Tag: Annie (Page 12 of 17)

TAFC – BOWLING GREEN 2017

August 28, 2017 / Todd Veney

In her first appearance ever at Beech Bend Raceway Park in Bowling Green, Ky., host of the first all-sportsman national event in drag racing history in 1974, Annie Whiteley obliterated the Top Alcohol Funny Car track record with a speed almost 100 mph faster than alcohol cars were running in the ’70s: 272.72 mph.

Whiteley made one flawless run after another in testing, struggled in the first qualifying session, then, facing an unthinkable DNQ with just one attempt remaining, ran a blistering 5.51 that put her in the No. 1 spot at the time. She settled for No. 2 when another driver racing for the first time in Bowling Green, perennial title contender Doug Gordon, hit a 5.49.

The track was completely different by the time eliminations kicked off Sunday afternoon, and Gordon was upset by the slowest qualifier in the field, Phil Esz. Whiteley nearly was, too, but, facing Chris Foster, whom she had beaten a week earlier in Brainerd, Minn., in a wild, all-over-the-track first-round match, came out on top in another weird first-rounder she easily could have lost.

“I have no idea what happened to the track between Saturday and Sunday – neither do a lot of other people, based on what they ran – but it was nothing like the track we thought we had,” she said. She left on Foster and survived with a backpedaling 6.26 at 243 mph but wasn’t as lucky opposite eventual winner Ray Drew in the semifinals, pedaling to a 6.03/233 that was no match for his consistent 5.61/260.

“[Crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] and the guys aren’t sure why the car wouldn’t go down the track in eliminations, but we know it’s making a lot of power,” Whiteley said. “These cars are hard to figure out sometimes, but if we can run as hard next week as we did on that one qualifying run here, maybe we’ll win the big one next week at Indy.”

TAFC – BRAINERD 2017

August 21, 2017 / Todd Veney

In the picturesque resort country of Brainerd, Minn., where she runner-upped last year and reached the first national final of her career in 2012, Annie Whiteley came up just short of another final-round appearance.

With a bye to the final round of the Lucas Oil Nationals on the line, Whiteley came out on the wrong end of a tight quarterfinal match against touring pro Kris Hool, 5.50 to 5.53. “The car ran great – exactly what we thought it would,” she said. “We didn’t know he was going to run a .50-flat. That’s kind of how things have been going all year.” The winner of that round earned a bye into the final, and, as has been the case far too often this year, the luckless YNot team came up a few hundredths of a second short at just the wrong time.

Whiteley qualified a solid fifth with a 5.566 at 269.13 mph in the first qualifying session, then followed with broken runs in the remaining two sessions and another in the first round. She lost traction early in that one but, for once, got a break – opponent Chris Foster, fresh off back-to-back regional wins on the same weekend in Indianapolis, broke a rear end and could only coast helplessly toward the far end.

Granted a rare reprieve, Whiteley tromped on back on the throttle for the easy win. Only from her perspective, it didn’t seem easy at all. “I kept wondering when he was going to come back around me,” she said. “I automatically shifted when the car shook, but that didn’t get rid of the shake, so I lifted. When I got back on it, I was already in 2nd gear. It took a loooooong time for that shift light to come on for high gear – almost to the 1,000-foot mark. Right when I was starting to think that I missed it, it came on.”

Whiteley hit high gear and scooped up the win with just a 6.48 e.t. but a speed that indicated what was to come in the following round and, hopefully, for the rest of the year. Despite lifting early and losing momentum in the most important part of the run, she charged across the finish line at more than 258 mph. On the losing 5.53 run in the quarterfinals, she obliterated the track record with top speed by a mile, running a track-record 273.33-mph speed on a weekend when no one else ever got out of the 260s.

TAFC – SEATTLE 2017

August 7, 2017 / Todd Veney

A totally unexpected mechanical glitch knocked Annie Whiteley out of the Northwest Nationals – right when everything was going perfectly. At venerable Seattle International Raceway, site of some of the greatest runs in Top Alcohol Funny Car history, Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro reigned atop the qualifying charts after the opening session with a strong 5.538 at 269.67 mph.

Things got only better as qualifying progressed, as Whiteley and crew chief Mike Strasburg backed up their off-the-trailer shot with equally impressive and nearly identical runs of 5.528/268.01 and 5.532/270.86. Set up perfectly for eliminations, Whiteley seemed even more sure to win when opponent Steve Gasparrelli, the eventual runner-up, managed just a 6.10 against her in the first round.

Unfortunately for Whiteley, she didn’t even make it to the Tree that time before going up in hard smoke. “The idle was too high,” she said. “The guys tried everything but couldn’t get it to come back down.” The result was an engine running way too lean and getting way too hot, which created way too much power and led, inevitably, to an up-in-smoke loss.

“The cylinder heads were 190 degrees – not 140, like they’re supposed to be,” Whiteley said. “The butterflies in the injector got ‘twisted,’ which also made the launch rpm too high – 7,600 instead of 6,800 or 7,100, like normal. It just made too much power. Lately, we just don’t have any luck. That could’ve happened on a warmup or on a qualifying run, but it had to happen right in the first round of eliminations. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just one more way to lose.”

TAFC – NORWALK 2017

June 26, 2017 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley set low e.t. of the meet and had top speed until the penultimate round of eliminations en route to a quarterfinal finish at the NHRA Summit Racing Nationals that solidified her hold on a Top 5 spot in the national standings.

Whiteley, a four-time winner on the national circuit with more than a dozen victories in regional competition, qualified the J&A/YNot Racing Camaro a solid 3rd in the Top Alcohol Funny Car field with an outstanding 5.53. She unloaded a 5.50-flat at more than 270 mph in the opening round of eliminations to establish low e.t. for the entire weekend and easily eliminate Canadian Tyler Scott, whose Larry Dobbs entry now is tuned by ex-YNot crew chief Roger Bateman.

In the second round against Chris Foster, who would go on to his third career runner-up finish at this event, Whiteley slipped to a 5.59 and lost a photo-finish match to Foster’s 5.62. Foster fought his car off the wall for much of the run but maintained the lead to win by the invisible margin of just seven-thousandths of a second.

“It shook and I had to short-shift 2nd gear,” Whiteley said. “That 5.50 was perfect, and you can’t help but wonder, ‘Why couldn’t I have run the .59 in the first round, when anything would have done, and the .50 that time?’ but there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s just the way things have been going lately.”

TAFC – MISSION 2017

June 5, 2017 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing team endured a frustrating weekend at Mission Raceway on the shores of the Fraser River in scenic Mission, B.C., struggling for traction throughout testing and qualifying and falling in the first round of eliminations despite running low e.t. of the meet.

The team’s frustration was compounded by the fact that the winner of that first-round matchup with recent nemesis Chris Marshall earned a semifinal single into the finals, making it a 32- or 53-point swing from the 64 runner-up points she’d have been guaranteed and the 85 point she would’ve received for winning the final, which she almost certainly would have.

“We got to the track ahead of time to test, but more than just trying stuff we were there to break in some tires,” Whiteley said “We never really get to – it rained. We ended up making two runs, didn’t make it down the track either time, and never made it down the track in qualifying, either – 0-for-3.”

Fifth on the grid when eliminations began with a shutoff best of 8.22, Whiteley stormed to a track-record 5.49 at one of the fastest speeds in Top Alcohol Funny Car history, 273.30 mph. It was her misfortune to do so right when opponent Chris Marshall laid down the best run of his young career, a 5.50-flat, and cut a better light to advance directly to the final.

“We put the exact tune-up in the car that we had in it at Belle Rose [where she dominated all weekend for her second victory of the season],” Whiteley said. “We thought, ‘Hey, maybe we were just misreading the track.’ Then we changed the transmission, but that didn’t work, either. Finally, [crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] figured, ‘OK, it’s not the track, it’s not the tune-up, and it’s not the transmission ratio.’ He realized that we’d really never had a weak shake since we started running Hoosiers, put some 47-run-old Hoosiers on the car and ‘boom,’ it went right down the track – 5.49, 273.”

A solid fourth in the Top Alcohol Funny Car standings, just 1 point out of third and well over 100 points up on fifth-place Ray Martin, Whiteley races next at the Summit Nationals June 23-25 in Norwalk, Ohio, where she just missed winning in 2015.

TAFC – TOPEKA 2017

May 22, 2017 / Todd Veney

With a runner-up to John Lombardo, who had never beaten her in national event competition, Annie Whiteley just missed a third win and second national event title early this season. At the Heartland Nationals at sprawling Heartland Park Topeka, where she had laid down multiple 5.40s and some of her best reaction times of the season, she went up in smoke off the line in the final and lost to Lombardo’s sub-par 6.26.

Whiteley took the lead for about 15 feet in the final with a clutch .047 reaction time, then went up in smoke, pedaled until the car was such a bucking bronco that there was no point in continuing, and coasted to a 9.22 at 111 mph. To compound the frustration, Lombardo, who earlier had made the third-best run in class history, 5.398, was pedaling for his life in the other lane, eventually recovering to win with an E.T. that would lose virtually any round at any race all year.

It was a disappointing end to what had been a great weekend. Whiteley and the YNot team reached the final round for the third time in 2017 by knocking off top-ranked Shane Westerfield in the semifinals in one of the closest races of all time. “Shane’s about the last guy I’d ever want to race,” Whiteley said of Top Alcohol Funny Car’s top-ranked driver. “He leaves on everybody. When he wasn’t already ahead of me, I actually thought, ‘I must have had a decent light – I don’t see him’ somewhere in low gear. I heard how close it was later but I never saw him the rest of the way.”

Westerfield was right there, falling to Whiteley’s 5.47 at 269 mph with a 5.44 at 272. Margin of victory: .0002 (1/5000 of a second). It was even tighter than her .0019-second MOV over Lombardo in the Gainesville semi’s that ended up being even more important than this round was, a rare two-for-one: as the winner, she got a single for the Gatornationals title when opponent Dan Pomponio was unable to return from a blown engine in the other semi.

Whiteley, who ended up No. 3 in rain-shortened qualifying with a 5.48/270 and erased Brian Hough in the quarterfinals with an outstanding 5.43/273, was grateful to still be around after the first round. Granted a first-round bye when Jeff Jones was unable to return after destroying an engine on an explosive, fiery qualifying run, she suffered some engine damage of her own, blowing up well before half-track and coasting to a 7.65 at 104 mph. “We had to change everything,” she said. “We didn’t end up winning, but the guys fixed everything and had the car running better on Sunday than it already was.”

TAFC – CHARLOTTE 2017

May 2, 2017 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley qualified No. 3 at the 4-Wide Nationals at zMax Dragway with a 5.54 and got only quicker from there, easily winning the first round with a 5.536 and barely losing in the quarterfinals with a 5.535 at 269.24 mph – just 0.05-mph off of top speed of the meet.

It was her misfortune to make that run against off-and-on nemesis Andy Bohl, who ran .05-mph faster in the other lane, edging her 5.535/269.24 with a slightly quicker and faster 5.520/269.29. “We take turns beating each other – one for him, one for me, one for him, one for me,” Whiteley said. “I guess it was his turn. It must have been really close down there – I never saw him, and he never saw me. We got out of our cars and asked each other, ‘Who won?’ ”

By three-hundredths of a second, Bohl did and moved on to the semifinals. Whiteley’s identical 5.536 in the first round was more than enough against former East Region champion Matt Gill, who shook hard off the line trying to make up the distance between his No. 14 qualifying berth and her No. 3.

After breaking right off the line on the first qualifying attempt, Whiteley’s Mike Strasburg-tuned J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro was never out of the 5.50s or under 260 mph thereafter. She clocked a solid 5.561 at 267.59 mph in the second session and backed it up with a 5.545/268.87 in Q3. “After that first qualifying run, the car ran great all weekend,” she said. “If we keep doing what we’re doing now the rest of the year, we’ll be fine.”

TAFC – HOUSTON 2017

April 24, 2017 / Todd Veney

Perennial championship contender Annie Whiteley, who had won half the races she entered this year as she pulled through the gates of Royal Purple Raceway, suffered a frustrating and frustratingly close first-round loss at the NHRA SpringNationals.

At the same Houston track where she just short of victory with a runner-up at the 2014 race, Whiteley qualified No. 6 this year with a 5.585 and was paired against Top Alcohol Funny Car rookie Ray Martin in the first round. Whiteley picked up half a tenth in the first round, wheeling the J&A Service/YNot Camaro to an outstanding 5.53 at nearly 270 mph.

Unfortunately for her, Martin, who was 7th on the grid with an almost identical 5.587, chose that round to run an even better 5.49/264 and won by about a car-length. “That was a tough draw,” Whiteley said of Martin, whose car is owned and tuned by 2014 Top Alcohol Funny Car world champ Steve Harker.

“We were in the No. 2 spot until the last qualifying session,” Whiteley said. “The car took the tires off in that session and it was, ‘See ya later.’ By the time the session was over, we were all the way down in the middle of the pack, and whenever that happens at a national event, you know you’re going to have somebody tough in the first round.”

TAFC – BELLE ROSE 2017

April 11, 2017 / Todd Veney

In her first appearance ever at No Problem Raceway, Annie Whiteley built off the momentum from her breakthrough Gatornationals win last month, her biggest in years, with a second victory in just three 2017 starts, dominating from the outset and leaving with low e.t., top speed, and both ends of the track record.

“The car was smooth every run,” Whiteley said. “The guys were chasing the heat and the track, and they really stayed on top of it. They kept adjusting the tire pressure and timing because the track was getting hotter but basically left it alone and the car kept repeating. The left lane was good and the right was a little iffy so you really wanted to keep lane choice, and we had it every time.”

Deadly consistency – a 5.57, 5.55, and 5.56 in eliminations, all three at exactly 268 mph – carried the J&A Service/YNot Racing team to the title in tiny Belle Rose, La., about an hour north of New Orleans. Whiteley set not just low e.t. and top speed but low e.t. and top speed of all three rounds of eliminations after shattering the track e.t. and speed marks with a 5.508 at 268.80 mph in qualifying.

After a solid 5.57 on the first-round single she earned by qualifying No. 1, Whiteley took out two-time national event winner Kris Hool in the semi’s with a 5.55. In the final against Bryan Brown, the only other driver in the 5.50s this weekend, she pounded out an almost identical 5.55 to easily turn back Brown’s trouble-plagued, up-in-smoke 6.42.

“It was a great weekend,” Whiteley said. “No Problem is out in the middle of nowhere, but it’s a nice, long track, which was great – we had a chute failure three runs in a row. Not both chutes, thank God, or there could have been a problem, but there was plenty of room to get stopped anyway. We tried so hard last year and never came home with any Wallys. Now we’ve only been to three races and we’ve already got two.”

TAFC – GAINESVILLE 2017

March 20, 2017 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley made the two greatest runs of her career in the semifinals and final round of the NHRA Gatornationals for her fourth career national title and first since Seattle in 2015.

“Sometimes you wonder if things are ever going to go your way again, but a weekend like this makes it all worthwhile,” said Whiteley, who ran a 5.40 (low e.t. of the meet) to edge defending champion John Lombardo in the semifinals and a 5.41 on a final-round single when 2013-2014 Gatornationals winner Dan Pomponio was unable to appear. “The car was just unbelievable all weekend.”

Despite an outstanding 5.45, Whiteley qualified just fifth in the field, then survived major scares in the early round of eliminations. In the opening round, she was just about to get strapped in for what she thought was a single when she was informed that, due to a mistake by NHRA officials, she would not have a bye run but instead would be racing Bill Naves. “We were really going for it that time because with a bye run, why not?” she said. “If it makes it, you know how hard you can push it for the next round, and if it doesn’t, you win anyway because there’s no one in the other lane.”

The car didn’t make it, shaking the tires violently and giving Naves, who qualifying attempt, a shot at the biggest round win of his NHRA career. Fortunately for the J&A Service/YNot Racing team, Whiteley was able to get the powerful beast back under control in time to blow past Naves for a 6.44 to 8.11 win.

In the quarterfinals, Whiteley got a scare of a different kind when opponent Andy Bohl, who had run one 5.4 after another until that point, veered completely into her lane, just missing her. “I’m glad I didn’t see how close he got,” she said. “People had pictures of it and were trying to show me, and I said, ‘I don’t want to think about that.’ ”

She advanced with a solid 5.51, then unloaded the 5.40 on Lombardo, the No. 1 qualifier, and beating him by one-thousandth of a second, stealing low e.t. from him (5.404 to his 5.409) to win a photo-finish decision. Both of them hit 273 mph in the fastest-side-by-side race of all time.

In the final, with the track to herself, she eclipsed her one-run-old career-best speed of 273.05 with a 273.22-mph blast. “It’s weird being on a single in the final,” she said. “You think of the ignition quitting or some dumb little thing breaking. What happens then? Does nobody win? I left, and it was just a perfect run. The front end came up, settled back down, came back up again when I hit second gear and just ran perfectly straight to the finish line. I wish every run could be like that.”