Tag: Annie (Page 14 of 17)

TAFC – WOODBURN 2016

July 19, 2016 / Todd Veney

By the smallest possible margin – a thousandth of a second – Annie Whiteley missed her first victory of the 2016 season. At Woodburn Dragstrip just outside Portland, Ore., where Whiteley won and was runner-up in two appearances there last season, she fell to lightning-quick Terry Ruckman in the final, 5.54 to a slightly quicker 5.52, despite a better-than-average .077 reaction time.

“Ruckman is good on the Tree – always has been,” Whiteley said of her Grand Junction, Colo., neighbor, who also won the semifinals on a holeshot. “It was still a good weekend. A runner-up isn’t a win, but we still did good.”

Whiteley qualified third at what traditionally is one of the toughest eight-car Top Alcohol Funny Car fields in the country. It took a mid-5.50 to get into the top half of the show, and the bump was one car from being an all-time regional series record. Woodburn has always been a great alcohol track – it’s run by reigning Top Alcohol Dragster world champ Joey Severance, who leads the 2016 standings and won this race for the fourth year in a row.

The J&A Service YNot Racing team ran a 5.54, which put them behind only Jirka Kaplan, who ran a career-best 5.49 for the No. 1 spot and Doug Gordon, who clocked a 5.50-flat for No. 2. Whiteley made her best run of the event, a 5.50 at just short of 269 mph, to erase Sean Bellemeur’s 5.80 in the first round of eliminations and a consistent 5.52 to drop Gordon’s 5.56 in the semi’s.

“The car’s responding to what Mike’s doing again,” she said, referring to crew chief Mike Strasburg. “At the beginning of the year, they found something that made the car haul ass and really thought they were on to something, but it wasn’t a consistent setup because it didn’t respond to little changes to you have to make as the track changes. This is good run after good run for two races in a row, so I think we’re finally back to where we were.”

Back into the Top 10 in the national standings, ninth overall with more than half of her points-earning races yet to claim, Whiteley next races at Brainerd, Minn. where in 2013 she made her first final-round appearance at a national event, and then the big one, the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis, where she’s been runner-up in two of the past three years.

TAFC – CHICAGO 2016

July 11, 2016 / Todd Veney

At the site of her first career NHRA national event title in 2014, Annie Whiteley drove to the semifinals of the Allstars race and the quarterfinals of the Route 66 Nationals. At Route 66 Raceway just outside Chicago, Whiteley qualified No. 3 with a blistering 5.49 and never ran slower than a 5.52 in eliminations for either race, moving to within two rounds of the Top 10 in the national standings despite having run fewer races than most of her competitors.

Whiteley’s Mike Strasburg-tuned J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro opened with a solid 5.63 at 263 mph in the first qualifying session and got only stronger from there, picking up to a 5.57 at 266 for the provisional No. 4 position in the late Friday session and ultimately to a 5.49 at 267 mph early Saturday for the No. 3 spot on the final grid.

That 5.49 couldn’t have come at a better time – the final qualifying session for the Route 66 Nationals was actually the first round of the prestigious Jegs Allstars race, which pits the top two drivers from each of NHRA’s four geographic regions against each other on an eight-car ladder comprised of the best of the best.

The 5.49 wiped out East Coast contender Dan Pomponio’s distant 5.79, and an equally outstanding 5.52 at 267 mph in the Allstars semifinals left her just short of a 5.50-flat at 270 mph by Shane Westerfield, who went on to sweep both the Allstars and the Route 66 Nationals.

Whiteley stomped former national event champion Ulf Leanders of Sweden in the first round of the Route 66 Nationals with another 5.49 but came out on the wrong end of a tight race to Doug Gordon in the quarterfinals, 5.53 to 5.50. Next up is the first of two regionals at Woodburn Dragstrip, just outside Portland, Ore., where last year Whiteley won once and was runner-up at the other one.

TAFC – NORWALK 2016

June 27, 2016 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley qualified No. 1 for the third race in a row, but for the second straight time her J&A Service/YNot Racing team struggled off the line in the opening round of eliminations and suffered an upset loss.

“Maybe we shouldn’t qualify No. 1 anymore,” joked Whiteley, who was also No. 1 at the Summit Racing Equipment Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio, last season. “I don’t know what’s going on, I really don’t. We did about four different things to make sure the car didn’t shake the tires on that run, and it did it anyway. It’s the same thing that happened in Denver, and we still don’t know why.”

Whiteley charged off the starting line with a slight lead on rookie Chris King, a newly licensed Chicago fireman who was making his national event debut, but the lead didn’t last long. Her car went into violent shake, slowed to a troubled 12.44 at 78 mph, and King was long gone. Even though his fire bottles discharged around half-track and he had to lift, King had enough momentum to coast to an unlikely win in by far the biggest upset of the entire event.

“It’s disappointing, but what are you going to do?” Whiteley said. We’ll keep testing, and we’ll get this thing figured out.”

Qualifying, as has been the case almost all year, was a huge success. Whiteley was No. 1 for the second year in a row at this race and for the third time in a row this season, including Houston, where she reached the semifinals, and Denver.

Whiteley paced the field with a 5.531, the exact same e.t. that was good for the top spot last year, right down to the thousandth of a second. Her speed was within 0.05 mph of the 266.16-mph blast she ran for top speed last year.

Heading into the West regional at Woodburn Dragstrip just outside Portland, Ore., Whiteley is tied for 14^th in the national standings, 52 points outside the Top 10.

TAFC – DENVER 2016

June 21, 2016 / Todd Veney

After qualifying No. 1 at the Denver regional for the third year in a row, perennial title contender Annie Whiteley was out early for the first time ever at this event. While husband Jim Whiteley and son Steven were 1,500 miles east racing their Pro Mods in Bristol, Tenn., Annie lost traction in the first round for an upset loss to No. 8 qualifier Nick Januik, 5.88 to an up-in-smoke 7.23.

“I probably didn’t make it two feet,” she said. “No idea what happened. There wasn’t any use in trying to run him down because I never got a chance to build up any momentum. It was fine in every single round of qualifying. We tested before the race, and it was the same thing – two for two, no problem.”

Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing team had never failed to reach at least the semifinals at breathtaking Bandimere Speedway, carved into the eastern ridge of the Rocky Mountains. She was runner-up the past two years and paced the field again this year with a 5.74 blast in Saturday qualifying.

Sandwiched between the matching 5.81s of upstart Bill Bernard and eventual winner Kris Hool at the conclusion of Friday qualifying with a 5.81 of her own, Whiteley pounded out a 5.74 – the same e.t. that made her No. 1 in 2014 – for the No. 1 spot. Behind her on the ladder was one heavy hitter after another: recent Chicago regional winner Jay Payne, national points leader John Lombardo and former national event champions Jirka Kaplan, Nick Januik, and Grand Junction, Colo. neighbor Terry Ruckman.

Denver was the first of five races in a six-week span. Up next is Norwalk, Ohio; followed by Woodburn, Ore.; Seattle; Brainerd, Minn.; and the big one, U.S. Nationals at Indy, where Whiteley has two runner-ups in the past three years.

TAFC – HOUSTON 2016

May 2, 2016 / Todd Veney

With one low 5.50 after another at the NHRA SpringNationals in Houston, Annie Whiteley turned in her finest performance since she dominated Top Alcohol Funny Car racing last summer with four final-round appearances and two wins in a five-race stretch.

The J&A Service/YNot racing team opened qualifying at Houston’s Royal Purple Raceway with a 5.51 for the provisional pole, improved to a 5.50-flat to lock down the No. 1 qualifying spot for good, and breezed into the semifinals with another 5.50 that held for low e.t. of the entire event and another 5.51 that stood as low e.t. of the second round. “We tested at Dallas before this race and the car was perfect, and it was the same thing when we got to Houston,” said Whiteley, whose suffered back spasms all weekend and had to be lifted gently into the cockpit before each run. “It’s great to have the car running like this again – it just gives you a lot more confidence.”

A nearly identical 5.52 in the semifinals wasn’t quite enough against veteran Steve Gasparrelli, who rebounded from .100+ reaction times in the first two rounds to post a .042 line and got to the finish line first with a slightly slower 5.54. It was the only reaction time and the only run Gasparrelli had all weekend quick enough to hold off Whiteley’s hard-charging Camaro on the top end.

For the YNot team, it was a doubly painful loss because, due to a bizarre set of circumstances, that semifinal match against Gasparrelli turned out to be the de facto final. With an odd number of cars in the field, the other semifinalist, Brian Hough, had a bye into the final, but a crank-trigger problem on the burnout silenced his engine and knocked him out of the race even though there wasn’t a car in the other lane. “I saw them pushing him off the line and thought, ‘OK, this is the final. Let’s get it done,’ but I didn’t quite get it done,” said Whiteley, who refused to use back pain as an excuse.

Despite that disappointment, crew chief Mike Strasburg and the YNot team have a car that can contend with the only two drivers who topped them in the 2015 national standings, Winternationals winner Jonnie Lindberg and Gatornationals champion John Lombardo. “We’re back where we belong,” said Whiteley, whose next race is the Denver regional in June. “We’re going to test between now and then, so we should be ready for anything when we come back.”

LAS VEGAS NATIONAL 2016

April 4, 2016 / Todd Veney

At the Denso NHRA Nationals, Annie Whiteley didn’t do what she has so many times before at the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway – win – but she did take a big step in the right direction after the first-round loss at the Phoenix season-opener. Whiteley, the defending Top Alcohol Funny Car champion at this event, pounded out solid runs in two of three qualifying sessions, including a 5.58 at nearly 265 mph, her best run of the season, en route to a quarterfinal finish.

“Let’s just say it was an extremely tricky track,” said Whiteley, whose YNot Racing/J&A Service team was one of just two top-half qualifiers to survive the wild, wide-open first round. “When that many people struggle to figure out the track in the same round, you know something’s up.” No. 1 qualifier John Lombardo, No. 2 qualifier and many-time Las Vegas winner Tony Bartone, and No. 3 qualifier and national points leader Doug Gordon all were gone after one round, with Bartone’s backpedaling 5.82 the best run of the bunch. Whiteley, who qualified No. 4, backpedaled to a 6.20 to hold off Chris Marshall, who had upset her in the first round of eliminations here last fall.

Whiteley was off the line first with one of the best reaction times of her career, a near-perfect .004, and got the car under control enough to pull away from Marshall’s all-over-the-track 6.37/238 with a 6.20/252. “It spun the tires early, but I didn’t know where he was,” she said. “You have to be quite a way behind to see the other car, and I never did see him, so just I kept trying.”

She had no such luck in Sunday’s second round of eliminations against eventual winner Terry Ruckman, the only other driver from the fast half of the field (No. 5) to make it out of the first round. While Whiteley fought to keep her car off the wall, Ruckman was long gone with a 5.58, his best run of the weekend and low e.t. of eliminations. Whiteley steered back into the groove, chased him down until there was no way she could catch him even if he broke, and coasted to a 6.18 at 217 mph.

“Nobody wants to lose, but Terry’s a good guy and he’d never won a national event before,” said Whiteley, who hails from the same hometown as Ruckman, Grand Junction, Colo. “All in all, it was a decent weekend. We figured out a few things with the car and my reaction times. The whole team has been working to figure out something for my lights, and I think we got it. We kept repositioning my [throttle] pedal and repositioning it, and I’m a lot more comfortable now. I don’t have to bury my foot against the can anymore, it just feels a lot better, and that has me kind of excited about the rest of the season.”

TAFC – POMONA 2015

November 17, 2015 / Todd Veney

If only she could’ve maintained the performance from her off-the-trailer qualifying pass at the NHRA Finals in Pomona, Calif., Annie Whiteley likely would’ve won the 2015 Top Alcohol Funny Car championship she seemed destined to win all year.

Whiteley, who won four races in seven final-round appearances this season and stood atop the national standings longer than any other driver, battled tire shake the rest of the way and eventually fell to Clint Thompson in the quarterfinals, allowing Sweden’s Jonnie Lindberg to slip past her by 12 points to win the title.

“That run probably hurt us more than it helped us,” Whiteley’s husband, two-time Top Alcohol Dragster world champ Jim Whiteley, said of her off-the-trailer 5.46 at nearly 267 mph. “I think it fooled us into thinking the track was different than it was. There was a whole lot of track out there this weekend.”

The run qualified Whiteley solidly in the No. 4 position and seemed to set her up for even better things in the remaining qualifying sessions and especially in eliminations, but her J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro refused to cooperate on subsequent runs.

“It is what it is,” said Whiteley, who reclaimed the lead she lost to Lindberg two weeks earlier at the Toyota Nationals by winning the first round over veteran Steve Gasparrelli with a tire-shaking, backpedaling 6.07. “We never got hold of the track after that first run. No complaints, though. Look how the season started – not getting down the track run after run, barely qualifying at the first race (Phoenix). I’d say it turned out pretty good overall.”

TAFC – LAS VEGAS REGIONAL 2015

November 9, 2015 / Todd Veney

It won’t count toward the national championship because she’s already run the maximum number of regional events – five – but Annie Whiteley pounded out one good run after another at her favorite track, The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, at the final regional event of the season. As always, it was the toughest regional event of the entire season; 17 cars attempted to qualify for one of just eight spots, and the bump was one of the quickest of all time, 5.63.

Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro held down the No. 1 spot in Top Alcohol Funny Car until the final pair of the final session with a 5.49. No. 2 in the field when eliminations began, she ripped of a consistent 5.51 to take out defending event champ Ulf Leanders, then slipped to a tire-shaking 5.79 in the semifinals and fell to friend and Grand Junction, Colo., neighbor Terry Ruckman, the former Division 7 champ.

“It shook pretty hard that time, and there wasn’t much I could do,” Whiteley said. “It didn’t hurt us points-wise, but you never want to lose – ever. It was still a good weekend, though. We learned a lot about running the car in cold conditions, and that’s going to do nothing but help us down the road.”

Now the YNot team’s focus shifts to this weekend’s NHRA Finals in Pomona, Calif. One point out of the lead – 626 to 625 – with one race to go, she’ll overtake Sweden’s Jonnie Lindberg by winning just one round of eliminations. “It’s all right there for us,” she said. “I don’t want to think about points or anything like that. I’m just going to try to make each run like it’s a qualifying run and take it one round at a time. We’ve run good all year. Now we just need to do it one more time.”

TAFC – LAS VEGAS NATIONAL 2015

November 2, 2015 / Todd Veney

At The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where she has dominated Alcohol Funny Car racing since earning the first win of her career there in her 2012 rookie campaign, Annie Whiteley suffered one of her few early round losses ever in Las Vegas. The fourth-year pro, who swept both the national and regional events there earlier this season for her fifth and sixth career Vegas wins, went out in the first round.

Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro went into hard tire shake in low gear, and despite a quick pedal job, she was unable to run down Chris Marshall, coming up just 14-thousandths of a second short in the lights with a 5.71 – far from her outstanding qualifying effort. “I was catching him the whole time, and I really thought I was going to get there,” Whiteley said. “It shook at the top of low gear, and I thought I could drive through it. I kept thinking, ‘Come on, come on, we’re almost there,’ but I finally had to short-shift. You’ve basically got two options at that point – short-shift or pedal – and I finally had to hit the button at 8,100.”

Marshall shot into the lead and claimed by far the biggest win of his young career with a 5.74. “I didn’t know if I was going to catch him or not, but at least I gave myself half a shot at it,” said Whiteley, who crossed the finish line going a full 13 mph faster than Marshall, 260 to 247. It was a disappointing end to what had been a typically solid Vegas outing to that point. Whiteley qualified No. 5 with an excellent 5.558 at 263.20 mph.

Now the YNot team, which had topped the national rankings since Whiteley’s dominant victory at Woodburn four months ago, is second in the standings, just a single point behind Jonnie Lindberg, 626 to 625.

TAFC – DALLAS 2015

October 19, 2015 / Todd Veney

On the all-concrete quarter-mile at the Texas Motorplex, Annie Whiteley pounded out the quickest run of her four-year career to qualify high in the fastest field in Top Alcohol Funny Car history. A 5.45 at nearly 267 mph positioned her fifth in the Fall Nationals lineup, but an up-in-smoke 10.95 in the first round of eliminations knocked her out of the race. “I don’t know what it is, but Scott McVey is my kryptonite,” Whiteley said of the disappointing early exit. “That guy’s always had my number.”

Up till then, the incoming national points leader was headed for yet another late-round finish, maybe even an eighth final and fifth victory of 2015. Whiteley guided her YNot Racing/J&A Service Camaro to an off-the trailer 5.58/263 Friday that had her fourth on the provisional grid, then stepped way up to a 5.52/264 later that afternoon for No. 6. When conditions improved Saturday morning, she made an even bigger gain to a career-best 5.453/266.90, one of three 5.453s in that round.

When eliminations kicked off Saturday afternoon, Whiteley blasted off the line with one of the best 60-foot times any Alcohol Funny Car driver ever had, .920, but with the front end in the air and the car headed straight for the wall, she had no choice but to lift. “I left too high that time – that’s why the 60-foot time was so good – but there’s no way the car’s going to make it with that kind of wheel speed that early,” she said.

With three races left, including two at her best track on the tour, the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Whiteley remains first in the national standings, where she’s been since July 19. Swede Jonnie Lindberg, who closed the gap slightly with a semifinal appearance at this race, is now 10 points back.