Tag: Charlotte (Page 1 of 3)

TAFC – CHARLOTTE

September 23, 2024 / Todd Veney

After perhaps the most consistent three runs any Alcohol Funny Car driver ever made anywhere and an even better one in the first round, Annie Whiteley inexplicably blew the tires off in round two. And it wasn’t just a barrage metronomically consistent E.T.s; it was all the progressive times, too. Thousands of horsepower to control and varying, ever-changing track and weather conditions to account for, yet every run looked exactly like the last: smooth.

“I knew the car was consistent,” Whiteley said, “but I didn’t realize it was that consistent – I never pay attention to the little numbers [the thousandths of a second]. But you look back on it, and it’s like, ‘How did we do that?’ “

As the race wore on, Whiteley’s times grew infinitesimally quicker and faster at each increment down the zMax Dragway quarter-mile: 2.497, 2.491, and 2.490 to the 330-foot mark; 3.679, 3.673, and 3.668 to the eighth-mile; 209.98, 210.64, and 210.97 mph half-track speeds; and 1000-foot times of 4.683, 4.676, and 4.671 led to increasingly quicker E.T.s of 5.530, 5.522, and 5.520, the last of which left her No. 3 in the final lineup.

After progressively better reaction times of .077, .054, and .033 in qualifying, Whiteley left on first-round opponent Chris Foster, the former U.S. Nationals winner, by more than a tenth and got the best of a 5.50/266.58 (top speed of the meet) to 5.575/261.83 decision not nearly as close as the E.T.s alone would indicate. In the quarterfinals, Whiteley, who last scored here in 2018, faced three-time national event winner D.J. Cox, who won this race in 2016.

That’s when the J&A Service/YNot team’s unerring consistency vanished, tire smoke billowed from behind the car, and the weekend ground to an unceremonious, premature halt. “This car has kicked our ass a couple times now, hasn’t it?” Whiteley asked. “They don’t tell me what they’re doing – it’s more like, ‘Get in it and drive.’ But it’s been taking the tire off every once in a while, and we’ll think, ‘Why did that happen? There’s no way it should have smoked the tires that time.’ “

PRO STOCK – CHARLOTTE

September 23, 2024 / Todd Veney

Pro Stock rookie Cory Reed got quicker and quicker on the Tree in qualifying, culminating in a perfect .000 reaction time, but ultimately took himself out of the Carolina Nationals with his first red-light in years.

“I’m not discouraged,” he insisted. “Disappointed, sure, but not discouraged. The thing is, after you get to the final at your second race ever [Sonoma], your perspective changes because now you know you can win. I didn’t think I’d feel this way until next year. When I started this deal, I was like, ‘Pro Stock? Yeah, that might be fun. Let’s do it.’ No expectations, no pressure. But then you get out there and do well right away, and you’re like, ‘Hey, I can win one of these things…’ “

Reed had a .057 light on his first qualifying run, a .025 on his second, and a perfect trip-zip .000 on his third. In the first round, the car lurched through the beams when he decked the throttle and opponent Cristian Cuadra inherited an easy win. “My foot got kicked off the pedal,” Reed said. “I was floating the clutch, cheating the pedal a little. We were on our third different engine, so I didn’t know if the car was going to run good or not. I figured the least I could do was give us a chance with a .010 light.”

Cuadra, another young driver with quick reflexes on the cusp of his first major victory, scooted to a winning 6.67 while Reed clicked it early and still coasted to a 6.76 at 178 mph. “I moved my foot to a different place on the pedal that time,” Reed said. “The pressure point was right on the tip of my toes, so the pedal was barely pushing back on my foot. I did it in qualifying and it worked great, so I tried it again first round. I thought I’d found something.”

Instead, Reed got a red-light, which, until this weekend, he’d never had in Pro Stock – even in qualifying. “As soon as the car started to move, I knew I was screwed,” he said. “I thought, ‘You dumbass, what was that?’ and stayed in it just to see what it’d run, and I was all over the place. In 5th gear, I was like, ‘What the hell are you doing? You red-lighted – why are you still on it?’ I just drove the hell out of it for no reason. That would’ve been a good run, too, because I lifted before the 1,000-foot mark and still went a .70-something. He only went a .67, so if I would’ve just cut my normal light, I would’ve won.”

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 – CHARLOTTE 2023

May 1, 2023 / Todd Veney

Pro Stock Motorcycle star Joey Gladstone navigated the often shark-infested world of four-wide competition at zMax Dragway and came out if victorious at least unscathed. Qualified well into the top half of the field, he advanced to the semifinals only to be denied a final-round appearance by a fraction of a second. “This Four-Wide deal can be tricky,” he said. “The first guy stages and that clock gets going, and you know you’ve only got seven seconds to get in there.”

Riding team owner Cory Reed’s Precision Service Equipment Hayabusa, Gladstone recorded a 6.87 in the first of four qualifying sessions, good for the No. 2 position at the time, improved to a 6.85, and ultimately settled into the No. 6 spot with an aggregate best of 6.82/197.94. “It feels good to be on our own stuff again,” said the 2022 championship runner-up, who spent his off time early this season twirling wrenches for the Greg Anderson/Dallas Glenn Pro Stock team. “I loved working on the Pro Stock car, but I can’t juggle both – Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle run too close together. I really learned a lot working for them, though – stuff I can apply to our program.”

Gladstone unwittingly became embroiled in the weirdest quad of a weird first round that ended with two of the four bikes quietly pushed off the starting line. John Hall got timed out, Jianna Evaristo never left, and Gladstone and dragbike stalwart Steve Johnson posted identical times right down to the thousandth of a second, matching 6.840s. Even that wasn’t close, though: Gladstone managed his emotions, focused his concentration, and left on Johnson by literally a second.

No one was ready when the Tree came down because all four drivers weren’t staged when the timer hit the seven-second mark, but when it flashed green Gladstone was gone long before anybody else let go of the clutch handle. “I saw Steve go in, and those other two were really taking their time,” Gladstone said, “so I just counted to five and put it on the chip.”

With a clutch performance in the semifinals, Gladstone shot off the line with a near-perfect .002 reaction time and narrowly missed making yet another final. Eddie Krawiec was out of reach with a winning 6.78, but Gladstone came painfully close (12-thousandths of a second) to beating Johnson on a 6.86-6.80 holeshot and making another final.

PSM – CHARLOTTE 2022

May 2, 2022 / Todd Veney

Joey Gladstone returned to the site of the most unforgettable race of his career – the out-and-out worst one ever and at the same time the absolute best: the 2021 Carolina Nationals, where his best friend, team owner Cory Reed, crashed right in front of him in round two and then a freak mechanical glitch in the final ripped away an in-the-bag first major victory.

Riding the crest of a season-long wave of success, Gladstone landed in a second consecutive Charlotte final – sort of. He was there for the last round, the third Pro Stock Motorcycle quad of the day, but at the Four-Wide Nationals the third- and fourth-place finishers are considered semifinalists. Still, it was a fantastic weekend, yet another late-round finish that catapulted him to fourth in the NHRA standings, the highest he’s ever been this deep into a season.

“I’m living my dream,” said Gladstone, who reached the semi’s at the season-opening Gatornationals and the quarterfinals in Houston. “I can’t express how proud I am of my team.” Led by Reed and longtime crew chief Cecil Towner, Gladstone made his best qualifying run all weekend right off the bat, a 6.80/198, followed by a 6.86/197 under better conditions Friday night and a 6.88/199 and 6.82/197 on Saturday.

Sunday in the first round, Gladstone edged reigning NHRA world champ Matt Smith, 6.84/200 to 6.86/198, to finish second behind Angelle Sampey’s outstanding 6.76/199. (Under the four-wide format, the top two in each “quad” of four bikes advance.) With a 13.43 at 45 mph, Kelly Clontz finished a distant fourth.

In the semi’s, in one of the more memorable moments of his entire career, Gladstone lined up against three former world champions and whipped all three – Eddie Krawiec, Sampey, and Jerry Savoie – with a 6.81/198. He outran Krawiec, beat Sampey on a holeshot, and Savoie, who was quicker than any of them with 6.78/199, red-lighted.

“That’s three gangsters in the other three lanes,” Gladstone said. “Last year, I really got my heart ripped out in the final, and this year I’m going to ride my heart out.” He did, drilling winner Krawiec and winner Steve Johnson with a .037 reaction time, but slipped to his worst run of the long weekend, a 6.90/199 that left him well short of Johnson’s winning 6.74/200.

“A four-wide isn’t like a regular final,” he said. “You know in the back of your mind the whole time what your odds are. Instead of having to beat one guy, you’ve got to beat three, so the pressure’s not the same. We may have slowed down and finished fourth, but I’ll take it. That first win is coming.”

PSM – CHARLOTTE 2021

September 20, 2021 / Todd Veney

Cory Reed, who’s shrugged off who knows how many motocross injuries but until now had had never been hurt on a drag strip, was lucky to survive a harrowing top-end crash in round two. Immediately after crossing the finish line at 190+ mph in a thrilling side-by-side match with teammate Joey Gladstone, Reed’s bike veered toward the opposite lane and just kept going.

Hanging further and further off to the left until he almost wasn’t even on the bike anymore, Reed never did get it to come back, finally tangling with Gladstone and going down hard. The bike catapulted high into the air and smashed into the wall while he tumbled down the unforgiving zMax Dragway pavement in a frightening scene.

Gladstone managed to avoid becoming entangled with Reed’s errant mount, came to a safe stop, and, when he whipped around to look back uptrack, was horrified to see Reed laid out on the asphalt, immobilized by multiple injuries. Gladstone sprinted toward his fallen comrade, arrived almost simultaneously with safety personnel, and, when the ambulance pulled out of the track, was right in there with Reed, who would undergo the first of multiple surgeries that night.

Gladstone made it back to the track in time to defeat incoming points leader Steve Johnson in the semi’s only to watch an in-the-bag first career NHRA victory dissolve before his eyes in a heartbreaking final against Angelle Sampey. The kill switch somehow became disengaged, cutting the power and bringing a sad end to an emotional day for the young racer, who’d strapped a bike-length holeshot on Sampey and was seconds away from the victory of a lifetime.

“It’s drag racing – it happens – but I don’t know what I ever did to deserve this bad luck,” said Gladstone, almost despondent. “It stings, it really does.”

Reed, runner-up here earlier this year at the Four-Wide Nationals and tied with Gladstone in the standings coming into this event, qualified solidly with a 6.99 at 191 mph. He knocked off Sonoma winner Karen Stoffer in the first round before narrowly losing to Gladstone, 6.94-6.93, an outcome rendered meaningless by what happened after they crossed the finish line.

It was exactly the kind of matchup Reed was looking for when qualifying wrapped up. “I like running guys close to me in the points head-to-head,” he said. “Let’s just get to it, right? I don’t need anybody else deciding anything for me. I want to settle it myself.” Now, unfortunately, he won’t get that chance.

PSM – READING 2021

September 13, 2021 / Todd Veney

He may not have gone the distance, but at the Mopar Express Lane NHRA Nationals, the first race of the seven-race 2021 Countdown to the Championship playoffs, underrated Pro Stock Motorcycle racer Cory Reed met his stated pre-race goal: go rounds. Running hard in not just the first qualifying session but in all three at legendary Maple Grove Raceway, Reed opened with a strong 6.86 Friday evening and followed with an even better 6.84 the next afternoon.

With a near-perfect .005 reaction time and another 6.86 Saturday evening, Reed nailed down the No. 6 spot in the final lineup, his best qualifying performance all year. “I think we’re finally starting to make a little progress here,” he said, justifiably pleased. “Both bikes [his and PSE/Reed Motorsports teammate Joey Gladstone’s] are set up the same, and now we’ve got them both running the same.”

Pitted against pal Ryan Oehler in the final pair of the first round, Reed got off the mark first and overcame a series of obstacles downtrack to win a crucial points battle by just 16-thousandths of a second, 6.97/193 to 6.98/194. “He definitely could’ve beat me right there,” said Reed, who pulled to within four points of Oehler in the NHRA standings. “It spun bad, and I had to just ride it out. The front end was trying to wash out and the bike was all over the place, but it was race day and I had to stay with it or I’d have lost for sure. If that was a test run, I’d have said, ‘Screw it,’ and shut it off.”

The wheels came off in the next round against superstar Andrew Hines, 6.85/199 to 6.98/191 – not that Reed didn’t have him covered for a good while. “The clutch didn’t lock up enough,” he explained. “We were trying to slip it down low – I mean, you really can’t get too conservative against somebody like him, can you? You’ve got to try to go a .79, right? I thought I was doing all right for a while there, but he caught me around half-track and just took off from there. I’ve never seen anybody go by me like that.”

PSM – CHARLOTTE 2021

May 17, 2021 / Todd Veney

The Four-Wide Nationals was the quickest, fastest Pro Stock Motorcycle race ever, by far – but not for Cory Reed. For him, it was another trying, unfulfilling weekend, the third in four outings this year, broken up only by his runner-up showing at 2021’s other Four-Wide Nationals, held last month at Las Vegas.

All around the former Rookie of the Year, drivers were making history in the cool Charlotte air, highlighted by PSE teammate Joey Gladstone, who became the eighth and final member of the prestigious Denso Spark Plugs 200-MPH Club with a 200.23-mph blast. Teams reset the NHRA national speed record four different times over the weekend, including three in the same qualifying session, and when eliminations commenced, Reed faced a former world champion in every lane – not just in the other lane, but in all three other lanes.

And right when he really could have done some damage, Reed’s bike let him down. It wasn’t some everyday glitch; this was something that basically never happens – the front brake started locking up. “I was pre-staging, and the bike doesn’t really want to roll, and I’m like, ‘Is the track really this tight?’ ” Reed said. “It really had a lot of rolling resistance, like more than ever. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

Right until he tried to approach the line, everything had been normal. He rattled off three unerringly consistent qualifying passes: 6.87/197, 6.87/199, and 6.85/197. The biggest names in the sport occupied every other lane, but Reed held his own, leaving first and making his best run of the weekend, a 6.83/197 that covered 2016 world champion Jerry Savoie’s 6.84/196 but not four-time champion Eddie Krawiec’s 6.77/202 or three-time champ Matt Smith’s 6.78/201.

“That was probably gonna be a .70-something,” Reed said. “At the 330-foot mark, I was in front of everybody – look at the time slip – but that damn front wheel was dragging and they went around me. Just add it to the list, I guess. I don’t get it. Sometimes, drag racing doesn’t make any sense. You take off, and you know it was a decent light and you start to think, ‘Oh yeah…’ And then the farther you go, the more something’s slowing you down. In the shutdown area, I didn’t even have to apply the brakes. The bike did it for me.”

TAFC – CHARLOTTE 2019

October 14, 2019 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley’s YNot/J&A Service Camaro dominated Carolina Nationals Top Alcohol Funny Car qualifying with not just low e.t. but low e.t. of all three qualifying sessions – 5.46, 5.46, and 5.44, all at 271 mph, including top speed of the meet to that point, 271.84. Her slowest speed was faster than anyone else’s fastest. “There were a couple of times we thought we could run quicker,” she said, “but when [crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] really looked at the track and saw all the bald spots, he backed it back down.”

The 5.44 for No. 1 came as a direct result of Strasburg’s last-minute fine-tuning expertise. “He started adjusting the barrel valve right there in the lanes,” Whiteley said. “I was all strapped in and ready to go, and when I saw him walk back, dip under the body, and go right for the injector, I thought, ‘Whatever you think is fine with me.’ ” It worked to perfection and cemented a first-round win over overmatched John Headley, the No. 16 qualifier, who, whether inadvertently or on purpose, rolled right in and turned on both bulbs. “That was weird,” she said. “I saw him do it and thought, ‘OK then … from now on whenever I race you I’ll just be ready before I pre-stage.’ ”

It didn’t matter. Whiteley maintained concentration and advanced easily, moving first and leaving Headley in the dust in a 5.51/268 to 7.27/170 blowout. She bowed out in the following round, an imminently winnable race opposite Dan Pomponio, who’s always had good luck in Charlotte. Chassis-shredding tire shake brought the YNot team’s weekend to a premature end, as Whiteley watched helplessly as Pomponio drove away to a winning 5.54. “It shook so hard I couldn’t see anything anymore,” she said. “Right as I went to pedal it, that tube that goes from the firewall to the left side window vibrated loose and started bouncing around inside the car with me, and at one point it hit me. I probably couldn’t have caught him anyway, but when that thing hit me I said, ‘OK, I’m done.’ “

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2019

October 14, 2019 / Todd Veney

In the second-to-last start of his Pro Mod career, second-generation driver Steven Whiteley turned in his second-best outing ever, behind only his victory at the 2017 Gatornationals. Whiteley drilled everybody on the Tree and reached the final round of the penultimate event of the 2019 season, which “Stevie Fast” Jackson won to clinch the NHRA Pro Mod championship. “This was almost better than winning Gainesville,” he said, “just because of who we had to run. It was great to run with the big guys and not just run with them but beat them.”

With one round-win in 20 career head-to-head matchups against Steve Matusek, lifelong nemeses Rickie Smith and Todd Tutterow, and Jackson heading into the Carolina Nationals, Whiteley went 3-1 against them and started from the No. 5 spot, the highest he’s qualified all season. Matusek, like every driver Whiteley raced all weekend, cut an excellent light, and like the other three he still trailed the J&A Service/YNot Camaro off the line. He was the only one who didn’t make it close, falling well short of the first of Whiteley’s first of four consecutive runs between 5.756 and 5.762.

“Tricky Rickie,” who narrowly lost the U.S. Nationals final on a holeshot, outran Whiteley in the quarterfinals but came up seven feet short for another holeshot loss, 5.761 to 5.757. “He’s always had my number,” said Whiteley, who stood 0-8 against the many-time series champ until now. “Every time I ever lined up against him, he chewed me up and spit out the bones, but it’s different with this car. I just feel good in it. Always did, really. With the converter, I feel like I can cut a light.” That’s putting it mildly – he averaged a .019 reaction time for the event, with a worst of .024. He’s averaging a .029 for the season and leaving first 85 percent of the time.

In the semi’s, Whiteley and Tutterow, who led the early season standings before veering across the centerline in Topeka and T-boning Whiteley’s car, both ran 5.75s. The veteran was more than on time with a .021 light, but Whiteley had him all the way with a .016 to win by 8-thousandths of a second. “It felt really good to put that guy’s ass on the trailer, I can tell you that,” he said. “After all the times I’ve run him – especially Topeka – that had to be the round of my career.”

The final ended in a loss to “Stevie Fast,” who clinched the NHRA championship when Whiteley took out Tutterow, but it wasn’t much of a disappointment. “This was a great weekend,” Whiteley said. “We’ve always run well in Charlotte, probably because we test there more than we do anywhere else. Yes, Stevie has been helping us for a while – that’s no secret – but not to the degree that he’s been helping my dad’s team. This weekend was all about [crew chief] Jeff Perley. He really showed his colors here.”