Tag: Houston (Page 2 of 2)

PRO MOD – HOUSTON 2015

April 28, 2015 / Todd Veney

At the NHRA Spring Nationals, the second event of the J&A Service Pro Mod Series, in by far the best outing of his Pro Mod career, two-time Top Alcohol Dragster world champ Jim Whiteley whipped the reigning Pro Mod champ to reach the semifinals for the first time as a Pro Mod driver.

“Now, that was an awesome weekend,” said Whiteley, who also went a couple rounds in Top Alcohol Dragster. “It’s hard to hop from car to car, and Pro Mod and Alcohol Dragster were stacked right on top of each other all weekend, so there wasn’t much time to get ready mentally, but it turned out pretty well.”

It wasn’t looking good with one session to go, but a tire swap Saturday morning brought Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing ’69 Chevelle to life. “A few feet off the line, it was obvious that putting the new Goodyear tire like we run on Annie’s Funny Car was the right move,” he said. A 5.92 on that run put Whiteley well into the field and set up a first-round match with the second-ranked driver in Pro Mod this season, Gatornationals runner-up Pete Farber.

Whiteley’s car stumbled off the line, but Farber disqualified himself with a red-light, advancing Whiteley to the quarterfinals. “You never like to have one given to you like that,” he said. “I hated it for Farber – he was way up there in points. I told him, ‘You really shouldn’t have done that,’ and I never even knew he red-lighted till they pulled me off the track – the car shook so hard that it shook the kill switch off, and I coasted forever.”

34 seconds after he left the starting line, Whiteley rolled silently across the finish line at 22 mph, the winner. “You don’t pay any attention to what’s going on in the other lane in a situation like that,” he said. “I was so mad that I lost, I was just looking for the first place to turn off.”

In the second round, Whiteley didn’t need any lucky breaks. In a performance reminiscent of his dominant days in Top Alcohol Dragster, he hit the Tree for an outstanding .043 reaction time, cracked the 5.8-second barrier for the first time as a Pro Mod driver, and whipped the most accomplished Pro Mod driver of the past several years, two-time and defending world champ Rickie Smith, on a 5.89 to 5.88 holeshot.

Whiteley slipped to a 5.94 in the semifinals and fell to eventual winner Don Walsh, who would have been hard to beat regardless with a 5.82, low e.t. of the meet. “The video shows that it put a hole out about 60 feet out, then it picked it back up,” Whiteley said. “The car kind of sashayed through low gear, and that was it. Doesn’t matter. I’m so pumped – I’m ready to race again right now. I wish there was another race this weekend.”

TAFC – HOUSTON 2015

April 27, 2015 / Todd Veney

She may not have won, as she did on back-to-back weekends earlier this month at the national and regional events in Las Vegas, but Annie Whiteley didn’t leave Houston’s Royal Purple Raceway empty-handed. Driving the J&A Service/YNot Racing Top Alcohol Funny Car, she set low e.t. of the meet in eliminations with a 5.53 and top speed of the meet during qualifying with a 266.85-mph blast, the fastest run of her four-year career.

Currently fourth in NHRA national points, just a round out of second place despite running fewer races than the drivers ahead of her in the standings, Whiteley grew increasingly quicker throughout qualifying with an opening 5.614 at 264.29 mph followed by a 5.595/264.03 and a 5.581/266.85. “Up until the second round, the car was running great,” said Whiteley, who ran at least 2 mph faster on all three qualifying passes than she’d ever gone before this race.

After dispatching former U.S. Nationals winner Chris Foster in the quickest side-by-side race of the opening round, 5.53 to 5.59, Whiteley dropped a weird second-round match with Sweden’s Ulf Leanders, the eventual runner-up. “The car shook the tires about 200 feet off the starting line and at first we couldn’t figure out why,” said Whiteley, who was runner-up at Houston last year. “The computer graph was odd. It shouldn’t have done anything different on that run because the way the car was running, we hadn’t really made any changes.”

A post-race analysis of video from that run revealed the culprit: liquid spraying up from one of the rear tires. “It looked like I was pushing puddles, like there was water on the track or something,” Whiteley said. “We refired the car in the pits, and it was making a puddle underÂ one of the headers because the inner tube was cracked.”

The Spring Nationals, Whiteley’s third race in three weeks, will be her last for nearly two months, and she heads for the sidelines having won 80 percent of her rounds so far this year, tops in Top Alcohol Funny Car. Next up: the Central Regional at Bandimere Speedway just outside Denver, the YNot team’s home track, June 19-21.

TAFC – HOUSTON 2014

April 30, 2014 / Todd Veney

Under gray, threatening skies at Houston’s Royal Purple Raceway, Annie Whiteley lost traction not far off the line in the Spring Nationals Top Alcohol Funny Car final and fell to Shane Westerfield. “It was spitting rain as we were staging,” she said. “I could see drops all over the windshield. They’d wipe ’em off, but then more drops would be right back on there. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen when we left, and I was kind of thinking they were going to shut us off. I didn’t make it very far before the car started shaking, but I got farther than Shane did.”

Westerfield, who, like Whiteley, broke through for his first national event victory last season, went up in smoke immediately, but he was able to recover and run a 6.31 for his second career title. Whiteley had no such opportunity when her kill switch vibrated into the “off” position during tire shake between the 1.0- and 1.5-second mark, silencing her engine and bringing a premature end to what had been a storybook weekend.

Whiteley qualified her Roger Bateman-tuned J&A Service/YNot Racing Mustang No. 1 with the only run in the 5.50s, a 5.589, and set low e.t. of all three preliminary rounds of eliminations. She lowered low e.t. to a 5.580 on a first-round single earned by qualifying No. 1 in a field with an odd number of cars, and took out Todd Veney, who red-lighted, in the quarterfinals with a 5.59. After resetting low e.t. for the third time with a semifinal 5.57 win over Gatornationals runner-up Dale Brand, Whiteley lost traction in the final and coasted helplessly down the track as Westerfield sped away.

“That one hurt,” she said. “I knew Shane was in trouble too, and I didn’t see him for a while. I kept trying to get back in it, but when the engine shuts itself off there’s not much you can do.”

TAD/TAFC – HOUSTON 2013

April 30, 2013 / Todd Veney

At the NHRA Spring Nationals in Houston, national points leader Jim Whiteley reached his fourth final in six starts this season to extend his lead in the national Top Alcohol standings to more than 50 points. Whiteley, the reigning national champion and defending event champ, had a commanding lead on Randy Meyer in the final until four blower studs failed around half-track, allowing Meyer to slip past him on the top end for his first national victory in six years.

Whiteley qualified No. 1, as he has at every race this year, and set low e.t., as he also has at every race this year, with a 5.26 in what turned out to be the only qualifying session. A downpour of almost biblical proportions washed out Saturday’s scheduled qualifying session and the first round of eliminations and turned the Royal Purple Raceway pits into a quagmire.

With a close 5.34 to 5.40 first-round win with Texan James Thompson, Whiteley advanced to the quarterfinals, where he sped to a 5.30, low e.t. of the round, on a bye run. When Brandon Pierce’s car failed to fire for the semifinals, he took another single and clocked a 5.28 at 274.83 mph, good for top speed of the meet honors for the fifth time this season.

Unfortunately for the J&A Service/YNot Racing team, the blower studs chose the final round to fail, slowing Whiteley to a 5.46 at just 221 mph and costing him the race against Meyer’s 5.36 at 271. Any other run he made all weekend would have been more than enough to win. “You hate to have that happen at a time like that, but there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said. “This car has been as reliable as any car in the country all year, but sometimes these parts have a mind of their own.”

Wife Annie Whiteley was eliminated in the first round of Top Alcohol Funny Car eliminations by defending Houston winner Jay Payne, 5.71 to a shut-off 6.36. “I stayed with it as long as I could,” said Annie, who qualified in the fast half of the field with one of the quicker runs of the entire weekend, 5.61, on her only attempt. “It went one way and then the other, and it’s not worth risking going over the centerline or hitting the wall, even in eliminations, so I shut off.”

After a busy spring, including three races in April alone, the J&A Service/YNot Racing crew will be off for nearly two months, until the Central Region event in Tulsa June 14-16. That race will be the start of a back-to-back-to-back swing that also includes stops in Denver and Chicago.