Tag: Charlotte (Page 3 of 3)

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2016

September 20, 2016 / Todd Veney

In much tougher conditions than at Indy, where everybody was running 5.80s, Steven Whiteley qualified a season-high third at the Carolina Nationals at zMax Dragway with an outstanding 5.840. He actually led qualifying at the palatial Charlotte, N.C., facility for a while and was in the No. 2 spot until the 11th hour in what turned out to be his best outing of the NHRA season.

For Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot team, it was one mid-.80 after another in qualifying – 5.87, 5.84, 5.86 – then nothing but trouble in eliminations, starting against Eric Latino in Saturday’s opening round. “I had to pedal the car to get around him,” Whiteley said. “I got aggressive, stayed in it, then blipped the throttle and got back into it and it made it down through there.”

Whiteley turned that potentially disastrous situation into a winning 5.91 at 247 mph, well ahead of Latino’s distant 6.25/204, but there was no saving it Sunday afternoon in the second round. “It started further out than it did in the first round,” he said. “I stayed in it again and hoped it would clean up, but I couldn’t catch it quick enough – when I blipped the throttle, it turned toward the wall.”

Whiteley wisely got the car straightened out before hammering the gas again, but by then opponent Todd Tutterow was long gone. “When the other guy’s laying down a 5.93 like that, there’s not much you can do,” he said. It was his first trip to the quarterfinals in 2016, but there’s still time for a late charge to the Top 10 like brother Cory Reed pulled off at Indy with his Pro Stock Motorcycle.

“The car was running well in qualifying,” said Whiteley, whose highest qualifying position this season had been No. 5 at Englishtown (5.88). “We backed it off a little on the last qualifier to get a race-day tuneup and basically left it alone for the first round, but I guess we didn’t compensate enough for the track. The thing is, we have the power to do this. All those .80s in qualifying mean we can go rounds at the last two races and still get in the Top 10 – that’s our goal.”

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2015

September 22, 2015 / Todd Veney

In the best overall performance of their Pro Mod careers, the father-and-son team of Jim and Steven Whiteley qualified solidly in the all-five-second field at the Carolina Nationals and advanced deep into eliminations – Jim reached the quarterfinals for the second race in a row, and Steven made it to the semifinals for the first time in his young career. “Finally,” Steven said. “What a relief. I was hoping Dad and I would race each other in the semi’s so that one of us was sure to be in the final, but it didn’t quite work out that way.”

Driving his popular YNot Racing/J&A Service ’14 Cadillac CTS-V, Steven went from outside the field all the way to the No. 4 spot in last-ditch qualifying with an outstanding 5.89 at 247.93 mph, one of the quickest runs of his career and his fastest speed all year. It was his second 5.80 qualifying effort in a row, including a 5.88 two weeks ago at the U.S. Nationals.

Jim clocked a 5.94 on his second qualifying attempt for the provisional No. 7 spot on the grid, slipped to 13^th by the time he got back to the line for Saturday’s lone session, then picked up to a 5.92 at 245 mph to shoot back up to the 10^th spot. Numerous past event winners – Don Walsh (No. 18, 6.00), Jay Payne (No. 19, 6.02), reigning series champ Rickie Smith (No. 22, 6.05), Kenny Lang (No. 23, 6.05), and Mike Castellana (No. 25, 6.12) failed to make the cut.

When eliminations for the third-to-last race of the 10-race 2015 J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod series kicked off, both Whiteleys powered through the first round, trailering a pair of “name” drivers. Jim got around Gatornationals winner and early season points leader Bob Rahaim in a great race, leaving first by a few thousandths of a second and leading Rahaim door handle to door handle right to the lights for a thrilling 5.93 to 5.94 win. The margin of victory was just 15-thousandths of a second. One pair later, Steven strapped a huge holeshot on veteran Chip King and drove away from him, not just winning but establishing low e.t. of the entire round with a 5.92.

Sunday in round two, Steven knocked off one of the biggest stars in Pro Mod, Englishtown winner Bill Glidden, son of legendary Pro Stock racer Bob Glidden, with the second-quickest run of the round, 5.93. Jim’s ’69 Chevelle dropped that round to eventual winner Danny Rowe, 6.08 to 10.11, after getting a slight jump at the line. Steven also left on Rowe in the semifinals but came out on the wrong end of a much closer race, 5.91 to 5.99.

“We just missed the setup that time,” Steven said. “It was way too soft, our worst full run of the weekend, and I could tell right away. I Tree’d him, and I still saw his fender right away. As soon as we got past the Tree, I knew. He never really did pull away from me, but I couldn’t get around him.”

With just a few days off before the penultimate event of the season, Jim and Steven head to Gateway Int’l Raceway in St. Louis with a ton of momentum eyeing the very real prospect of the YNot Racing/J&A Service team’s first Pro Mod title.

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2014

September 17, 2014 / Todd Veney

At the Carolina Nationals at zMax Dragway in Charlotte, one of the biggest Pro Mod races of all time and one that attracted nearly 30 cars, Steven Whiteley outran everybody – not just once, but twice.

The second-generation driver has gotten faster and faster as the season has progressed, and after qualifying a career-high fourth at the prestigious U.S. Nationals at Indy, he was No. 1 at Charlotte with an outstanding 5.87 at 246 mph right off the trailer, followed by an almost identical 5.89 at 245 that was low e.t. of the second session.

Whiteley topped a mammoth field that attracted nearly 30 cars and had a bump (6.03) too fast for past NHRA Pro Mod champs Mike Castellana and Jay Payne, and, unfortunately, for Steven’s dad, Jim, who just missed the cut with a 6.07. “The biggest thing with my car is that we got it to stop kicking the rods when I shut it off,” said Jim, who, during pre-race testing in Rockingham, N.C., blew two engines – not during the runs, but after he’d completely lifted off the throttle and was coasting through the shutdown area.

In the first round of eliminations Saturday evening, Steven became the second No. 1 qualifier in a row to be upset by No. 16. Again it was by the smallest of margins, again it was on a holeshot, and again it came when the No. 1 qualifier nearly duplicated his qualifying time and the No. 16 driver made the only run he’d made all weekend that would have been enough. At the U.S. Nationals, Bill Glidden ran nearly a tenth better than he’d run in his entire career, 5.90, to nip No. 1 qualifier Don Walsh’s 5.87; this time, Jim Laurita picked up a tenth to a 5.92 that edged Whiteley’s consistent 5.90 by just 12-thousandths of a second.

Laurita got the jump at the line with a .055 reaction time, Whiteley was right behind him with an .087, and the chase was on. The cars were never separated by more than 25-thousandths of a second at any point on the track, and Whiteley just missed running him down in a tight 5.92 to 5.90 decision. The run tied for low e.t. of the round with No. 2 qualifier Danny Rowe, who ran an identical 5.907 and had almost exactly the same reaction time that Whiteley had – .086 to .087 – but had the good fortune to do it against an opponent who lifted right off the line.

Laurita actually ran a 5.92 in the last-shot session that would have qualified him fourth, but the run was disqualified when his car came up light at the scales and he had to settle for 16th with an earlier 6.03. “Steven got a lot tougher opponent than you’d usually get as a No. 1 qualifier,” said Jim, who was No. 1 countless times in a Top Alcohol Dragster career that ended last year with consecutive national championships. “That’s OK, though. He’s still just getting started. The important thing is that he’s getting better every time out, and the car is too.”

TAFC – CHARLOTTE 2014

September 15, 2014 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley’s maddening 2014 season grew even more aggravating at the Carolina Nationals at state-of-the-art zMax Dragway in Charlotte when she slipped over the centerline in a very winnable first-round matchup against Tony Bogolo and was disqualified. “I had the wheel cocked all the way to the right, and the car just kept going and going and going to the left,” she said. “I had my arms completely crossed at the end, but it wouldn’t come back, and boom – right over the centerline. The whole year’s been like that. It’s just been a bad season.”

Whiteley wheeled her J&A Service/YNot Racing Funny Car to five wins and the West Region championship in her rookie season, 2012, and piled up four more victories – including a first national title, in Chicago – in five final-round appearances last year on the way to another Top 5 finish in the prestigious NHRA national standings.

“Hey, maybe we can still make the top 10 this year,” said Whiteley, who currently is tied with Kris Hool and John Lombardo Jr. for sixth place, just two points out of the Top 5. “The best part about this weekend is how well we ran in qualifying with a new crew chief [Mike Strasburg]. It was his first race tuning a Funny Car, and with all the rain we had and considering that we lost a qualifying run, I’d say he did pretty well.”

Strasburg, who drove the YNot Racing dragster to his first career national event title earlier this season at Norwalk, tuned Whiteley’s Funny Car to a 5.63 in last-shot qualifying in Charlotte, good for the No. 6 qualifying position. “I’m just getting started, but the Funny Car doesn’t seem to be that different from a dragster so far,” Strasburg said. “5.63 isn’t too bad for our first time out, and I’m pretty encouraged about the rest of the year.”

The YNot season picks back up next month with the first of back-to-back-to-back races, the West Regional closer in Las Vegas, where Whiteley has scored three times already in her young Top Alcohol Funny Car career.

TAD/TAFC – CHARLOTTE 2013

April 24, 2013 / Todd Veney

As in Las Vegas, the J&A Service/YNot Racing entries of both Jim and Annie Whiteley were eliminated in the quarterfinals after strong performances in qualifying. Jim set low e.t. – as he has at every race this year – but lost a photo-finish match to rival Chris Demke in Top Alcohol Dragster, and Annie was upset in nearly as close a match by Ray Drew in Top Alcohol Funny Car.

Jim, the reigning Top Alcohol Dragster world champ, qualified No. 1 with a 5.28 and paced the field in all three sessions. He sailed through the first round with another 5.28, but lost on a holeshot to Demke in round two by the invisible margin of two-thousandths of a second, 5.26 to 5.21, after Demke stole a .05-second lead at the start.

“I hadn’t had worse that a .047 light all weekend, including all three qualifying runs, so you hate to lose like that,” said Whiteley, who lost with a .094 reaction time. “I was trying to get staged before Chris did, and I was just bumping in when he got in there first. It was a quick Tree, and I wasn’t ready.”

A 5.21, one of the quickest runs in blown-alcohol dragster history, left Whiteley just short at the finish line. “I never saw him and had no idea that I lost,” he said. “The other car has to be way out there for you to see it, and at this track, because the fuel cars were running four-wide, there’s no win-light after the finish line.”

Wife Annie fell to Drew in a match in which she and the Wisconsin driver were locked side by side for the entire quarter-mile after leaving with almost identical reaction times, .060 and .065. Drew ran a 5.56, the only run he made all weekend that was quick enough to beat her, to edge her 5.57 by a scant 13-thousandths of a second.

“I never did see him,” said Whiteley, who won the Las Vegas regional three weeks ago. “The car ran fine and I thought we really had a good chance to win this weekend, especially after what we did in qualifying.” After shaking the tires on low-5.7 runs in the first two sessions, she stormed to a 5.54 in last-shot qualifying that at the time was good for low e.t. of the meet. She then breezed through the first round with a 5.58 against New Jersey’s Duane Beers, who broke on the burnout.