Tag: 2024 (Page 2 of 3)

TAFC – BRAINERD

August 19, 2024 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley put together another solid if unspectacular weekend at the Lucas Oil Nationals, one not unlike several others this season: she didn’t the race but went rounds, knocked off a top contender, and walked away rightfully encouraged about her team’s immediate future.

For the 13-year veteran, who reached her first national final here as a rookie in 2012, the clear-cut highlight was a huge first-round win over drag racing’s fastest-rising new star, Maddi Gordon, who, in her young career, already has established herself as a leaver. Gordon, who won her first major Top Alcohol Funny Car title at the Northwest Nationals three weeks ago, was more or less on time with a respectable .070 reaction time, but Whiteley had her all the way with an outstanding .027 light for a 5.51 to 5.50 holeshot win.

“I almost felt bad about it,” Whiteley said later. “I’d never want to see Maddi lose like that. I didn’t want to race her in the first place. I love her – her whole family, really. Who doesn’t?”

Neither team had much to go off of heading into the first round of eliminations. Nobody did. Delayed by repeated oil downs from the fuel cars, Top Alcohol Funny Car and Dragster racers sat around all day Friday and never did get to run. Saturday, when teams got what turned out to their only qualifying attempt, Whiteley laid down a 5.56 at 264.91 mph. Then the first round got pushed back to Sunday morning.

Momentum from winning that huge all-female first-round match ebbed a round later when Whiteley’s promising weekend was cut short by tire shake against eventual winner Bob McCosh. Again, she was off the line first with a clutch reaction time (.030), but this lead was short-lived. She went up in smoke almost immediately.

“I wonder if NHRA is prepping the track the same on Sunday as they do earlier in the weekend,” Whiteley said. “No way did we think the car was going to do that. It’s weird – sometimes my brain says, ‘pedal it,’ and other times I just hold the throttle down like it’s somehow going clean itself up. It never does. I guess that time my brain just didn’t compute.”

PRO STOCK – SONOMA

July 29, 2024 / Todd Veney

Already a national event finalist in one professional category, Cory Reed reached the Sonoma final in just his second start ever in Pro Stock. Reed, who came within a round of winning Maple Grove in 2016, his first season astride a 200-mph Pro Stock Motorcycle, came within a whisker of his first major title, falling 6.54 to 6.55 to Aaron Stanfield, who’s won more races this year than Greg Anderson or Erica Enders or anyone in Pro Stock.

“The car ran good and I was driving pretty decent,” Reed said. “It was just one of those days when everything goes your way. Between Joey [Gladstone] and me, we’ve always had good luck at Sonoma. Joey won his first NHRA national event here [in 2022], and I guess it’s just one of those tracks that seems to like us.”

Powered by a KB-Titan 500-inch big-block and crewed by trusted allies from his two-wheel glory days, Gladstone and Dave Kuschke, Reed claimed his first Pro Stock round-win when veteran Deric Kramer’s car went silent right off the line, sending the sleek, immaculate J&A Service Camaro to a runaway 6.53 win. Teammate Eric Latino was the next to go, falling on a second-round holeshot, 6.58/208 to 6.56/208.

“It’s not like I was cutting .020 lights or anything,” Reed modestly said. “It was more like .040s and .050s, actually, but I wasn’t floating the pedal or trying too hard and upsetting the chassis. I had that pedal slammed to the floor and wasn’t trying to squeeze it and cheat, making it push back and release too soon and upsetting the car. You’ve got to be right on that threshold, where it’s not kicking back.”

Superior starting line driving carried Reed through the semifinals, too, when Jerry Don Tucker turned it red – right when Reed really could have used a break. “I didn’t know he red-lighted,” Reed said. “It didn’t feel like I was late, but when you see the other guy out there that early, you think he Tree’d you and start cussing yourself. Then I looked up and saw the scoreboard, and it’s a good thing he went red because after I got behind I short-shifted and only ran a .64.”

Reed picked right back up to a 6.55 in the final but fell to Stanfield’s slightly quicker 6.54. “I just wanted to prove to myself that Seattle wasn’t fake, that I can really do this,” he said. “Stanfield’s hard to beat. He’s a savage. If he ends up doing this long enough, he’ll be one of the best to ever do it. To be honest, I was already a fan of his before I started doing this. He’s a badass – that whole family is.”

TAFC – SEATTLE

July 22, 2024 / Todd Veney

It was one 5.46 after another for Annie Whiteley at the NHRA Northwest Nationals, where she won in 2015 and nearly did again last year. The first one, a 5.469, came right off the trailer Friday morning, and she got only quicker from there with an even better 5.465, her quickest run all year, at 270.05 mph (top speed of the meet) that afternoon.

Following a shut-off 10.48 at 114 mph on an aborted shoot-for-the-moon blast Saturday morning in last-ditch qualifying, Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing team was right back in the 5.40s with another 5.46 that evening in the first round – right when it didn’t matter. It came on a bye she earned by qualifying No. 1, so any ol’ run would have been enough.

Sunday in the semifinals, where all four cars ran in the 5.40s, Whiteley missed what would’ve been a fourth 5.46 by the closest possible margin, one-thousandth of a second, with a 5.470 that left her just short of Brian Hough’s nearly identical 5.48. Nine-thousandths of a second quicker at the Tree or on the quarter-mile and Whiteley, who finished second to outgoing world champion Doug Gordon here last year, would’ve been part of the first all-female final round in Top Alcohol Funny Car history. (Gordon’s daughter, rookie phenom Maddi Gordon, went on to beat Hough in the final and became the 100th different woman to win an NHRA national event.)

With an .088, light Whiteley wasn’t exactly late, but if she’d had another .077 like she did on her first-round single, or Hough had had another .121 like the one he had last weekend at Woodburn, where she left on him and beat him in the first round, and she’d have been in her 22nd career national event final. “With this two-step, you really want to get in there first,” she said. “Hough always used to want to stage last, but now he always wants to go in first – everybody with a two-step does. This is a crappy way to lose, but the guys really have this car running good.”

PRO STOCK – SEATTLE

July 22, 2024 / Todd Veney

With a just handful of burnouts and a few runs to draw from, Cory Reed, already an accomplished racer in one category, made his debut in another and looked like a pro doing it. At the Northwest Nationals at picturesque Pacific Raceways, the former Pro Stock Motorcycle racer shot to No. 1 on the Pro Stock grid with an outstanding 6.53 on his first full run ever.

In the first round, Reed might have been even more impressive – in a losing effort. An in-the-bag win over two-time 2024 tour winner Troy Coughlin Jr. dissolved in the last few hundred feet when the loose, dicey conditions forced him to lift. A lesser driver might have crashed.

“You hate to get out of it when you don’t see the other guy, but I didn’t want to wad this thing up in my first round in Pro Stock,” Reed said. “Troy was like, ‘Man, you had me,’ but the car was spinning the tires hard, and I really didn’t want to crash.”

Delayed hours by repeated rain delays and two crashes in the first round of Funny Car, Reed/Coughlin was the first pair down the track in Pro Stock. After Reed’s brush with disaster, the other 14 Pro Stock teams returned to the pits, NHRA officials immediately went to work on the track, and the remaining seven pairs were run way later under drastically different (and better) conditions.

Utterly inexperienced but encouraged after licensing, Reed and the J&A Service team made their official debut at the furthest track from K-B/Titan headquarters in faraway North Carolina. “It shook on the first qualifying run – I may have done a few bone-headed things because I’m still learning – and that 6.53 in Q2 was the first full pass I ever made in a Pro Stock car,” he said.

“Before we went to Seattle, I did six burnouts in the burnout car, wore the transmission out, then did a few more burnouts in Darlington. The first test pass at Rockingham, I destroyed the transmission, and for a minute there I was thinking, ‘Do I really want to do this? What are these guys thinking about me?’ But after running a 6.59 without even taking it all the way to the finish line, I felt a lot better about it.”

All things considered, Seattle was a successful, rewarding debut. “I was about over the bikes anyway,” Reed said. “We were going to start all over with our own engine program with K-B Titan, but you get to thinking about it and it’s like, ‘This could take a while.’ I was talking to my dad, and he said, ‘What about Pro Stock?’ We’re already right there with K-B and it was like, ‘Hey, why not?’ And here we are.”

TAFC – WOODBURN 2

July 15, 2024 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley and team picked up the pieces from the frustrating first leg of Woodburn Dragstrip’s Western Regional “double” with their best finish in NHRA competition this season, qualifying atop the Top Alcohol Funny Car field and storming to the final round. “The track changed a lot for that second race,” she said, “and that made all the difference.”

Whiteley shot to the top of the qualifying grid right off the trailer Saturday morning – much to her surprise. “The track was bald,” she said. “Bald. Absolutely, perfectly smooth. They work so hard to make this place perfect, but when it gets that hot, what are they supposed to do? Brian Hough ran right in front of me and just annihilated the tires, so we thought for sure I was gonna smoke the tires, but it made it.”

Whiteley’s “Shattered Glass” Chevy Camaro did more than just make it – it made it to the other end with low e.t. and top speed of the event, a 5.66 at 266.42 mph. “We couldn’t believe it,” she said. Hers was the only car in the 5.60s, comfortably ahead of Ray Martin’s 5.72 and miles ahead of veteran Bret Williamson, who ran a 6-flat and Hough, who never got down the track.

With a 5.70 at 265.95 mph, Whiteley also had low e.t. and top speed of the first round, easily turning back Hough’s similar 5.70/262 after drilling him on the Tree. “The car didn’t smoke the tires that time, but it was kind of slow,” she said. “I mean, 5.70? The clutch was back to being super light. We thought it would be way hot again and figured the clutch would come to us, so we changed hardly anything for the final.”

It made perfect sense, but when the car launched, Whiteley blew ’em off again, and though Martin, now driving the Miner Bros.’ retro-styled Camaro, did too, her car lost traction first and it cost her the race. “Ray pedaled,” she said. “I did too, but I guess I stayed with it too long. It was like, ‘Hey, good job against Brian, but this time … no.’ I pedaled one more time just to feel like I was doing something, but no way was I catching him.”

TAFC – WOODBURN 1

July 13, 2024 / Todd Veney

Facing oppressive, draining heat and a touchy, temperamental track surface, Annie Whiteley and the J&A Service/YNot Racing team hit Woodburn Dragstrip, that rare race track with the best kind of owners: racers. The venerable family-owned facility hosted a huge contingent of Top Alcohol Dragsters and a small but fierce assortment of Top Alcohol Funny Cars in a “double” – back-to-back Western Regionals held on a single weekend.

After an up-and-down day of testing, Whiteley had to shut off on both qualifying attempts, eventually plopping into the fourth spot with a disappointing best of 9.72 at just over 100 mph. “It was hot as hell and the track was really tricky,” she said. “Even the Top Dragsters were struggling to get down it. At one point, the track was 146 degrees and the temperature gauge on the car read 156.”

Whiteley’s “Shattered Glass” Camaro took the tire off on the first test pass, setting off a troubling trend that would persist all weekend. “The only thing we could think to do is switch back to our two-run tires,” she said. “The guys backed the car down, worked their magic, and it ran a 5.61, so, naturally, we thought, ‘We’re good. Now we know what the car wants.’ But on the first qualifying run it was a weak shake – the clutch showed that we actually didn’t give it enough.”

Well aware that the conditions were only going to get hotter, crew chief Mike Strasburg tweaked the tune-up for Q2, but the car smoked the tires anyway and a setup for Whiteley’s first-round opponent, No. 1 qualifier Brian Hough, was anyone’s guess. “We figured, ‘OK, let’s just go halfway in between,’ ” Whiteley said. “Nope. Smoked the tires anyway. I pedaled it, and for a minute there, I didn’t see him and thought I had chance. Then he blew by me. I hit the bump, and he was gone.

“Driving back down the return road, I yelled, ‘Hey, maybe it’s the tires – that’s the only thing we haven’t changed.’ The same thing happened in Mission a few years ago. Something wasn’t right, so we put on a set with 56 runs on them and set the track record. So for Race 2, we changed the tires and kept the same tune-up and things worked out a lot better.”

TAFC – FLYING H

June 2, 2024 / Todd Veney

At the Mid-West Drag Racing Series’ Summer Smackdown, the first major event at drag racing’s next big-time track, Flying H Drag Strip, Annie Whiteley went out early for the first time all year. The driver of the 276-mph “Shattered Glass” Camaro was nipped by defending MWDRS Funny Car champion Steve Macklyn in the first round but still enjoyed the J&A/YNot Racing team’s first trip to the all-new Midwestern facility just east of Kansas City in Odessa, Mo.

“It’s a nice track,” Whiteley said. “They’re still working on it but I think it’s going to be a really nice facility. They ran out of time to finish the asphalt in the upper pits before this first race and there was still a lot of gravel because everything is so new, but the Funny Cars and Pro Mods we were all on asphalt.”

Whiteley started from the fourth position, behind husband Jim, who led all qualifiers with an outstanding 3.61, NHRA championship contender Bob McCosh, and Macklyn, who joined Jim in the low 3.60s. Veterans Mark Billington (3.68) and Lance Van Hauen (3.78) rounded out the field.

When eliminations got under way, Jim was upset by Van Hauen and Annie came out on the wrong end of a tough first-round match with Macklyn. She was on time with a .066 reaction time, but Macklyn got off the line first with a telepathic .007 reaction time and led from wire to wire in a great race, 3.64 to 3.66. Still, there was reason for optimism with the newfound promise of Whiteley’s two-step setup.

“I miss revving the car up on the starting line like I used to, but I have to say I like this thing because, let’s face it, it’s definitely made me better,” Whiteley said. “Without the two-step, whenever it smoked the tires, I’d be panicked, like ‘Did I just mess up the swap?’ Now, I’m not. Like [brother-in-law] Jeff [Strasburg] says, there is no foot swap, so how can you mess it up?”

TAFC – DALLAS

May 21, 2024 / Todd Veney

A semifinalist, at least, at every race this year, Annie Whiteley plowed forward at the Central Regional at Dallas with yet another final-four performance. At the original supertrack, the world-famous Texas Motorplex, she just missed low E.T. in qualifying and just missed her second final-round appearance of the season, which, had she gotten that far, would have, without question, resulted in a second straight win.

There was no final-round opponent, and, thus, no chance of a runner-up finish – Whiteley was either going to lose in the semifinals or win the event. Unfortunately for her, she lost in the semifinals to Kyle Smith, whose reaction time just missed costing him the race.

Three-thousandths of a second quicker than his near-perfect .002, and Smith would’ve red-lighted, handing Whiteley a final-round berth and, ultimately, a final-round win because Bryan Brown, who needed only to stage in the other semi to secure a berth in the title round, was sidelined by a broken crank. “It was doubly bad,” said Whiteley, who blew the tires off immediately and coasted silently across the finish line at 96 mph while Smith shot ahead with a beatable 5.57.

“We all knew Bryan wasn’t going to be there for the final,” Whiteley said. “He’d already come by and told everybody. People offered to help him put something together so he could run, but he just said, ‘We’re done,’ so the semifinal was basically the final.”

Whiteley had driven the “Shattered Glass” Camaro to the No. 2 spot in qualifying, behind only Bob McCosh (5.52 to 5.53), and had strapped a huge holeshot on returning veteran Mark Billington in the first round, .014 to .102, for a lopsided 5.55/264 win. He lost traction immediately and coasted through the traps with an E.T. and speed both in the 20s.

In the semifinal/final, Whiteley was right on time with a solid .064 light, but reaction times proved immaterial when she went up in smoke at the hit. “It spun the tires instantly [60-foot time: 1.16], which probably hurt my reaction time too, and when it blows the tires off that early, there’s nothing you can do. The car kicked sideways a little, and I saw Smith out the window and thought, ‘Damn, he’s really hauling ass, isn’t he?’ “

TAFC – TULSA

May 13, 2024 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley’s first victory of 2024 was just her latest triumph at Tulsa Raceway Park, where she’s been winning since she started racing Funny Cars back in 2012. Her final-round victim this time: husband Jim Whiteley, who just missed a perfect light with a -.002 foul that handed the Mid-West Drag Racing Series’ Throwdown in T-Town title to his all-time favorite opponent.

“I was late going down on the pedal, which usually means I’m going to be late, and I had my worst light all weekend,” Annie said. It was, but even it was pretty good, a .060. “I was excited to win, but it sucked because I don’t like to see Jim lose – especially like that.”

Annie, who’d qualified second, fourth, and third in her previous 2024 starts – all on the quarter-mile in NHRA competition – reigned supreme at Tulsa, where she locked down her first No. 1 of the season with an outstanding 3.62 at nearly 212 mph, top speed by more than three and a half miles per hour. Driving a matching J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro dressed in white, Jim tied friend Steve Macklyn right down to the thousandth of a second for No. 2 spot with an identical 3.632 E.T. but qualified higher on the basis of his faster speed, 208.30 mph to Macklyn’s 207.59.

In the first round, Annie ripped off a 3.63/211, nearly matching her Low E.T./top speed marks from qualifying, to erase veteran Lance Van Hauen, then breezed through the semifinals to meet Jim in the final. He had a much tougher road, topping Bryan Brown in the opening round, 3.64/206 to 3.87/200, and surviving a memorable matchup with Macklyn in the semifinals. Both cut near-perfect .00 lights and both ran 3.66s, but Jim was a tick better on both ends of the track – .003 to .006 and 3.664 to 3.669.

“You get down to the final at these Mid-West races and you’d better bring everything you have,” Annie said. “The track can be kind of iffy for testing on Thursday, then gets pretty good on Friday, and by Saturday it’s a lot better. I don’t know what they do or how they do it, but they just keep working on it all weekend and by the finals, the track is perfect.”

Annie ran a 3.63 and Jim a 3.65, but their E.T.s meant nothing when he went red by 1/500th of a second. “I don’t know why, but I always seem to do my best against him,” said Annie, who’d had a perfect .000 light in qualifying. To cap an already memorable weekend, grandson Breccan won the Jr. Dragster title and shared a toast with dad Steven – a Dr. Pepper for him and a beer for Dad.

TAFC – LAS VEGAS

April 15, 2024 / Todd Veney

Quietly putting together a solid season with one late-round finish after another, Annie Whiteley kept the ball rolling at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, always one of her favorite tracks. Fourth in the standings and third in final qualifying coming into eliminations, she moved first with a .052 light and charged ahead of bucks-down upstart Charles McLaws and second-generation driver Will Martin in the first round, advancing easily with a 5.49/267 over McLaws’ 5.62/257 and Martin’s 5.60/260.

With three or four cars on the track at the same time, it isn’t necessary to “win” – to reach the finish line before every other car – to advance through the preliminary rounds. You just have to finish in the top two, but Whiteley had the best reaction time and the best E.T., leaving first and easily outdistancing the others despite her unfamiliarity with (and barely disguised disdain for) her new two-step.

“With this thing, I still have to tell myself not to go up on the throttle when I’m pre-staged,” she said. “I’ve done it the old way so many times, muscle memory still tells me to start revving it up to 7,000, and I really have to go out of my way stop myself from doing it.”

Whiteley’s new setup proved to be her undoing in the semifinals, where she lost to eventual winner Sean Bellemeur and Hunter Jones in a race not nearly as close as the E.T.s alone would indicate. Bellemeur ran a 5.50, Jones a .51, and Whiteley a .52, but Bellemeur and Jones hit the Tree while she, clearly distracted, did not. (McLaws finished a distant fourth with a 5.72.)

“I was late going down on the throttle that time,” Whiteley explained. “At this point – I’m still learning – I have to get in there [stage] first. If you do, you have more time to get set. I used to just barely have to let go of the brake and the car would roll in [to the staged beam], but with this two-step, I have to move the clutch pedal to get the car to roll. I have to think … and when you’re up there on the starting line, thinking is the absolute last thing you want to do.”