YNot Racing

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PRO MOD – TOPEKA 2019

June 10, 2019 /

Steven Whiteley was minding his own business, charging down the right lane at nearly 250 mph in the first round of the Heartland Nationals, when opponent Todd Tutterow slammed into his car just past the finish line. Sliding sideways out of control across the stripe at 223 mph with a 5.80-flat, one of the quickest Pro Mod runs all weekend, Tutterow, the second-ranked driver of 2019, actually got the win.

But things got ugly fast after the finish line for the grizzled old pro. Tutterow, who won the season-opening Gatornationals and who’s made countless runs under every conceivable track and weather condition, took it a little too far this time, and when he made a correction farther down the quarter-mile than he likely ever has, his ’68 Camaro shot across the track and rammed Whiteley’s car. It trashed the left side of the once pristine ’18 Camaro and shoved it into the other wall, crunching the right side and more or less totaled the car.

“I never saw him until he got close,” Whiteley said. “By then, there’s wasn’t much I could do before he pancaked my car into the wall. He told me, ‘It sucks to tear up your stuff, but it sucks even more when somebody else’s gets torn up, too,’ and I thought, ‘Yeah, no kidding.’ It’s tough knowing your wife, your mom – basically your whole family – is watching. The weird part is that it was exactly one year ago that we debuted this car here at Topeka.”

It was an unfortunate but somehow fitting conclusion to the clash of past Gatornationals champions – Whiteley in 2017 and Tutterow, who’s lived through countless dangerous runs down every backwoods track in the South across all eras of big-time door-car racing, three months ago. In the same round, four cars were destroyed – the 1st Gen and 6th Gen Camaros of Tutterow and Whiteley, the late-model Camaro of Pro Stock/Pro Mod racer Alex Laughlin, who smashed up the left side of his car when he lost vision but pressed on anyway, and the split-window ’63 Corvette of past national event champ Jeremy Ray, who just missed collecting superstar Erica Enders in a frightening crash that opened the single most eventful round in NHRA Pro Mod history.

It marked the end one of the finest-looking Pro Mods to ever grace the J&A Service Pro Mod series but shouldn’t keep Whiteley down for long. The second-generation star will be at Bristol this weekend supporting father Jim Whiteley and back in action next weekend at Norwalk with his old Cadillac. “I’m not sure when the Camaro will be back,” he said. “Maybe Indy.”

TAFC – CHICAGO 2019

June 2, 2019 /

Coming off low e.t. and top speed of the meet in Route 66 Nationals qualifying (5.48/270.20-mph) and a semifinal showing in the prestigious Jegs All Stars race, six-time national event champion Annie Whiteley got a bad draw for first round: five-time national event winner Andy Bohl was No. 16. Bohl, making his first start in a Camaro purchased from 2018 championship team owner Tony Bartone, anchored easily the toughest Top Alcohol Funny Car of 2019 – all 17 cars have run at least in the 5.50s.

Racing under the lights Saturday night in the first pair of the first round, Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing Yenko Camaro and Bohl’s Howards Cams entry shot off the line as one. Whiteley sprinted to a two-car-length lead while Bohl, beset with traction problems in low gear as he had been all weekend, dropped back. Whiteley charged to a winning 5.51 at 269 mph while Bohl’s car made an abrupt left turn at the 2-3 shift, plowing into the wall at a disturbingly direct angle and, when the left rear tire went down, sliding upside down in a shower of sparks into the opposite-lane barrier before ramming head-on into the wall back in his own lane and erupting in flames. He leapt out the escape hatch and clambered over the wall to safety while Whiteley, oblivious to the fiery crash behind her, coasted uneventfully to a stop, wondering what was taking the NHRA Safety Safari so long.

“It seemed like I was sitting there for forever, and when they finally pushed me off the track, [crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] ripped the hatch open and asked if I was OK,” Whiteley said. “I didn’t know what he was talking about, and it was a good 10 minutes before he got around to telling me what we ran and it all started making sense. Watching the, the first thing I thought was, ‘That’s exactly what Jim’s crash at Pomona in 2007 looked like’ – sideways into the left wall, then into the right wall, then back into the left.’ ”

It started raining before NHRA officials could clear the wreckage, and the remainder of the round was postponed. When racing resumed Sunday morning, Whiteley was victimized by Kris Hool’s lethal .024 reaction time and dropped a tough second-round match to the Wyoming driver, 5.52/264 to 5.49 271 (top speed of the meet). “We’re really fighting something in the clutch right now,” she said. “It’s not responding like it normally does – the travel to get it to engage is way more than it should be. What could ever cause it to change that much I have no idea, but instead of moving the pedal an inch to get the car to roll, it was like three inches.”

PSM – RICHMOND 2019

May 21, 2019 /

YNot/PSE teammates Cory Reed and Joey Gladstone just missed a highly anticipated head-to-head second-round showdown at the Virginia Nationals when Reed was unceremoniously dumped by Hector Arana Jr. in the first round of eliminations. Gladstone put away 2009 NHRA champion Hector Arana Sr. in another first-round match, so another Arana-Arana matchup in the quarterfinals never materialized, either.

Reed assumed the early qualifying lead with a straight-down-the-groove 6.969 at 192 mph off the trailer. He slowed to a 7.13/188 Friday evening, improved incrementally to a 6.962 at just short of 194 mph Saturday in Q3 that left him smack in the middle of the pack, and entered eliminations mired in the No. 14 position after a dispiriting 7.02/191 Saturday afternoon.

Pitted against Las Vegas winner Arana Jr., who now stands third in the 2019 NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle standings, Reed managed just a 7.10 187 mph – two-tenths of a second and 10 mph off what he’s capable of, in a discouraging loss to the perennial title contender’s 6.90-flat at 197 mph minutes after Gladstone had dispatched Arana Sr. with what surprisingly was technically the first holeshot win of his NHRA career. “I’ve left on a lot of people and have this reputation for being really good on the lights,” said Gladstone, who whipped the senior Arana’s 6.97/194 with a slower won 7.00/191, “but that’s the first time I’ve ever actually won on a holeshot.”

PRO MOD – RICHMOND 2019

May 20, 2019 /

Running on his own while his dad, team leader Jim Whiteley, sits out until his new “Stevie Fast” Jackson combination is refined enough to race, Steven Whiteley absorbed his first DNQ of the J&A Service Pro Mod season. Steven, who was going rounds everywhere, rising high as fifth in the points standings, was in solidly the 5.80s and to most was securely qualified heading into the final day of qualifying.

Not to him, though. “No way that’ll hold,” Whiteley said before the third of four qualifying sessions for the NHRA Virginia Nationals at Virginia Motorsports Park. Stuck in a precarious position after two of four qualifying sessions – 15th in a field of 16, two cars from being out in the cold – he improved, but not enough to ensure himself a berth in what’s long been established as the toughest field in drag racing.

“We’ve got to run better or we’ll get knocked thing for sure,” Whiteley said, and he was proven right – barely. When the tire smoke from nearly 30 blown, turbocharged, and nitrous hot rods had cleared, he wound up in the most frustrating qualifying spot of all, No. 17 – one position shy of making the show. After running a 5.893 at 247.84 mph out of the box that ordinarily would have had him set him up for bigger things to come, the 2017 Gatornationals winner improved by the smallest measurable margin, one-thousandth of a second, to a 5.892 that left him on the outside looking in.

Whiteley’s immaculate Camaro coasted to a shutoff 10.15 at 87 mph in the second of four qualifying sessions and to a 10.93 at 80 mph in the third that positioned him 15th going into last-shot qualifying, tied with Chip King at 5.893 but 15th and not 16th because of his faster speed – 247.84 mph to King’s 247.66. He improved to a 5.892 but was in the other lane when King climbed ahead of him with a 5.85. Vowing not to return to the series that bears his company’s name until he’s running good enough to win, father Jim Whiteley joined Steven on the sidelines, but with eventual event runner-up Stevie “Fast” calling the mechanical shots going forward, that shouldn’t last long.

PSM – ATLANTA 2019

May 5, 2019 /

Right off the trailer at Atlanta Dragway, which has hosted major events since the IHRA glory days of the 1970s, Cory Reed sped to a 6.98 at more than 192 mph that qualified him No. 3 at the time. Following an aborted 14-second time in the second session opposite veteran Karen Stoffer, he rolled silently across the finish line in the never-good upright position at 49 silent mph in Q3 and entered last-shot qualifying an uncustomarily low 12th on the provisional grid, eyeing something in the low 6.90s or high 6.80s on his final attempt.

Instead, Reed’s bike registered an unfulfilling 7.01 at 191 mph and he entered eliminations in the No. 12 qualifying spot. PSE/YNot teammate Joey Gladstone finished a couple spots ahead of him, 10th in the final order with an aggregate best of 6.94/193.99. Between them was 2009 NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle champion Hector Arana Sr., who clocked in at 6.95/194.55.

Reed, who has never had any luck against 2016 world champion Jerry Savoie, his first-round foe, blasted off the line with a clutch .026 light, but for once he didn’t get the best of even that battle. Savoie, never known for his reaction times, outdid him with an even better .013 bulb and pulled away for a 6.91/192 to 7.01/191 round-win, his fifth in five head-to head-matchups with the former motocross racer. To compound the YNot’s team’s frustration, Gladstone came out on the wrong end of a hard-fought first-round encounter with Ryan Oehler in which both drivers cut killer .015 lights, 6.92/195 to 6.95/192, despite holding the lead to half-track.

PRO MOD – ATLANTA 2019

May 5, 2019 /

The 2019 Southern Nationals is one race that won’t make the jam-packed highlight reel of the YNot team’s many successes in drag racing. Two-time Top Alcohol Dragster world champion and multiple Pro Mod event winner Jim Whiteley wasn’t around for the first round of Pro Mod eliminations and son Steven was but didn’t last long.

Jim ran a 5.99 off the trailer Friday but had to shut off in the second of four qualifying sessions that evening, and son Steven was off the gas early both times on the unforgiving Atlanta Dragway surface, where in Friday night qualifying three years ago he had the only crash of his career but actually qualified on that run.

Come Saturday morning, Jim picked up half a tenth to a 5.95 but still found himself on the bubble and Steven went from unqualified to the top half of the field with a 5.87, but when Jim ran even quicker (5.94) in last-shot qualifying Saturday afternoon, he still ended up on the outside looking in. Steven did make the cut with the 5.87, but the wheels came off when eliminations commenced and he lost losing to reigning world champion Mike Janis’ backpedaling 6.27 after cutting one of the best lights of his or anyone’s career, .010. Steven’s YNot Camaro went into violent tire-shake early in the run and he had to lift, helpless as Janis drifted toward the center line, eventually lifted, and still advanced with a 6.27 at just 200 mph.

TAFC – CHARLOTTE 2019

April 28, 2019 /

Former Four-Wide Nationals champion Annie Whiteley just missed a second career victory at Charlotte when her car went ballistic right off the line in the final against Tyler Scott, who’d never been close a national event victory until now. Whiteley, who won the Four-Wides in 2017, went down to an opponent’s all-over-the track 5.70-flat in the final for the second time in a row, again after running flawlessly through the preliminary rounds of eliminations.

Whiteley’s car actually had run great not just all day but all weekend. “It was going perfectly straight, but I probably didn’t make it 60 feet,” said the nine-year veteran, who was in the 21st final of her Top Alcohol Funny Car career. “It’s not like it went into tire shake in the middle of low gear or anything – it just blew the tires off. I came off the throttle as soon as it started to go paint-shaker on me, but there’s no way the car should have done anything like that. I mean, we barely changed anything, and what we did change should have made it less aggressive, not more aggressive. [Crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] richened up the barrel valve three flats. I never expected anything like that to happen, and Mike and the guys damn sure didn’t.”

“The track cooled down a little between the semi’s and the final,” Strasburg said. “It should’ve been fine. The only thing that changed before the final round was the track getting eight degrees cooler, which should’ve only made things better. It should’ve gone right down through there with another 5.40-something.”

By then, Whiteley had every reason to believe she was in line for her seventh career national event title. She’d already made it through what should’ve been the hard part, having slayed the dragon himself – reigning world champ Sean Bellemeur, who won the Gatornationals with a national-record 5.35 – in the semifinals. In the other semi, Scott just had to take the Tree to advance on a single.

“Beating Sean was like winning the whole race, but we still had to win one more round,” said Whiteley, who moved from fifth to third in the national standings with her latest final-round appearance. She and Bellemeur had already blown everybody away with a side-by-side 5.44-to-5.45 classic in qualifying, and she was knocking off her best reaction times of the season round after round. “I decided to just do what I know how to do and not go doing anything crazy. I think sometimes you just try too hard, and I’m not doing that anymore. Getting yourself all psyched up so you cut a light – it just doesn’t work.”

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2019

April 28, 2019 /

Steven Whiteley was riding high coming into Charlotte for the Four-Wide Nationals, a Top 5 driver in the standings and one of the odds-on favorites to win the race. Three days later he pulled out of ZMax Dragway a non-qualifier, clearly aggravated and dead set on turning things around after his first first-round loss all year.

Friday was a complete disaster for the young driver, one of the more consistent qualifiers on the J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod circuit year after year. Rain and 41-mph winds killed one qualifying session, and he was timed out on the line in the other one. After a shake-plagued shutoff blast Saturday morning, things weren’t looking good for the YNot team heading into last-shot qualifying, but as it has many times before, they came through under pressure with a 5.78 at nearly 253 mph to make the show.

Anything close to that Sunday morning in the first round and Whiteley would’ve been in the semifinals because only one car in his quad made it to the finish line under power. Whiteley was second off the line, trailing only Sidnei Frigo’s telepathic .015 reaction time with an outstanding .033, and they all crossed the finish line in the inverse order of how they left the starting line. Rickie Smith cut just a .090 light but laid down a 5.77 to finish first, and Chad Green’s 8.27 at 120 mph was enough to advance, literally hundreds of feet ahead of Whiteley’s aborted 10.19 at 87 mph and Frigo’s distant 13.95 at 47 mph. In one of the more unusual heats in the anything-but-orderly history of four-wide competition, nobody was within two seconds or 30 mph of anyone else.

PSM – CHARLOTTE 2019

April 28, 2019 /

At the Four-Wide Nationals, which racers in every pro category seem to loathe but absolutely fans love, Cory Reed turned in his strongest performance of the 2019 season. The former NHRA Rookie of the Year started off well and got only tougher from there, advancing to the semifinals in easily his finest performance since he landed in his first career final the at the Dodge Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway late in his 2016 Rookie of the Year campaign.

When absurd 40+ mph winds turned two scheduled qualifying attempts Friday at palatial zMax Dragway into a single session, Reed’s YNot/PSE team clocked an off-the-trailer 6.93 at 192 mph that positioned them in the No. 2 spot at the time. Running in the last of five quads with all the top dogs Saturday in Q2/Q3, Reed stepped way up to a 6.84 at 197.28 mph that propelled him into the upper reaches of the Pro Stock Motorcycle stratosphere. Granted one last crack at the track, Reed’s team showed that the 6.84/197 was for real with a consistent 6.89/196 and entered eliminations smack in the middle of the pack.

In the first round, stuck in the middle of theoretically the toughest quad – 1/8/9/16 – Reed advanced, finishing second of the four with a 6.88/195 that trailed No. 1 qualifier Karen Stoffer’s 6.81/197 but was more than enough to top second-generation driver Jim Underdahl’s 6.93 and former YNot teammate Angelle Sampey’s out-of-the-groove 7.13/151. In the semifinals, Reed left with the other three and outran No. 1 qualifier Karen Stoffer’s 6.95 but his right-there 6.91 wasn’t quite enough to deal with eventual runner-up Eddie Krawiec’s 6.85 or upstart Ryan Oehler’s 6.89. “.040 lights – that’s not gonna cut it,” Reed said. “I can do way better than that. I have and I will – to win, I’ll have to.”

TAFC – HOUSTON 2019

April 15, 2019 /

Picking up right where she left off in a dominant victory four days earlier at the rain-soaked Dallas regional, Annie Whiteley stormed to a 5.52 under overcast skies in the opening session of SpringNationals qualifying to claim the provisional pole by a mile. An even better 5.50-flat Friday afternoon set her up in the No. 2 position on the final grid behind eventual final-round opponent Brian Hough, who took the top spot with a 5.48 and held it for good when last-shot qualifying Saturday afternoon was washed out.

Whiteley’s J&A Service YNot team, led by crew chief Mike Strasburg, stepped up even more in the first round of eliminations to a 5.45 at 272.17 mph (top speed of the meet) to dispatch overmatched Aryan Rochon. A similar 5.48 at more than 271 mph in the semi’s was enough to wipe out many-time divisional and regional champ Kirk Williams, who trailed her across the finish line by about a car length with a competitive 5.55/259 after upsetting Jay Payne, one of the most prolific drivers of all time in both Top Alcohol Funny Car and Top Alcohol Dragster.

In the final against Hough, who had only beaten her once in four previous encounters, Whiteley blew the tires off right when anything close to either of her qualifying times or either of her winning eliminations runs would have been enough to win. “I was in trouble by 60 feet,” she said. “I tried to pedal, but it wasn’t having it. If he would’ve blown our doors off with another 5.40-something, that’d be one thing. But a 5.70 in the final? That’s a little tough to take. I mean, even a 5.60-anything would’ve been enough. We hopped it up a little because it looked like the track could hold more than a 5.48, and the way he’d been running, we thought we were going to need it. Maybe we just got a little greedy.”

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