearly as close as the E.T.s alone would indicate. Bellemeur ran a 5.50, Jones a .51, and Whiteley a .52, but Bellemeur and Jones hit the Tree while she, clearly distracted, did not. (McLaws finished a distant fourth with a 5.72.)

“I was late going down on the throttle that time,” Whiteley explained. “At this point – I’m still learning – I have to get in there [stage] first. If you get in first, you have more time to get set. I used to just barely have to let go of the brake and the car would roll in [to the staged beam], but with this two-step, I have to move the clutch pedal to get the car to roll. I have to think … and up there, thinking is the absolute last thing you want to do.”

TAFC – POMONA

March 25, 2024 / Todd Veney

At the prestigious Winternationals at In-N-Out Burger Pomona Raceway, one of the few tracks at which she hasn’t already won at least once, Annie Whiteley came through with one of her best reaction times ever to trounce one of biggest names in the business, feared leaver Shane Westerfield.

With a near-perfect .007 light, Whiteley drilled Westerfield on the Tree and drove away with low E.T. of the meet to that point. Westerfield, driving for the RJM superteam owned by Kathy Jackson, wife of the late Rick Jackson, was more than on time with a respectable .059 reaction time, but Whiteley was noticeably ahead and opened the lead from there with an outstanding 5.49 at 265.80 mph to cover Westerfield’s otherwise fine 5.54/264 by more than a car length.

“They handed me the ticket and I saw that .007 and thought, ‘That can’t be mine. It must be Shane’s, ” Whiteley said. “He’s the one who’s always cutting .00 lights – not me. But he said, ‘That’s not mine, Annie. That’s all you.’ I couldn’t believe it.”

Whiteley’s “Shattered Glass” Camaro came off the trailer with a decent 5.56 at 263.46 mph (just shy of top speed of the meet to that point) that left her No. 2 on the provisional grid behind only the surprising Hunter Jones, who would go on to enjoy the finest outing of his young Top Alcohol Funny Car career. After an aborted 7.52 on what turned out to be their only other attempt, the J&A Service/YNot Racing team entered eliminations fourth on the grid, set to face Westerfield, the 2017 national champion who virtually never qualifies in the slow half of the field.

In the lanes, readying for a crucial semifinal match with Jones, Whiteley dove for cover when the skies opened, pummeling cars and drivers with golf-ball-sized hail, and an hour later the race was postponed. When it resumed three weeks later at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in conjunction with Four-Wide Nationals qualifying, Whiteley was upset, 5.59/262 to a shutoff 7.97/117, by the upstart Jones, who then lost a close final to Brian Hough.

PSM – GAINESVILLE

March 11, 2024 / Todd Veney

Reed Motorsports’ first outing of 2024 turned out to be a lot more like the team’s frustrating 2023 campaign than it did their soaring dream season of 2022. Rider Joey Gladstone squeaked into the back half of the Gatornationals Pro Stock Motorcycle field and was gone after a single round.

Hamstrung by a disastrous foray into the sand trap after a test run just before Gainesville, the team was worn out before qualifying even got under way. “We were up until 5 a.m. getting the sand out of everything,” Reed said. They missed the first qualifying session and never made it to the finish line in the second. Saturday in Q3 Gladstone managed a 7.09 at 186 mph – a third of a second and 15 mph short of what the team is capable of but good enough to make the final lineup. Barely.

On the bump when eliminations began, Gladstone faced the toughest possible opponent, reigning world champion Gaige Herrera, lead rider for the all-conquering Vance & Hines juggernaut that dominated 2023. He got off the line on time and picked up a tenth and a half with a decent 6.94/194 but had absolutely no chance when Herrera, already the quickest rider by a mile, picked up more than a tenth with the second-quickest run of all time, a track-record 6.63.

“We’ve gotten everything out of this that we can,” Reed said. “We’re just about done. I’m good with what we’ve accomplished. Joey’s good. He’s set records, won championships. What he wanted was to win an NHRA Pro Stock race, and we did – three times.”

The team’s 2022 season was one for the ages, the epitome of everything both racers ever wanted to achieve – six finals, three victories, and one career best after another. But lately? “We’re tired of it,” Reed said. “The amount of time we’ve spent on this to not run well … I mean, it’s been nine years of this crap. Joey’s not some punching bag, some filler. We might run Charlotte, might run Richmond. Maybe a couple more. Maybe none. If we run anywhere, it’ll be the ones close to home. We both have things going on, new goals. We don’t want to ditch the bike program now – we have too much knowledge – but this is pointless. There’s more opportunity out there in other classes.”

TAFC – PHOENIX

February 26, 2024 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley launched her 13th season of Funny Car racing with a fine semifinal finish at the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series’ Western Region opener. “Not bad,” she assessed. “Things got a little stressful at times, changing the ignition to something we’ve never run before, but, all in all, I’d say it turned out all right.”

Frustrated by an erratic MSD command module that single-handedly cost the J&A Service/YNot Racing team three races last year, crew chief Mike Strasburg made the switch to a FuelTech setup for 2024. “From inside the car, the motor sounds different now,” Whiteley said. “The idle is deeper, a little throatier. We get up there for the first test run and I look out the window at Jeff [Strasburg], like, ‘This thing sounds like a mud truck – you sure it’s OK?’ “

After a couple of test runs – one too soft and one a little too hard – the team got down to business Friday when qualifying officially got under way. Strasburg split the difference and the car charged to the 1,000-foot mark, where, as planned, Whiteley clicked it off, coasting to a 5.71. On her second and final attempt, the “Shattered Glass” Camaro produced a fine 5.47 at 263.82 mph, good for No. 2 behind rookie Maddi Gordon, who went low with a 5.43 in her first start since taking over for her dad, outgoing world champ Doug Gordon.

Saturday afternoon in round one, Whiteley summarily dispatched the decent 5.60/262 of second-generation driver Will Martin, son of former nitro Funny Car racer John A. Martin, with a much quicker and faster 5.46/265. In the semi’s, she lost to eventual winner Brian Hough, 5.47/265 to a right-there 5.48/267, narrowly missing what would have been an all-female final round opposite Ms. Gordon.

Still, it was a decent start to the season and confirmation that the potentially perilous switch to an altogether different ignition system will pay dividends down the road. “That old command module cost us too many runs,” Whiteley said. “We didn’t even qualify at [the West Regional finale at] Vegas last year because of it. Nine cars, and what’s the one team that doesn’t qualify? Us. We kept sending it to them and they kept sending it back, saying, ‘It’s fine – run it.’ “

It won’t be the only major change to Whiteley’s machine for the season ahead. “We’re going to try that thing Hough uses [the newly legalized two-step],” Whiteley said. “I’ve been fighting this clutch-pedal extension and struggling to cut a light for 12 years now. If I don’t roll in deep, I can’t get a light. I can tell you one thing, though – this car is still going to have a clutch pedal, no matter what. I’ll quit before I run a car without one.”