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PSM – NORWALK 2018

June 25, 2018 / Todd Veney

Cory Reed pulled out of Norwalk, Ohio in a better place than when he arrived, a first-round casualty but one wiser and better positioned for the future than when he left Richmond and especially Chicago. The former NHRA Rookie of the Year entered in eliminations for this race 11th on the grid, a spot that typically holds the promise of a fair chance at beating the fast-half qualifier, who’s only five spots ahead in sixth place.

But in this instance, the No. 6 qualifier was reigning and many-time world champ Eddie Krawiec, who went on to win the whole race. “We learned a lot this weekend,” said Reed, who had gone rounds at consecutive races to open the season but hasn’t since. “We burned up the clutch trying to pull a gear we thought we could run. I didn’t really think it was going to work, and it didn’t. With that longer gear, the bike is dragging when you shift gears – not ‘snapping.’ It’s just not going anywhere, and you can feel it – it’s obvious.

Reed was consistent in qualifying, and at it’s a good thing he was – inclement weather limited the two-wheel contingent to just two qualifying attempts instead of the usual four. Team Liberty reeled off similar runs of 6.95/193 and 6.97/193 – one on Friday and one on Saturday. In completely different circumstances in the first round of eliminations Sunday, Reed remained in that range with a competitive 6.95/192, but the Harley rider pulled away with a 6.90/193 and went on to the event title.

“We’ll test before the next race [Denver], and we’ll be ready when we get there,” Reed said. “We’re making changes around here, and I know they’re going to help. We’re starting to see the big picture. With these things, you need to get the momentum going early in the run – if you don’t, you’re done.”

PRO MOD – BRISTOL 2018

June 19, 2018 / Todd Veney

At the Thunder Valley Nationals in picturesque Bristol, Tenn., another promising weekend ended in frustration for Steven Whiteley, who’s been qualifying at the top of drag racing’s most competitive class all year, when he got bounced again in the first round. This time he was at the very top of the Pro Mod qualifying charts – No. 1 – with a 5.823 that held up all weekend as low e.t. “I knew that was a decent run,” he said, “but I couldn’t believe it ran that quick, especially in these conditions. That was right on the edge of not making it – I don’t think the car could have run another .82 five minutes later.”

It wasn’t the only time Whiteley would top all qualifiers at Thunder Valley. Saturday afternoon, when steamy conditions made it impossible for anyone to approach his .82 for the top spot, he established low e.t. of that session, too, with a 5.88. “We knew that No. 1 run from Friday wasn’t going be taken down in these conditions,” he said Saturday, “so we used the day as a test session to have more data for race day.”

The wheels came off again in the first round opposite cagey old pro Todd Tutterow, who would go from the bump spot all the way to the final. Tutterow, seemingly down 13-hundredths of a second, matched his 16th-best 5.95 qualifying time while Whiteley reluctantly lifted early. “It was too weak,” he said. “What’s funny is that the car was set up exactly the same as it was on the No. 1 run, just backed up a little to account for the conditions. Jeff [Perley, Whiteley’s crew chief] figured it would run slower, but not that much slower. It’s bitten us before, and we thought we were getting pretty good at not backing up too much, but a run like that almost makes you wish ran bad all the time so you don’t look like a bunch of idiots losing in the first round after running good all weekend.”

TAFC – DENVER 2018

June 18, 2018 / Todd Veney

After years on the cusp of victory at her adopted home track, Top Alcohol Funny Car star Annie Whiteley went the distance at Bandimere Speedway, the Denver-area track husband Jim owned for his entire his career. Annie, who had a runner-up, two semifinal finishes, and two first-round losses at Bandimere, won the 2018 final by the just about closest possible margin over former Indy Comp winner Jirka Kaplan: 3-thousandths of a second.

“It feels so good to finally win here,” Annie said. “Jim just won here every time. I couldn’t even tell you how many times he won [six in a row – the last six years he competed in Top Alcohol Dragster: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013]. It was nice to finally win after getting so close so many times.”

Whiteley, who scored earlier this year at the Belle Rose, La., regional and the 4-Wide Nationals in Charlotte, started from the No. 2 qualifying position behind two-time championship runner-up John Lombardo, 5.74 to 5.78. Kaplan strapped a .007 to .140 holeshot on Lombardo in the first round to eliminate the top qualifier, 5.86 to 5.85, and singled in the semifinals. Whiteley had to do it the hard way and win all three rounds head-to-head to take home the title. She matched her No. 2 qualifying time right to the thousandth of a second in a 5.785 first-round decision over Steve Macklyn, who red-lighted, and topped perennial championship contender Jay Payne in the semifinals, 5.91 to a shutoff 6.58.

In the final, Whiteley wheeled her YNot/J&A Service Camaro to her quickest and fastest run of the weekend, 5.76/255, to hold off Kaplan, who also made his quickest and fastest lap of the weekend, by literally a foot. “I never saw him,” she said. “I just stared straight ahead like I always do and never noticed the win-light come on. After losing in every other round, most of them a couple times, this is just a great feeling.”

PSM – RICHMOND 2018

June 11, 2018 / Todd Veney

Cory Reed staggered into Richmond determined to shake off the most discouraging outing of his career and officially hit rock bottom in the opening qualifying session with an even more disappointing 7.28. From the depths of the Pro Stock Motorcycle qualifying order, Reed’s Team Liberty Buell then picked up dramatically to a 6.96 Friday night, skyrocketing 10 spots in the order. “There’s no magic to this,” he said, “just hard work. We wasted time testing a tire that really killed the bike, really set us back, but I think that’s all behind us now.”

Reed stepped up even further Saturday afternoon with a 6.93 and woke up Sunday back in the race, with a legitimate shot to go rounds and a positive attitude about both his team and Pro Stock Motorcycle racing in general. “The bike class is still growing, and there are big gains to be made for all of us,” he said. “We can find a tenth out here – I’m not kidding. It’s there. We can go 205 mph. The whole field can be in the 200s. The front half of the class is really tight, really competitive, compared to the last couple of years.”

Facing a driver from that top half in the opening round of eliminations, No. 3 qualifier Matt Smith, Reed got the jump off the line, as he typically does, but Smith ran him down for a 6.87 to 6.98 win. “I don’t even care,” he insisted. “We’re better off now than we were when we got here. Larry [Morgan] and Jim [Yates] came up through the hard times of Pro Stock – they know what it takes to win out here. It doesn’t matter if it’s Pro Stock or Pro Stock Motorcycle – motors are motors, clutches are clutches, and transmissions are transmissions. Get it all right, and you’ll win.”

PRO MOD – RICHMOND 2018

June 11, 2018 / Todd Veney

Hot off the promising debut of his new Camaro in Topeka, Steven Whiteley starred in qualifying at the Virginia Nationals in Richmond, setting top speed at 252.71 mph and claiming the No. 5 spot with a 5.82. “Everything we learned off the old car we applied to the Camaro,” he said of the venerable Cadillac he drove to victory last year in Gainesville. “We ran the wheels off that old car – it had 960-some runs on it – but this new car has development from Pro Stock.”

The new Camaro went 0-for-2 on Friday, shaking on the first run and being pushed off the starting line on the second, but hopes were high for Sunday’s eliminations after Whiteley pounded out back-to-back 5.82s in Saturday’s qualifying sessions, first a 5.828 and then a 5.821 late in the day after a storm blew through and drastically changed the conditions. “Jeff [Perley, Whiteley’s crew chief and a key member of several championship Pro Stock teams] figured out a lot on his own and brought it to this team. A lot of what we’ve done is what Pro Stock guys were doing – Jeff just applied it to Pro Mod before other people got on to it.”

Right when a long run in eliminations seemed a foregone conclusion, Whiteley was stopped in the first round by Chicago-area driver Dan Stevenson, who stepped up to a 5.81 while Whiteley’s car inexplicably slowed from earlier in the weekend. The team underestimated the completely resurfaced Virginia Motorsports Park quarter-mile, and Whiteley, who had never lost to Stevenson, slipped to a disappointing 5.89. “We just missed it on the tune-up,” he said. “No excuses – there was a lot more out there, and we didn’t realize it.”

PSM – CHICAGO 2018

June 2, 2018 / Todd Veney

Motivated by back-to-back top-half qualifying performances at Charlotte and Atlanta, Cory Reed and his Liberty Racing crew pulled into Chicago thinking big. “We were all pumped up, like, ‘Hey, we’re going to win this race,’ but, uh, no,” said the 2016 NHRA Rookie of the Year, clearly disappointed. He opened with an off-pace 7.15 and it only went downhill from there.

Well aware that he wasn’t going anywhere in the second session, Reed shut off early and actually went into Saturday not qualified. He then picked up to a 7.03 at just short of 190 mph that squeaked into the field in the 15th spot, and after a similar 7.04 in last-shot qualifying found himself qualified, though barely so in the 16th and final spot. He was pitted against many-time world champ and No. 1 qualifier Andrew Hines in round one, but as it turned out, it didn’t matter who Reed lined up against when eliminations commenced Sunday afternoon – his engine refused to fire, and he was peeling off his gloves as his bike was pushed away from the starting apron when the light turned green for that first-round match.

“We had a different injector for this race, different manifold, shorter pipes, and moved the power curve up,” Reed said. “It all looked good on the dyno, but that’s not how it turned out. You make a small change to the clutch, and nothing happens. Even a big change, nothing happens. Out of nowhere, it does something it’s never done before. When we fried the clutch, we thought, ‘OK, no problem, that wasn’t the right way. We’ll just work back in the other direction,’ but that didn’t work either. It’s been a mess. Right now, the clutch just is not repeatable, but believe me, we’ll get this figured out before the next one.”

TAFC – TOPEKA 2018

May 21, 2018 / Todd Veney

After plowing through the first third of the season with one late-round finish after another and winning the season opener in Belle Rose, La., Annie Whiteley and the YNot Top Alcohol Funny Car team hit their first bump in their road at the Heartland Nationals in Topeka, Kan. Whiteley, who had reached at least the semifinals of every race all year, was unceremoniously dumped in the first round of eliminations by Texas upstart Bryan Brown, who had never beaten her before.

Whiteley shut off on her first qualifying attempt, coasting to a 7.62 at just 126 mph, and rebounded with a cautious 5.60 at 265 mph on her only other attempt at the rain-plagued event, which put her No. 3 at the time and was good for No. 5 when the last car cleared the traps. Under threatening skies in the first round, with storm clouds gathering and rain clearly on the way, she left with a competitive .074 reaction time, but her best lap of the weekend, 5.59, was edged out by Brown’s virtually identical 5.58. As soon as they exited the track, the skies opened and racing was halted for nearly an hour.

“Not much you can do about a deal like that,” Whiteley stoically said later in the pits. “You can’t shoot for the 5.40s and risk smoking the tires when you have the advantage – you have to just make sure you make it down the track. We did, but not quick enough, I guess. Looking at all the numbers, the guys said there was a lot more left, but what are you going to do? We’ll just try to be better at the next one.”

Next up on the schedule for the YNot/J&A Service Top Alcohol Funny Car team is the Central Regional at Bandimere Speedway just outside Denver, where Whiteley’s husband, Jim, always dominated in Top Alcohol Dragster but where she’s still looking for her first win after one near-miss after another.

PRO MOD – TOPEKA 2018

May 21, 2018 / Todd Veney

Until the light turned green in the first round of eliminations, the debut of Steven Whiteley’s immaculate ’18 Camaro at the Heartland Nationals in Topeka, Kan., couldn’t have gone much better. The Jerry Haas-built beast’s first official run was a 5.84 at 251 mph that gave Whiteley the provisional qualifying lead, and after 16 cars had run he was still on top. Next came a better 5.80-flat, a 5.81 that was low for that entire session, and finally a 5.78 that landed him No. 2 of 24 cars on the final grid.

Then came the first round of eliminations, when Whiteley lost traction and Pro Mod veteran Todd Tutterow stepped up dramatically from his 15th-best qualifying time to a 5.80. Whiteley, a winner last year in Gainesville, shoved the clutch in and coasted to a 7.27 at 137 mph while Tutterow disappeared in the distance, bringing a disappointing end to what had been a promising debut.

“We made one full run at St. Louis after leaving Haas’ shop, loaded it up, and went to Topeka and ran that .84 off the trailer,” Whiteley said. “I really can’t complain about a weekend like this with a brand-new car, and I’m still trying to figure out how to drive it – it’s so different from the old car. I can see better, for one thing, but the biggest thing is that it has auto-shift. The old car was the last one out there with a clutch and no auto-shift. I hate auto-shift – it’s boring. You drive the car and it shifts itself and it just seems like, as a driver, you should be doing more. I wish they’d make it a rule that the driver has to shift the car himself, but there’s no rule and this thing shifts at exactly the right time every time, so there’s really no choice.”

PSM – ATLANTA 2018

May 7, 2018 / Todd Veney

Missing the middle rounds of eliminations for the first time all year, Cory Reed absorbed the first early exit of Team Liberty’s promising 2018 season at the NHRA Southern Nationals at Atlanta Dragway. “We were chasing a clutch tune-up and different gear ratios, trying to learn,” Reed said following a narrow first-round loss to championship contender Scotty Pollacheck.

“It was still a good weekend, if you ask me,” Reed said. “The team came together, people meshed, and everybody’s morale was good. We just ordered six complete transmissions so we don’t have to spend time changing gears between runs. It’ll just be ‘Take this one out and put this one in’ because rebuilding the whole transmission just takes too long to do it between rounds. We weren’t here to test – we came to win – but each pass was a learning experience, and things are looking up.”

Reed grabbed the early qualifying lead with an off-the-trailer 6.88 that had him in the No. 2 spot when the opening session wrapped up, No. 3 at the conclusion of Friday qualifying, and No. 7 on Saturday’s final grid. He and Pollacheck left the line within a thousandth of a second of each other Sunday morning and charged down the quarter-mile side by side to the finish, where Pollacheck persevered by about a bike length, 6.93 to 6.97.

“That sucked, but I’m not down,” Reed said. “The season’s 16 races long – you’re going to lose first round a time or two. My first year out here [2016], I didn’t qualify three times and we still made the Countdown. We’re building for the future. People are telling me we’re assembling a super team and we are – these are the exact people I would pick if I had my choice of anyone out here. Ken [Johnson] and Darrell [Mullis] have the bikes prepared perfectly every time, and everybody knows what Larry [Morgan] and Jim [Yates] can do. I’m not out here for a good time – I want to make my name in drag racing and bring this whole class up. I’m here to win championships.”

PSM – CHARLOTTE 2018

May 1, 2018 / Todd Veney

After what transpired at the Four-Wide Nationals, former NHRA Rookie of the Year Cory Reed is probably better positioned than ever to take down that elusive first NHRA title. In the first quad (round) of eliminations under the sometimes-confusing four-lane format, Reed trounced not only Ryan Oehler in the lane next to him but both Joey Gladstone and reigning world champ Eddie Krawiec on the adjoining track to his right for the most significant round-win of his young career.

“I knew I was going to win that time,” said Reed, who pulled out the zMax gates 5th in the NHRA standings, the highest he’s ever been at any point in any season. “The way I feel now is the mindset it’s going to take to win one of these things. I feel this way and act this way because I really do think we can wax anybody at any time.” Such optimism is hardly unfounded – the addition of all-time Pro Stock greats Larry Morgan and Jim Yates has clearly transformed Team Victory, which is sneaking up on the long-established Pro Stock Motorcycle elite a little more each time out.

Reed found himself in the No. 1 qualifying position after two complete sessions of Friday qualifying for the first time in his career with a 6.83. His winning first-round time against Oehler (who also advanced to the semi’s – second place in each quad moves on, too), Gladstone, and Krawiec was a 6.81, his quickest time to date. The .81 stood as Low E.T. for all 16 bikes in that round – another career-first – but according to the driver himself it could have been a few ticks quicker. “It spun the tire,” he said, “I got a little excited and short-shifted three gears or that seriously would have been about a .77.”

“The motors go Columbus [Ohio with Morgan] after every race,” Reed said. “We do all the chassis stuff at the shop, and at the track Jim [Yates} has spreadsheet after spreadsheet of gear ratios to try. You can really tell the difference. I was at about mid-track on the first run we ever made and thought, ‘This thing really sounds aggressive.’ It just sounded mean, like some kind of growl. There’s so much power, every time I shift, it spins the tire for a split second.”

Early in the semifinal quad it spun a little too hard, and Reed slipped to a 6.94 and fell to Scotty Pollacheck, who won with a 6.84, and Matt Smith, who also made it to the final by finishing second with a 6.88. “The 60-foot time sucked,” Reed said. “It spun so bad, it killed the momentum for the whole run. We’re still trying to find that sweet spot and it’s a little hit-or-miss right now because we don’t have enough data with this much power. But when we hit it, we really hit it. I have to say, right now is the best things have ever been.”

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