Category: News (Page 4 of 39)

race-by-race wrapups

TAFC – FERRIS 2023

October 23, 2023 / Todd Veney

For the second year in a row, Jim and Annie Whiteley met in the Top Alcohol Funny Car final at the Mid-West Drag Racing Series World Finals, where last year Jim secured his first win as a Funny Car driver. Annie lost traction, just like last year, but this time it didn’t cost her the race – Jim had even bigger problems in the other lane.

“I haven’t smoked the tires like that in probably five years,” Annie said. “I came completely off the throttle and thought, ‘What the hell was that?’ But then it was like, ‘Wait a minute … Why isn’t he driving away from me?’ and I got back on it.”

The snout on Jim’s converter gave up, knocking him out of the race. “It was charging hard,” he said, “but it gave up right before the gear change, just went ‘bam-bam-bam.’ I got on the brakes when it let go because at first I wasn’t sure what was going on. They got down there to tow me off and the car wouldn’t move; it was locked up. We had to put the car on dollies to get it off the track.”

Jim qualified No. 1, and Annie was No. 2, which set her up with a semifinal match against No. 3 qualifier and former NHRA Division 2 champion Mark Billington in his first race back from a big crash earlier this season. Billington put up a good fight with a solid 3.72 at 206 mph, but Annie left on him, .075 to .084, and put him away with a superior 3.69/213 to advance to another final.

With nearly identical .015 and .018 reaction times, husband and wife both were more than ready when the Tree flashed green. “For some reason – it’s not like I’m not trying just as hard against everybody else – I always do well against Jim,” Annie said. “It blew the tires off and I thought I was out of it, but out of the corner of my I realized I was catching him so I got back on it and ran it to the end. If was funny, actually. The first shift light didn’t come on until I was at the eighth-mile – right where the second one usually comes on.”

PSM – DALLAS 2023

October 16, 2023 / Todd Veney

Cory Reed’s Precision Service Equipment Pro Stock Motorcycle team was all over the place at the Texas FallNationals, with three different riders on three different bikes on two different teams: Cory aboard Michael Phillips’ two-valve machine, teammate Joey Gladstone on recently sidelined Angie Smith’s Buell, and returning veteran Blaine Hale on the Suzuki usually ridden by Gladstone.

All three qualified for the field, and Gladstone made it all the way to the semifinals before bowing out to many-time world champion Eddie Krawiec, who made his first run ever in the 6.60s, a 6.69, to beat him. Hale, who won the Mile-High Nationals in Denver 20 years ago from the No. 16 qualifying spot, was on the bump again here, but facing the dominant Gaige Herrera in round one, there’d be no miracle finish this time.

“We just want to see what our stuff can do,” said Reed, whose team won three races and wound up second in the final standings last year with Gladstone on the bike. “You have a good year like we did and don’t do much early the next year and all of a sudden everybody thinks you don’t know what you’re doing. People in the pits … they’re definitely going to doubt you. They’re going to talk. But we’ve been making good progress for a while now. Can we outrun Gaige? Not necessarily. But we’re a lot faster than what we’ve shown.”

As for Reed himself, he was Krawiec’s first victim, dropping a first-round match when Krawiec’s mighty Vance & Hines team was, for once, actually vulnerable with just a 6.85. Reed, who spun off the line on his first qualifying run and posted a perfect .000 reaction time on his second, drilled Krawiec on the Tree with a clutch .028 light but slowed to a troubled 7.13 at only 167 mph for the loss.

“Mike really wants to see if we can make this two-valve deal a little faster at the next few races,” Reed said. “I’m only 140 pounds right now. By next year, I won’t be able to make the two-valve weight break anymore. 570 pounds with me on it? It’s crazy that we could even think about doing something like this.”

TAFC – DALLAS 2023

October 16, 2023 / Todd Veney

As championship scenarios played out all around him, two-time world champion Jim Whiteley unleashed one all-time-best after another at the Texas FallNationals in the finest outing of his NHRA Top Alcohol Funny Car career. He qualified higher than ever before (No. 3) with his best run ever (5.456) and ran better than that one round after another in eliminations, wiping out a past national event champion every time down the track.

Whiteley, who won Dallas in both of his Top Alcohol Dragster championship seasons (2012 and 2013), and wife Annie, an integral part of what’s still the quickest side-by-side race in Top Alcohol Funny Car history (5.376-5.382 here in the 2017 final), paced a star-studded field Thursday afternoon, tied atop the early leaderboard with identical 5.510s. Jim went on to record a career-best 5.465 in Q2 and an even better 5.456 in last-shot qualifying, and Annie blew everyone away with a 5.438 for the No. 1 spot in Q3, outrunning even title contenders Doug Gordon and Sean Bellemeur.

Annie was right on time in the first round and sped to a smooth 5.453 but was blindsided by No. 16 qualifier Christine Foster, who came up with an incredible, out-of-nowhere 5.431 – low E.T. of the meet to that point and the best run of her life by more than a tenth. Then, in the very next pair, Jim assumed low E.T. with a 5.418, freight-training Chris Marshall’s 5.634, and in the pair after that Bellemeur made the second-quickest run of all time, a 5.359, to claim Low E.T for good.

Under perfect track and weather conditions again in round two, every full run by every winning and losing driver was in the 5.40s, including Whiteley’s 5.442 against Norwalk winner Bob McCosh’s otherwise excellent 5.488. Bellemeur and Gordon both ran 5.40-flats, with Bellemeur losing on a holeshot to Kyle Smith’s 5.425 and Gordon clinching his third national championship on Matt Gill’s foul start.

With a holeshot semifinal win over Smith, who fell despite a fine .042 reaction time, Whiteley moved into his first NHRA national event final since the 2018 Springnationals in Houston, where he won Pro Mod, and first ever in Top Alcohol Funny Car. “Kyle runs good and really knows how to cut a light,” said Whiteley, whose near-perfect .010 reaction time made for a 5.439 to 5.421 win. “I knew I had to have a good one, but I damn sure didn’t know that was a .010.”

Whiteley was right there in the final against Gordon until his car shelled the rear end around half-track, slowing him to a hapless 6.226 while Gordon shot ahead to a winning 5.414. “The 60 [foot time] was .919,” said crew chief Brandon Snider, who knows a thing or two about getting torque-converter cars off the starting line. “If it made it, that would’ve been about a 5.38.”

PRO MOD – TULSA 2 2023

October 9, 2023 / Todd Veney

Steven Whiteley pulled off one of the biggest wins of his Pro Mod career at the Throwdown at T-Town, resurrecting his once-dwindling championship hopes with a narrow semifinal win over yearlong points leader Keith Haney and a crucial final-round decision over Blake Housley. “That,” said Whiteley, whose last race, at Martin, Mich., ended in a crash, “was big.”

Just when it seemed he was out of contention for the Mid-West Drag Series title, Whiteley thrust himself back into it, scoring in the unfamiliar confines of father Jim’s ’63 split-window Corvette. “It’s just messed up, trying to drive a different car like this,” he said. “They’re both Tommy Mauney cars, yeah, but everything’s in a different position in this car. You’re laid back more in the seat, it’s narrower, the trans-brake button is in wrong spot, the pedals are longer … nothing is where it should be.”

As big an obstacle as that clearly was – and as tough as it was to push aside the anxiety from crashing the last time he went down the track – it didn’t keep Whiteley from victory. He and crew chief/co-driver Brandon Snider overcame early qualifying struggles to qualify No. 1 with a 3.63, breezed through the first round, and trounced Tony “Sandman” Williams in the second, 3.64 to 5.88, to set up what he termed “the round of the year,” his semifinal showdown with Haney.

“That was just an awesome race,” Whiteley said. “Three-thousandths of a second in the lights.” He was quicker than Haney off the line and quicker and faster downtrack (barely), moving first by a thousandth of a second, .064 to .065, and outrunning Haney by two-thousandths, 3.617 to 3.619, with a massive top-end charge, 209 mph to 205. Haney was first to the 330-foot mark, 2.41 to 2.43, so it was only in the last few hundred feet that the J&A Service/YNot Racing team’s aging Corvette prevailed.

“This thing was running 209 mph all weekend,” Whiteley said. “209 is pretty mean for a door car. I mean, ’63 Corvettes aren’t the most aerodynamic cars out there, you know? The track was really cooling off for the final and groove was getting tight, so we made sure the track was prepped the same as it was for the semi’s and stayed aggressive with the tune-up. We didn’t back it off at all – just sent it – and hoped the car would run the same as it did.”

It ran exactly as it had a round earlier, another 3.61 at 209 mph, to stop Housley and give Whiteley new life in the championship chase. “I’m still not used to this car,” he said, “but I don’t have the luxury of having everything just the way I want it anymore. We’re trying to win a championship. At some point, you’ve got to just get in and go.”

TAFC – TULSA 2023

October 9, 2023 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley’s latest Tulsa triumph only added to her legacy of success at the venerable old track in a town she once called home. “I’ve always liked racing here,” said Whiteley, who’s been winning races at Osage Tulsa Raceway Park since NHRA held Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series divisional and regional events here early in her Top Alcohol Funny Car career.

Today, Tulsa is the hub of the Mid-West Drag Racing Series, home to two major MWDRS events every year, including the latest Throwdown in T-Town. After dominating the first Throwdown and scoring at the U.S. 131 Nationals in Martin, Mich., last month, she claimed her third MWDRS victory of 2023 with a final-round decision over veteran Mark Billington, the retired Pepsi/Frito-Lay executive who’s been competitive since the day he bought a used Bob Newberry car more than 20 years ago and became an NHRA Division 2 champion.

“Tulsa is the first place Jim and I and I ever won the same race [in 2012, her rookie season in Top Alcohol Funny Car], and it was just a great weekend for the whole team because we had a lot of family here,” Whiteley said. “We had seven cars here altogether – Jim’s, mine, [son] Steven [Whiteley’s] Pro Mod, the Jrs., and [sister], Anita’s Top Dragster.”

Whiteley qualified No. 2 with an outstanding 3.56 at the ridiculous speed of 215.79 mph, one of her best eighth-mile speeds ever, and trailed only Jim’s 3.54 in the final qualifying order. After taking out Canadian Ryan Stack, driver of veteran Larry Dobbs’ bucks-down machine, in the opening round, Whiteley took on Billington, who was in the midst of a spirited comeback from a nasty crash earlier this year, in the final.

“That had to be one of the smoothest runs this car made all year,” Whiteley said. “It was a clean run, a great side-by-side race. This was Mark’s first race back after the crash and he really ran good. It was great to have him back out here for the first time in a long time and great to win, especially since our whole team was here.”

PRO MOD – TULSA 1 2023

October 7, 2023 / Todd Veney

At the Throwdown in T-Town, the team’s first race back since lead driver Steven Whiteley crashed at Martin, Brandon Snider wheeled Jim Whiteley’s old Pro Mod Corvette to a semifinal finish while Steven looked on from the line.

“If I’m not going to be in there, I wouldn’t want anybody else driving my car,” Whiteley said. “You know exactly what it feels like in there, so you want it to be somebody you know. Somebody good – like Brandon.”

It may not have been the event win the team was after (arch-rival Keith Haney took that home) but a final-four finish at the first of two events over the weekend (the makeup of the rained-out Tulsa race originally scheduled for May 12-13) was just enough to keep the Whiteley/Snider crew in contention for the 2023 Mid-West Drag Racing Series title. Without it, Whiteley’s comeback win later in the weekend would have been almost moot, at least as far as the points standings are concerned.

Back in May, strapped into the same ’69 Camaro they began the season with, Snider qualified smack in the middle of the pack, 9th, with a 3.73 at 202.15 mph. In the first round, he easily handled Texas Pro Mod legend Frankie “Mad Man” Taylor in a lopsided affair, 3.69 to Taylor’s aborted 5.62.

Then the rain set in, the event was postponed for five months, and when Snider rolled into the beams for the second round, it was aboard the Tommy Mauney-built ’63 split-window Corvette driven for years by J&A Service/YNot Racing team leader Jim Whiteley. A semifinal win over Haney truly would have made for a storybook weekend, especially considering Whiteley’s clutch win over him later in the weekend, but it wasn’t to be this time as Haney edged Snider in a close one, 3.61 to 3.64.

“It’s all-out every time we run that guy,” Whiteley said. “But for some reason it never happens in the final. I’ve run Haney in a final once, but whenever we race each other head to head, it seems like it’s always in the semi’s. It just keeps going back and forth every time.”

PSM – ST. LOUIS 2023

October 2, 2023 / Todd Veney

At the Midwest Nationals, a race overshadowed by the violent crash of one of Pro Stock Motorcycle racing’s biggest stars, Angie Smith, Cory Reed went rounds for the first time since his triumphant return to the sport. Reed, who, against all odds, happened to be in the lane opposite Smith on that fateful qualifying run, outdrove Kelly Clontz in the opening round of eliminations for his first quarterfinal appearance since his own horrific crash at the 2021 Carolina Nationals.

“This turned out to be a pretty good weekend,” Reed said. “The biggest thing is that the bike is responding now. At the beginning of the year, we went through motor problems and only made a few real passes. This is probably the first good data we’ve gotten all year. We made a few small changes and got in some good laps – finally. We showed that we didn’t forget how to run to 60 feet.”

Reed qualified in the fast half of the field with his finest performance since switching from Vance & Hines to KB Racing power with a solid 6.87 at 195.48 mph backed up by a 6.88 at 195 on his only other attempt. It was on that other attempt when he was horrified to discover that Smith had just crashed behind him. “It was close down there,” he said. “I beat her to the finish line, so I didn’t see it. All of a sudden, I people are out on the track waving at me, and I turn around and she’s not on her bike anymore. It’s grinding down the wall, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh man,’ because I know what that’s like.”

Smith went down hard and was transported to the hospital with a broken arm, two broken feet, and road rash so bad that skin grafts will be required. “On dirt bikes, crashes are just part of it all,” Reed said. “Drag racing? That’s not supposed to happen.” He put it all behind him when eliminations commenced and put away Clontz in a race closer than anyone would have anticipated. They were only two-thousandths of a second a part on the track – 6.818 to 6.820 – but he had her all the way with a much better reaction time, .027 to .055.

Reed was out of it early in the next round opposite reigning world champion Matt Smith, who clocked a 6.75 at top speed of the meet, 203.40 mph, but this weekend was all about Smith’s wife, Angie. “I felt so bad for her on a personal level,” Reed said. “I know what she’s going through and what she’s going to go through – the pain, the sitting around, the thinking it about it all the time, the feeling stupid for crashing, the deciding if you want to even keep doing it… I feel bad for anyone who has to experience that. It sucks. It’s painful, but it’s a mind game, too. Because how’s it gonna be when you come back?”

PSM – CHARLOTTE 2023

September 25, 2023 / Todd Veney

Back at the controls of Cory Reed’s Precision Service Equipment Hayabusa exactly two years after Reed’s horrible accident at this same event, Joey Gladstone made his first start since Bristol. “It feels good to be back,” he said at spacious zMax Dragway in Concord, N.C. “I haven’t ridden in so long I almost forgot what it feels like. I had a few butterflies at first, but they were gone after one run.”

It wasn’t a good one – had the Saturday forecast not been so dire, Gladstone never would have completed it under power. He spun on the launch, quickly recovered, and rolled back into the throttle for a just-for-the-hell-of-it 7.22 at 192.85 mph to get himself on the board. Though they never came close to approaching their career-best performances of 6.72 and 202.18 mph from last season, Gladstone and team improved on every run thereafter, starting with a 6.97 at 194.21 mph Saturday afternoon in Q2.

“We probably had it turned up a little bit too much for that one,” Gladstone said, “but this one gave us some good data to work with.” He picked up a little more in the final session to a 6.93/194.91 and broke into the .80s Sunday morning in the first round of eliminations with by far his quickest and fastest run of the weekend.

13th on the ladder when he staged for round one, Gladstone was down more than a tenth of a second to 2023 Rookie of the Year candidate Chase Van Sant, who’d just missed the 6.70s in qualifying with an aggregate best of 6.80/198. Van Sant slowed way down and Gladstone made a quantum leap into the 6.80s with his first 195+ mph speed since Chicago, but it wasn’t quite enough in a tough 6.86/196 to 6.89/195 loss.

Still, it was a giant step forward for the Reed team’s new alliance with KB Racing, which is led by the most prolific Pro Stock racer of all time, Greg Anderson, who collected his NHRA record 102nd national event win over the weekend. “We really have a home now at KB Racing,” Reed said. “They’d never had an in-house project like this before and really want to see us succeed. Greg obviously knows how to make horsepower – just look at how his own stuff is coming around now. He’s on the dyno every single day, just constantly, and that can only mean good things for us.”

PSM – MAPLE GROVE 2023

September 18, 2023 / Todd Veney

Still getting up to speed in his second start back on the NHRA tour – literally and figuratively – Cory Reed made his first six-second pass this season in a first-round loss to veteran Chip Ellis. “I’m getting more and more comfortable every run,” said Reed, who picked up considerably every time down the super-fast Maple Grove Raceway quarter-mile, from the 7.20s to the 7.10s to the 7.0s to, when it mattered most, in eliminations, the 6.90s.

“Shutting down can still be a little nerve-wracking,” said Reed, whose 2021 Charlotte accident unfolded well beyond the finish line. “You go through what I went through, and now when you get on the brakes at the top end, you can’t help but think, ‘Hey, this is where something bad can happen…’ I’ve made a lot of runs at almost 200 mph and never even thought about what could go wrong, but on a motorcycle, the shutdown is the hardest part. The scariest part.”

The weekend began with a thud when Reed never made it to the lanes for the first qualifying session. “We had some wires swapped around backwards,” he said. “Without a computer, it’s kind of hard to know that until you go to start the bike, and we couldn’t get the damn thing to start. Everybody’s thrashing, and finally I just said, ‘Stop. This isn’t the end of the world. Let’s just have it right for the next one,’ and we went from there.”

Reed got on the grid with a leisurely 7.22 at 188.41 mph later Friday afternoon, improved to a 7.16/179 early Saturday, and settled into the No. 15 position with a 7.04/192 that evening. It might not have changed the final outcome, but the team definitely could have benefited from that first qualifying pass because Reed picked up considerably on Sunday, and, with his reflexes, an extra run to build from might have made the difference.

Ellis, known more for getting the last thousandth of a second out of every run than for his starting-line reflexes, wasn’t there to win. He was in Reading to block for Matt Smith Racing and to help Smith win the event, which, by advancing to the final against Smith and strolling off the line with a casual .400 light, he certainly did. Reed nailed him on the Tree in the first round, but Ellis easily drove around his season-best 6.94 with an effortless 6.76.

“It was still a good weekend,” Reed said. “The coil was arcing off the frame and robbing power, and we kept chasing it and really could have used another run, but it is what it is. At this point in my life, I’m not gonna freak out about something like that. It’ll all be all right in the long run.”

PRO MOD – MARTIN 2023

September 11, 2023 / Todd Veney

What had already been a lousy weekend for Steven Whiteley turned downright dreadful in the first round of Pro Mod eliminations at U.S. 131 Dragway. Disaster struck when Whiteley, who, along with driver/tuner Brandon Snider, has basically been to the final round of every race all year, crashed into Ron Muenks.

Whiteley tested well leading up to the Mid-West Drag Racing Series’ U.S. 131 Nationals in tiny Martin, Mich., but when the race officially began, “everything went to hell,” as he tersely remarked. “We really struggled in qualifying,” he said. “Actually, it was more than ‘struggling.’ It was a complete disaster.” Tenth and last in the short 10-car field with an aggregate best of 4.14 at 126 mph, he lined up to face Muenks, the No. 1 qualifier with an outstanding 3.62/206.

Whiteley, who got plowed into by veteran Todd Tutterow in the first round of the 2019 NHRA Heartland Nationals in Topeka, became embroiled in another two-car crash here, but this one was nothing like Topeka. It was more reminiscent of his qualifying accident at the NHRA Southern Nationals at Atlanta Dragway in 2017.

“It was exactly like Atlanta, actually,” Whiteley said, disgusted. “That’s the first thing I thought when it happened: ‘Atlanta…’ I was in the right lane, just like before, and the car kept working its way over to the right, just like before. I got the front end to come down, and then the car darted left on me.

“I thought I had it,” Whiteley said. “Pulling the chutes was going to save it – I thought. The car was already coming back around and straightening itself out, and I was just going to barely miss him. I knew I could get the front end pointed in the right direction and figured the worst that could happen was that I might pancake the wall, but I got him right between the rear wheel and the spoiler. All of a sudden, he was right there, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

As if tearing up their beautiful ’69 Camaro wasn’t awful enough, this one was doubly tough for Whiteley and the J&A Service/YNot Racing team. On the odd 10-car ladder, the winner of that first-round match with Muenks would have had a second-round bye into the semifinals, and Whiteley’s biggest rival, points leader Keith Haney, capitalized fully by going on to win the race.