Tag: Charlotte (Page 2 of 3)

TAFC – CHARLOTTE 2019

April 28, 2019 / Todd Veney

Former Four-Wide Nationals champion Annie Whiteley just missed a second career victory at Charlotte when her car went ballistic right off the line in the final against Tyler Scott, who’d never been close a national event victory until now. Whiteley, who won the Four-Wides in 2017, went down to an opponent’s all-over-the track 5.70-flat in the final for the second time in a row, again after running flawlessly through the preliminary rounds of eliminations.

Whiteley’s car actually had run great not just all day but all weekend. “It was going perfectly straight, but I probably didn’t make it 60 feet,” said the nine-year veteran, who was in the 21st final of her Top Alcohol Funny Car career. “It’s not like it went into tire shake in the middle of low gear or anything – it just blew the tires off. I came off the throttle as soon as it started to go paint-shaker on me, but there’s no way the car should have done anything like that. I mean, we barely changed anything, and what we did change should have made it less aggressive, not more aggressive. [Crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] richened up the barrel valve three flats. I never expected anything like that to happen, and Mike and the guys damn sure didn’t.”

“The track cooled down a little between the semi’s and the final,” Strasburg said. “It should’ve been fine. The only thing that changed before the final round was the track getting eight degrees cooler, which should’ve only made things better. It should’ve gone right down through there with another 5.40-something.”

By then, Whiteley had every reason to believe she was in line for her seventh career national event title. She’d already made it through what should’ve been the hard part, having slayed the dragon himself – reigning world champ Sean Bellemeur, who won the Gatornationals with a national-record 5.35 – in the semifinals. In the other semi, Scott just had to take the Tree to advance on a single.

“Beating Sean was like winning the whole race, but we still had to win one more round,” said Whiteley, who moved from fifth to third in the national standings with her latest final-round appearance. She and Bellemeur had already blown everybody away with a side-by-side 5.44-to-5.45 classic in qualifying, and she was knocking off her best reaction times of the season round after round. “I decided to just do what I know how to do and not go doing anything crazy. I think sometimes you just try too hard, and I’m not doing that anymore. Getting yourself all psyched up so you cut a light – it just doesn’t work.”

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2019

April 28, 2019 / Todd Veney

Steven Whiteley was riding high coming into Charlotte for the Four-Wide Nationals, a Top 5 driver in the standings and one of the odds-on favorites to win the race. Three days later he pulled out of ZMax Dragway a non-qualifier, clearly aggravated and dead set on turning things around after his first first-round loss all year.

Friday was a complete disaster for the young driver, one of the more consistent qualifiers on the J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod circuit year after year. Rain and 41-mph winds killed one qualifying session, and he was timed out on the line in the other one. After a shake-plagued shutoff blast Saturday morning, things weren’t looking good for the YNot team heading into last-shot qualifying, but as it has many times before, they came through under pressure with a 5.78 at nearly 253 mph to make the show.

Anything close to that Sunday morning in the first round and Whiteley would’ve been in the semifinals because only one car in his quad made it to the finish line under power. Whiteley was second off the line, trailing only Sidnei Frigo’s telepathic .015 reaction time with an outstanding .033, and they all crossed the finish line in the inverse order of how they left the starting line. Rickie Smith cut just a .090 light but laid down a 5.77 to finish first, and Chad Green’s 8.27 at 120 mph was enough to advance, literally hundreds of feet ahead of Whiteley’s aborted 10.19 at 87 mph and Frigo’s distant 13.95 at 47 mph. In one of the more unusual heats in the anything-but-orderly history of four-wide competition, nobody was within two seconds or 30 mph of anyone else.

PSM – CHARLOTTE 2019

April 28, 2019 / Todd Veney

At the Four-Wide Nationals, which racers in every pro category seem to loathe but absolutely fans love, Cory Reed turned in his strongest performance of the 2019 season. The former NHRA Rookie of the Year started off well and got only tougher from there, advancing to the semifinals in easily his finest performance since he landed in his first career final the at the Dodge Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway late in his 2016 Rookie of the Year campaign.

When absurd 40+ mph winds turned two scheduled qualifying attempts Friday at palatial zMax Dragway into a single session, Reed’s YNot/PSE team clocked an off-the-trailer 6.93 at 192 mph that positioned them in the No. 2 spot at the time. Running in the last of five quads with all the top dogs Saturday in Q2/Q3, Reed stepped way up to a 6.84 at 197.28 mph that propelled him into the upper reaches of the Pro Stock Motorcycle stratosphere. Granted one last crack at the track, Reed’s team showed that the 6.84/197 was for real with a consistent 6.89/196 and entered eliminations smack in the middle of the pack.

In the first round, stuck in the middle of theoretically the toughest quad – 1/8/9/16 – Reed advanced, finishing second of the four with a 6.88/195 that trailed No. 1 qualifier Karen Stoffer’s 6.81/197 but was more than enough to top second-generation driver Jim Underdahl’s 6.93 and former YNot teammate Angelle Sampey’s out-of-the-groove 7.13/151. In the semifinals, Reed left with the other three and outran No. 1 qualifier Karen Stoffer’s 6.95 but his right-there 6.91 wasn’t quite enough to deal with eventual runner-up Eddie Krawiec’s 6.85 or upstart Ryan Oehler’s 6.89. “.040 lights – that’s not gonna cut it,” Reed said. “I can do way better than that. I have and I will – to win, I’ll have to.”

PSM – CHARLOTTE 2018

October 15, 2018 / Todd Veney

In his fifth start astride Cory Reed’s Team Liberty Buell, Yellow Corn rider Joey Gladstone got faster and faster in almost every qualifying session and entered Carolina Nationals eliminations primed to give Vance & Hines test rider Chip Ellis all he could handle. Gladstone got off the line within thousandths of a second of the 2008 championship runner-up, but that was the last time he was in the race.

Ellis pulled away with an outstanding 6.77 – low e.t. of the entire event – while Gladstone could only watch him increase his lead with every shift after bogging hard off the line. Qualified 15th and down exactly a tenth of a second heading into their first-round heat, Gladstone wasn’t exactly the favorite against the No. 2 seed, but Ellis doubled the distance between them in qualifying (6.80 to 6.90) to an insurmountable two-tenths of a second, 6.77 to 6.97.

But despite entering eliminations in the second-to-last spot, Gladstone wasn’t out of contention. He’d already outpaced five non-qualifiers to make the Sunday field and stepped it up in virtually every session of qualifying with times of 7.01/193, 6.99/193, 6.90/192, and 6.92/194. For a No. 15 qualifier, he wasn’t far from the top – less than a tenth of a second, actually, with a 6.903 to No. 1 Eddie Krawiec’s 6.806 – but against low E.T. of the meet, no one would’ve had a chance.

PSM – CHARLOTTE 2018

May 1, 2018 / Todd Veney

After what transpired at the Four-Wide Nationals, former NHRA Rookie of the Year Cory Reed is probably better positioned than ever to take down that elusive first NHRA title. In the first quad (round) of eliminations under the sometimes-confusing four-lane format, Reed trounced not only Ryan Oehler in the lane next to him but both Joey Gladstone and reigning world champ Eddie Krawiec on the adjoining track to his right for the most significant round-win of his young career.

“I knew I was going to win that time,” said Reed, who pulled out the zMax gates 5th in the NHRA standings, the highest he’s ever been at any point in any season. “The way I feel now is the mindset it’s going to take to win one of these things. I feel this way and act this way because I really do think we can wax anybody at any time.” Such optimism is hardly unfounded – the addition of all-time Pro Stock greats Larry Morgan and Jim Yates has clearly transformed Team Victory, which is sneaking up on the long-established Pro Stock Motorcycle elite a little more each time out.

Reed found himself in the No. 1 qualifying position after two complete sessions of Friday qualifying for the first time in his career with a 6.83. His winning first-round time against Oehler (who also advanced to the semi’s – second place in each quad moves on, too), Gladstone, and Krawiec was a 6.81, his quickest time to date. The .81 stood as Low E.T. for all 16 bikes in that round – another career-first – but according to the driver himself it could have been a few ticks quicker. “It spun the tire,” he said, “I got a little excited and short-shifted three gears or that seriously would have been about a .77.”

“The motors go Columbus [Ohio with Morgan] after every race,” Reed said. “We do all the chassis stuff at the shop, and at the track Jim [Yates} has spreadsheet after spreadsheet of gear ratios to try. You can really tell the difference. I was at about mid-track on the first run we ever made and thought, ‘This thing really sounds aggressive.’ It just sounded mean, like some kind of growl. There’s so much power, every time I shift, it spins the tire for a split second.”

Early in the semifinal quad it spun a little too hard, and Reed slipped to a 6.94 and fell to Scotty Pollacheck, who won with a 6.84, and Matt Smith, who also made it to the final by finishing second with a 6.88. “The 60-foot time sucked,” Reed said. “It spun so bad, it killed the momentum for the whole run. We’re still trying to find that sweet spot and it’s a little hit-or-miss right now because we don’t have enough data with this much power. But when we hit it, we really hit it. I have to say, right now is the best things have ever been.”

TAFC – CHARLOTTE 2018

April 30, 2018 / Todd Veney

After qualifying somewhere other than No. 1 for the first time all year, Top Alcohol Funny Car star Annie Whiteley, who had set the pace five times in a row, earned the fifth and perhaps most satisfying national event victory of her career at the Four-Wide Nationals in Charlotte. Starting from No. 2, Whiteley wheeled the powerful YNot Racing Camaro to one 5.40-something after another in a race-day performance that culminated in a final-round decision over recent nemesis DJ Cox that catapulted her to first place in the national standings.

With veteran crew chief, former Top Fuel pilot, and accomplished practical joker Mike Strasburg calling the shots, Whiteley reeled off 5.40s in every round to eradicate the painful memory a holeshot loss a week earlier in Richmond against the very driver she faced down in the final round this time. “This has got to be just about just the best win ever,” said Whiteley, who also scored at the national level in Chicago in 2013, Las Vegas and Seattle in 2015, and Gainesville last year. “The car was perfect all weekend – it pretty much has been all year – and it just feels so good to win a big race like this, especially after what happened last week at Richmond.”

Whiteley’s YNot team missed qualifying in the top spot for the first time all season when Swede Ulf Leanders assumed the early qualifying lead with a 5.46 and claimed it for good with a subsequent 5.42. She opened with a 5.52 and began eliminations from the No. 2 spot with a 5.46. From there, it was nothing but total domination, a string of 5.40s at 270-plus mph to trailer defending event champ Johan Lindberg, 2013-2014 winner Dan Pomponio, 2012 winner Andy Bohl, and, in the final, Cox, one of the four drivers to ever run in the 5.30s.

Whiteley established low e.t. of eliminations with a 5.43 against Pomponio, and, after an hour-plus wait to run the final following Stevie Jackson’s spectacular double-wall crash in the Pro Mod final, seemed to have everything under control until she hit the button for high gear not knowing the race was already hers. “The car just went crazy,” she said. “For a second I almost thought I was going to crash, but I stayed in it.” Her reward was a satisfying, vindicating win over Cox, who had barely beaten her on a holeshot eight days earlier in Richmond, Va.

Whiteley, who has reached at least the semifinals in all six starts this season, went the distance for the second time in 2018, including her season-opening regional win at No Problem Raceway in the swaps of Louisiana. “I didn’t try to make something happen this time,” this time. “I just trusted myself to cut a light and believed that the car would be there when it really counted, and it was.”

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2018

April 30, 2018 / Todd Veney

Just days after the ultimate high of a victory at the Spring Nationals in Houston, Jim Whiteley found himself in a most unfamiliar place when qualifying concluded for the Four-Wide Nationals in Charlotte: on the outside looking in, unqualified along with son Steven, last year’s Gatornationals champion, who also missed the cut.

“I messed up on the Tree on the one run that definitely would have been good enough to qualify,” Whiteley said with characteristic modesty. “The Four-Wide Tree can really confuse you if you’re not careful, and I rolled right through the beams because I thought I was in a different lane than I actually was. To be in the what’s the left lane at any other track but one of the two right lanes on a four-wide track and have to look at the other side of the Tree â€¦ it’s just not natural. It gives you something to think about, and in drag racing that’s never a good thing.”

Positioned in Lane 3, Whiteley crept into the beams with a wall on his left and opponent Rickie Smith to his right. For 99.9% of the runs he’s ever made, that would have him looking at the left side of the Tree. But as the third of four drivers lined up across two adjoining tracks, the stage lights corresponding to his spot in the lineup actually were second from the right. Wondering why his staged light wasn’t coming on, he inched through both the pre-staged and staged beams and wasn’t on the starting line when the Tree dropped. Translation: his run wasn’t timed.

Naturally, it was that very run when Whiteley’s ’69 Yenko Camaro made had its best performance (about a 5.77, according to information downloaded from the data recorder), a run that otherwise would have qualified him in the top half of the field. In each subsequent session, he, like most Pro Mod drivers on the fast but tricky zMax surface, struggled for traction. He went up in smoke Saturday morning in the heat, and a backed-down 5.84 in last-shot qualifying late Saturday afternoon that was one of the better times of that session ultimately was good enough only for 19th on the final grid. “That won’t happen again,” he said of the opening-session slipup.

Son Steven fared no better, never making a representative run and landing 28th on the final qualifying chart with an aggregate best of 6.32 in the Friday evening session and a 231-mph speed Saturday morning. “There’ll be some big changes before we get to Topeka,” he said, undaunted. “We’ll be back.”

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2017

September 17, 2017 / Todd Veney

At the Carolina Nationals at spectacular zMax Dragway, Jim Whiteley, who won Houston last year despite not qualifying for the race, nearly became the only driver in drag racing history to pull of that incredibly rare feat twice.

Whiteley, who joined Clayton Harris (1973 Summernationals), Tom “the Mongoose” McEwen (1973 Supernationals), Ken Veney (1985 Gatornationals) and Michael Bartone (1995 U.S. Nationals) as the only drivers to get in as an alternate and go on to win an NHRA national event, barely missed the cut in Charlotte.

He wasn’t 17th in the 16-car field – he was 18th, five-thousandths of a second short of the 5.873 bump with a 5.878 – but No. 17 qualifier Dan Stevenson was literally driving out the gate when the word went out that Shannon “the Iceman” Jenkins wouldn’t be able to make repairs in time for the quick turnaround between the final qualifying session and the first round of eliminations. Whiteley was tending to business on the opposite side of the track when his crew frantically tracked him down and informed him that if he could get to the lanes in time, he was back in the race.

While other cars were parading past the J&A Service/YNot Racing pit area on their way to the lanes, Whiteley hustled back to his pit, where his ’70 Chevelle sat, ready to run. “I threw on my suit and they were already backing the car out,” he said. “If the guys hadn’t already done all the maintenance to have the car ready for testing tomorrow, we never would have made it in time.”

Whiteley’s first-round opponent was Sidnei Frigo, who survived a spectacular over-the-wall crash last year at Houston, where Whiteley beat eventual world champ Rickie Smith, who crashed, in the final. Frigo, who won the biggest race in drag racing, the U.S. Nationals two weeks before this event, took another wild ride opposite Whiteley in the first round, careening into the right lane behind Whiteley’s ’69 Camaro, which was long gone with a winning 5.90 at 247 mph.

“The car is pretty consistent but not quite quick enough right now,” said Whiteley, whose steady 5.92/247 in the quarterfinals fell short of 72-year-old Chuck Little’s 5.87/245. “We’re right in there, in the high 5.80s most of the time, but to win these races, you really need to be in the low .80s all the time and the high .70s when it counts.”

Son Steven Whiteley, a fixture in the top 5 of the J&A Service Pro Mod standings all year, slid from fourth place to seventh after skipping the event to be home with wife Delaina for the birth of daughter Bayslei.

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.”

PSM – CHARLOTTE 2017

May 2, 2017 / Todd Veney

At the 4-Wide Nationals in Charlotte, N.C., 2016 NHRA Rookie of the Year Cory Reed had the reflexes to win but not yet the horsepower. The controversial, one-of-a-kind 4-wide format, which pits bikes side by side by side by side across zMax Dragway’s four lanes, annually presents problems for riders, who have to deal with three times as many opponents as they do at any other event, but for Reed it’s no problem at all.

“A lot of people don’t like the 4-Wides – there’s too much going on and it messes them up – but I like it,” said the sophomore sensation, whose worst reaction time all weekend was a .022. “To me, it doesn’t really matter when I stage – first, last, whenever. I think running four wide actually gives me an advantage.”

Reed clocked a 6.92 at 192 mph right off the trailer and improved to a 6.89 at 191 in the third of four sessions and eventually landed in the No. 11 spot for the second race in a row. In the opening round of eliminations, he found himself in probably the toughest “quad” of the four, facing nothing but former world champs: Team Liberty teammate Angelle Sampey (2000-01-02), Hector Arana (2009), and Andrew Hines (2004-05-06-14-15), who had won the 4-Wide Nationals three years in a row.

With a telepathic .009 reaction time, Reed, who also destroyed the Tree with .00 lights in qualifying, left on Arana and got a noticeable jump on Hines and Sampey, but it didn’t hold. Hines finished first with a 6.83 and Sampey, who made the field on her final attempt for the second straight time, also advanced to the semifinals with a 6.95 while Arana slowed to a 7.27 and Reed to a coasting 10.03 at 83 mph.

“I pulled right up there and got in first,” Reed said. “Angelle even asked me, ‘What was the rush up there?’ There’s was no rush – I was ready to go.”