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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.

TAFC – INDY 2023

September 5, 2023 / Todd Veney

With a final-four finish at the biggest race of the year, former U.S. Nationals Top Alcohol Dragster champ Jim Whiteley turned in his finest showing to date as an NHRA Top Alcohol Funny Car racer, taking out, of all people, wife Annie Whiteley along the way. Jim, who won the 2013 U.S. Nationals en route to his second straight TA/D championship, made his best run of the year right off the trailer and delivered a steady, consistent performance not unlike his glory days in dragsters with six full pulls in six trips to the line.

Fresh off a St. Louis victory in the eighth-mile Mid-West Drag Racing Series, Jim made his quickest quarter-mile run of 2023, a 5.52 at 262.08 mph, and Annie was right behind him a couple pairs later with a 5.54 at nearly 265 mph in her clutch car. They ran side by side in each of two ensuing qualifying sessions with only Jim making it to 2nd gear under power, but Annie’s Mike Strasburg-tuned “Shattered Glass” machine came back to life when it mattered most, in eliminations.

Annie advanced with a smooth 5.59/262 against the A/Fuel Funny Car of Mick Steele, who made his first start in this class in 25 years, but Jim really had to work for it to get around many-time national event winner DJ Cox. He deftly worked the throttle to maintain control early and moved on with a backpedaling 5.64/256 that cost him lane choice for his highly anticipated quarterfinal matchup with Annie.

She shot off the line with an excellent .045 reaction time in that one, but Jim was already ahead of her with the first of consecutive .00 lights, a perfect .000. “I always do better against him,” said Annie, who developed ignition troubles downtrack. “But a triple-0 light? That’s just mean.” Her clutch light was irrelevant when the ignition cut out at 9,400 rpm in every gear.

“It felt like I hit the rev-limiter,” she said. “I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but I didn’t want to hurt anything and there was no way I was going to catch him, so I shut it off.” She coasted to a not-bad 5.68/236 but was well short of Jim’s 5.59/258.

In the semifinals opposite world champ Doug Gordon, Jim’s second straight .00 came up on the wrong side of perfection, a -.004 red-light that denied him a potential upset win. His Brandon Snider-tuned J&A Service Camaro was within striking distance of Gordon’s vaunted Beta Motorcycles entry, 5.50/266 to 5.57/259, and with anything from .001 to .003 green he’d have won on a holeshot.

PSM – INDY 2023

September 5, 2023 / Todd Veney

Cory Reed qualified on the bump at the NHRA U.S. Nationals and was out after a single round in his first start in nearly two years, but this time that wasn’t really the point. The only thing that mattered at the most prestigious event in drag racing was that he was back on a bike, back out where he belongs – both he and his teammate, 2022 championship runner-up Joey Gladstone.

The last time NHRA fans saw Reed, he was careening into Gladstone in the shutdown area in the second round of the 2021 Carolina Nationals in easily the most horrifying crash in the 40-year history of Pro Stock Motorcycle racing. “I had to make some 7.50 passes at 175 mph just to get my license back,” he said. “It was a little strange, but I guess it’s all part of the process of coming back. You’d think 175 mph might feel slow, but it didn’t – until we left Indy, everything up to 180 felt fast.”

Still hobbling but dead-set on returning to the quarter-mile, Reed accepted teammate Michael Phillips’ out-of-nowhere offer to run Indy on a two-valve bike. “We saw what Karen [Stoffer] did with the two-valve weight break [at Sonoma, where she ran a 6.79], and we were curious,” he said. “Michael called me one night and said, ‘What do you think? You ready to get back on a bike?’ and I thought, ‘What the hell? Why not?’ “

With the exception of the third session, the Reed/Phillips team showed steady improvement every time down the track, with times of 7.22/187, 7.21/181, 7.36/186, 7.19/185, and a 7.16/188 in last-shot qualifying, Reed’s quickest and fastest run of the long Labor Day weekend. A full four-tenths of a second behind Mr. Everything 2023, Gaige Herrera, who has taken the sport by storm since taking over for Angelle Sampey on the Vance & Hines flagship Suzuki, Reed didn’t expect to beat him in the first round, and he didn’t.

Nobody else would have either. Reed picked up considerably to a 7.09 at 189 mph but was no match for the runaway points leader’s 6.79/198 in a lopsided but ultimately unimportant loss. “I’m just happy to be out here and lucky to be riding Mike’s bike,” he said. “I had zero expectations coming into this weekend – I’m just here to have fun. For Joey and me, it’s just great to be back out here with our racing family.”

PRO MOD – ST. LOUIS 2 2023

August 22, 2023 / Todd Veney

Steven Whiteley’s relentless march to the 2023 Mid-West Drag Racing Series championship continued at Worldwide Technology Raceway in a dream weekend in which teammate Brandon Snider (whose points count just the same as if Whiteley himself was driving) made the final of the rescheduled Night of Fire & Thunder Friday night and Whiteley followed with a huge Heads-Up Hootenanny victory on Saturday.

“It’s been a great season,” Whiteley said. “We started coming on strong at the last two races of ’22 – we probably would’ve won Tulsa if we hadn’t shredded all those blower belts – and it’s carried right over to this year.” Since Whiteley finished second in the Chicago-Style Second Chance Shootout at the season-opening Drag Illustrated World Series of Pro Mod, it’s been one final after another: Snider won Tulsa, Whiteley made the final in Noble, Snider got second here, and Whiteley just brought down his biggest win since his career breakthrough at the 2017 NHRA Gatornationals.

Driving father Jim’s immaculate J&A Service ’69 Camaro, Whiteley qualified No. 2 and sailed through the first two rounds of eliminations, dispatching overmatched Robbie Vander Woude’s ’00 Camaro, 3.69/206 to 4.00/194, and Blake Housley’s classic ’41 Willys, 3.66/206 to 3.82/192. The stakes went way up in the semifinals against championship rival Keith Haney, and Snider, Whiteley’s irreplaceable crew chief, was ready for what both knew would be their biggest round so far this season.

Snider, who’d dumped Haney Friday night in a crucial semifinal decision, dialed up Whiteley’s best run of eliminations to that point, and Whiteley did his part behind the wheel, nailing Haney at the line and leading wire to wire for a 3.63/207 to 3.65/206 win that propelled the team into its fifth final of 2023. “That was huge,” Whiteley said. “Haney and I have had a rivalry going all year, the announcers were really playing it up, the crowd was into it, and we got it done again. Brandon beat him Friday night and I got him tonight.”

In the final, Whiteley produced his best run of the weekend, a 3.62/208, against the 217-mph turbocharged ’69 Camaro of No. 1 qualifier Mark Micke, who was coming off a big win the previous evening. Micke blew the engine in a huge cloud of smoke and never came around Whiteley, as he had the night before against Snider. “There was just smoke everywhere,” Whiteley said. “I could see it from inside the car. We’re leading the championship right now and really focused on these last three races. We just have to keep the momentum going.”

TAFC – ST. LOUIS 2023

August 20, 2023 / Todd Veney

He may have started at the bottom, but when the figurative smoke cleared, it was Jim Whiteley who stood tall, collecting the second victory of his escalating Top Alcohol Funny Car career. “It felt great,” said the 25-time NHRA national event winner of his latest triumph on the Mid-West Drag Racing Series tour. “It felt as good as any race I’ve ever won.”

The four-car field just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis at Worldwide Technology Raceway was, in a word, tight. Reigning NHRA Division 3 Top Alcohol Funny Car champion Phil Esz paced the field and Whiteley was dead last, but they were separated by just six-hundredths of a second, from Esz’s No. 1 3.63 at 208.75 mph to Whiteley’s fourth-best 3.69 at 207.88. In between were Jim’s wife Annie and the vaunted family team of veteran Steve Macklyn.

In a first-round battle of converter cars, Whiteley, who also scored at the final race of the 2022 MWDRS tour, the Xtreme Texas World Finals in Ferris, Texas, began his march to the $10,000 top prize with a close holeshot win over Esz. With a .059 reaction time Esz was hardly late, but Whiteley got the drop on him with a .045 and held him off at the eighth-mile stripe to win a close one, 3.64/207 to Esz’s slightly quicker 3.63/207. The margin of victory was just five-thousandths of a second.

Macklyn won the other first-round match, also on a holeshot, in another tight race against Annie. She was slightly quicker with a 3.67 at 209.72 mph – the fastest speed of eliminations – but couldn’t quite get around Macklyn’s quicker-leaving 3.68 at 203 mph. No such scenario played out in the final. Whiteley left on Macklyn by a hair, .056 to .059, and ran quicker and faster, too, with a 3.63 at 207 mph to Macklyn’s 3.67 at 202, making Whiteley a multiple major-event winner in all three alcohol categories – Top Alcohol Dragster, Pro Mod, and now Top Alcohol Funny Car.

PRO MOD – ST. LOUIS 1 2023

August 19, 2023 / Todd Veney

Steven Whiteley doesn’t particularly care who drives his car – talented driver/tuner Brandon Snider or him. To him, it still it isn’t that strange to stand on the starting line and watch his car charge down the track with someone else at the wheel.

“It really isn’t,” Whiteley insisted. “I get asked that a lot, but, first of all, it’s not my car – it’s my dad’s. I know Brandon’s driving style, and he’s good. Really good. He’s a lot better than I ever was. I’ll stage and wonder, ‘Did I do this right? Did I do that right? Is this the right rpm?’ He never thinks anything like that.”

At the rain-delayed Night of Fire & Thunder, contested in conjunction with the originally scheduled Heads-Up Hootenanny, Snider pulled off something even more important than winning: he took out rival Keith Haney, the biggest obstacle between Whiteley and his first Mid-West Drag Racing Series championship.

Snider proved his worth from the start, six weeks ago on the original date, when he tuned and drove the car to the No. 1 spot by more than a tenth and a half with a 3.69 at 205 mph, securing a first-round bye in the 13-car field. On that single, he came within thousandths of a second of low E.T. of the round with a 3.72/203, second only to hard-charging Mark Micke’s 3.71 at 215 mph, which was top speed of the meet by nearly 10 mph.

It set up a massive quarterfinal clash with Haney, which Snider won with a better light (.063 to .075) and a quicker (3.64 to 3.70) and faster (208 mph to 201 mph) pass. “The way he tunes the car shows how much more analytical he is than I am,” Whiteley modestly said. “I’m just a driver. I let go of the trans-brake button and send it, then tell Brandon what I felt when I get out of the car. He knows what’s going on the whole time – in or out of the seat.”

Snider then mowed down Jerry Hunter in the semi’s, 3.69/207 to Hunter’s slowing 3.85/187, but Micke grabbed the upper hand for the final on a 3.65/217 single. Picking up significantly to a 3.66/207, Snider gave the J&A Service/YNot Racing team a real chance in the final, but Micke ran him down before the eighth-mile with a superior 3.64/217.

“Brandon was winning,” Whiteley said, “but against that turbo car there’s not much you can do after half-track. He outran us, but that wasn’t the big thing for us this weekend. Beating Haney was the big thing, and Brandon beat him.”