Hot off a victory in Louisiana in her only previous 2018 appearance, Annie Whiteley laid down a 5.464 at 274 mph – the seventh-fastest run in in the long history of Top Alcohol Funny Car – in the first of two qualifying sessions and followed with an unbelievable 275.34-mph blast to reset the national speed record she already had. Last year in the Fall Nationals final against Doug Gordon, in the quickest side-by-side race in class history (5.37-5.38), Whiteley had become the first (and still the only) driver ever to reach 275 mph with a historic 275.00-mph charge.
With a 5.42 E.T. on that landmark run, Whiteley qualified No. 1, and in the first round against two-time regional event finalist Aryan Rochon, her YNot team advanced easily with a steady 5.47 at 271.46. She was traveling nearly 214 mph at half-track, but anything would have done – Rochon was out of it early and shut down to a 10.69 at just 78 mph. In the semifinals, when another 5.46, 5.42, 5.47, or anything close to any other run she’d made all weekend would have been enough, she was forced to pedal and lost to Kris Hool, who’d finished second to her a week earlier in a nerve-racking final in Belle Rose, La.
Whiteley made only run she made all weekend that wouldn’t have won, and Hool made only run he’d make all weekend that wouldn’t have lost. She recovered to record a still-good 5.51, again at more than 270 mph, closing in on Hool’s car every foot of the course beyond half-track, but he had just enough of a lead to hold her off. The margin of victory: 11-thousandths of a second.
“Of all the times for the car to do that,” Whiteley said. “Any other run … it gets a little old after a while. If we could’ve just run a little better or I could’ve cut a little better light, we could’ve been in another final, but the car had to go and do that right then. It was perfect up till then. Testing, qualifying, eliminations – the car’s been just about perfect all year.”
Tag: 2018 (Page 5 of 5)
Annie Whiteley opened the 2018 season just as she did in 2017 – with a dominant win in the swamps of bayou country at the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series event at No Problem Raceway in Belle Rose, La. With one good run after another she was never headed, but that barrage in the preliminary rounds did her no good when it was time for the only round that mattered – the final.
Due to mechanical issues, travel problems, and the vagaries of early season scheduling, just two of the many teams slated to be in the lanes for the first qualifying session actually were: Whiteley’s YNot team and the Hool Bros.’ SK Tools crew from Wyoming. That meant no first round, no semifinals – just one run for the title.
“There’s always going to be nerves when you’re in a final,” said Whiteley, whose YNot Racing team, led by crew chief Mike Strasburg, had pounded out consecutive runs ranging between a track-record 5.44 at 271 mph and a 5.51 at 270. When the call went out for teams to report to the lanes for the final round, there was no buildup, nothing to draw from.
“It wasn’t like a normal final, where you’ve won all these other rounds to get there,” Whiteley said. “Every other final I’ve been in, at least I could say, ‘Well, I won the first round. I won the semi’s.’ This time, we both just rolled up there and whatever was going to happen was going to happen.” What happened was Whiteley left with a solid .075 reaction time and had it all the way with a steady 5.51 at 270.50 mph. Hool red-lighted, shut off, and coasted to a 10.89 at less than 100 mph. “That was one of the hardest runs I’ve ever made,” Whiteley said. “It’s just you and him. The whole weekend came down to that one run.”