Tag: Indy (Page 2 of 3)

TAFC – ALLSTARS 2020

September 6, 2020 / Todd Veney

Top Alcohol Funny Car star Annie Whiteley was out early at theoretically the toughest race of the season, the prestigious Jegs Allstars, held this year in conjunction with the granddaddy of them all, the U.S. Nationals.

Shifted to Indianapolis from its originally scheduled June date in Chicago, the invitation-only race-within-a-race attracted the biggest names in the country – just about everybody but the two biggest: 2018-19 NHRA world champion Sean Bellemeur and yearlong 2020 points leader Doug Gordon. Eliminations had to be wedged into an already jam-packed U.S. Nationals schedule, and Allstar drivers got just a single qualifying attempt because all eight were seeded into the starting lineup anyway.

Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing team made the most of its one shot with a businesslike 5.56 at 267.22 mph, top speed of the event to that point and good for No. 3 on the grid and a first-round matchup with former East Region champ DJ Cox. Whiteley, the defending Central Region Top Alcohol Funny Car champion, had lane choice and seemingly had the upper hand, but when she rolled in to stage, Cox uncharacteristically took several seconds to follow her into the beams, which, with the engines screaming at 7,500 rpm and her red-hot clutch getting tighter and tighter, felt to her like several minutes.

“I sat there for a while – 4 or 5 seconds, according to the computer,” Whiteley said. “As high as we’re leaving now, it’s hard to hold it that long.” Right as she shoved down on the clutch pedal to keep the car from creeping through the beams for an automatic disqualification, Cox lit the fourth and final light and the Tree came down. She was caught off guard, and the Maryland driver opened a noticeable lead in low gear and advanced with low e.t. of the round, 5.51. Whiteley streaked to a 5.54 – quicker than anybody but Cox ran that round – at a speed of 269.78 mph (top speed of not just that round or of the Allstars competition, but of the entire weekend), but by then the race was lost.

PRO MOD – INDY III 2020

August 10, 2020 / Todd Veney

PRO MOD – INDY III

The inaugural Dodge NHRA Indy Nationals, a pseudo-national event staged at half-speed in the heart of the Coronavirus panic, didn’t quite feel like a national event, and Jim Whiteley didn’t quite feel like himself behind the wheel of his ’63 Corvette. Whiteley, who almost never loses on a holeshot – or even gets left on, for that matter – lost on a holeshot.

“I just lost focus that time,” said the two-time world champ of by far the worst light of his entire career, an unimaginable .313 in the second round against 2018 series champ Mike Janis. A reaction time half that bad (.157) would’ve been easily the worst light Whiteley ever had, Pro Mod or otherwise, but he got caught off guard that time and Janis had it the instant he launched with a .035 light, advancing with a passable 5.97 at 240 mph. “I don’t know what the hell I was looking at up there,” Whiteley said, laughing. “All of a sudden I was staged, the Tree came on, and I thought, ‘I should probably leave now.’ “

Until the Tree flashed, everything had been going just fine. Whiteley wheeled the J&A Service/YNot Racing ‘Vette to a competitive 5.85 in the first pair of the first session of Pro Mod qualifying and wasted Pro Mod/Funny Car driver Chad Green in the first round of eliminations, leaving first and leading wire to wire, 5.88/241 to 7.14/138. With fields this tight there really are no underdogs, but both he and Janis technically “upset” higher-qualified drivers in the first round, Whiteley over No. 5 qualifier Green with a 5.88 and Janis over No. 4 Jeff Jones with a 5.94.

With no better option than to flush the whole forgettable weekend in this utterly forgettable year, Whiteley is shifting his focus to the Midwest Drag Racing Series’ Summer Speed Spectacular next weekend in St. Louis. He’ll jump into “Stevie Fast’s” world-famous “Shadow 2.0” and Jackson will test the viability of a torque-converter/automatic-transmission setup in Annie Whiteley’s record-holding Top Alcohol Funny Car.

PRO MOD – INDY 2018

September 9, 2018 / Todd Veney

The biggest race in all of drag racing, which two-time world champion Jim Whiteley won in his second of two championship seasons in Top Alcohol Dragster, wasn’t kind to the J&A Service/YNot Racing Pro Mod team this year. Teammate Annie Whiteley, who has reached at least the semifinals of Top Alcohol Funny Car at Indy almost every year in her career, did so again this year, but neither of the YNot Pro Mods made the field – not that they didn’t run hard.

Both Jim Whiteley and son Steven ran well down into the 5.80s, but neither Jim’s ’69 Camaro nor Steven’s late model Camaro was quite fast enough to qualify, which at Indy required a 5.85. At the first stop on the NHRA J&A Service Pro Mod tour since Norwalk in June, Jim missed the cut by a hundredth of a second with a 5.86 at 245 mph and Steven fell short by two-hundredths with a 5.87 at 246. Jim wound up 18th on the final qualifying ladder, Steven 20th.

“We got a little greedy,” Steven admitted. “We just bolted the converter back in the week before the race, and that’s not the easiest way to go. [Trans-brake] button racing is nothing new to me – I’m an old Top Sportsman racer – but when you’re racing all the turbo guys and “Stevie Fast” [Jackson] and all these people who’ve been running one all year, it’s kinda tough. We’ll go back to what we know, finish out the year, and go from there.”

TAFC – INDY 2018

September 3, 2018 / Todd Veney

Three-time Indy runner-up Annie Whiteley padded her already gaudy career stats at the U.S. Nationals with yet another late-round finish at the biggest race of the year in 2018. Whiteley, who reached the final round in 2013, 2015, and 2016, and just missed winning it all in ’15, overcame a rough start to reach the semifinals for the sixth time in seven career Indy starts.

“The first runner-up wasn’t that bad – I mean, who really thinks they’re going to beat [Frank] Manzo anyway?” Whiteley asked. “The next one, I barely lost to Andy Bohl, 5.62 to 5.63, and the last one, against Jonnie Lindberg, I smoked the tires right off the line and he slowed way down from what we’d both been running all day.”

This year, Whiteley’s YNot/J&A Camaro broke and stopped on the track on her first qualifying attempt, coasted to a 7.69 at just 127 mph in Q2 on the second, then ran back-to-back 5.57s in Saturday’s third and fourth qualifying sessions to nail down the No. 3 spot. She trounced returning veteran Bob McCosh in the opening round of eliminations, 5.59 to 5.72, and got a measure of revenge on Bohl for the 2015 final in a classic second-round matchup, 5.601 to his right-there 5.607, before bowing out in the semifinals against eventual runner-up Chris Marshall, 5.49 to 5.61.

“I don’t know what it is about this race,” said Whiteley, who ran 5.44, 5.43, and 5.42 here last year and has a career U.S. Nationals win-loss record of 15-7 (.682). “I think some people might make too big of a deal out of it. I just try to treat it like it’s any other race.”

PSM – INDY 2018

September 3, 2018 / Todd Veney

Turning the seat over to Joey Gladstone at the 64th annual U.S. Nationals, former NHRA Rookie of the Year Cory Reed stood back and watched his teammates perform at the biggest race of the year. Reed, who, as a stone rookie, clinched his spot in the Countdown to the Championship playoffs here in 2016, looked on as Gladstone made the field and Angelle Sampey, the 2000-02 NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle world champ, bumped in in last-shot qualifying at the last race of the regular season to keep herself in title contention.

Sampey ripped off a clutch 6.94 that nearly vaulted her into the top half of the field, and Gladstone entered eliminations in his Team Liberty debut one spot ahead of her in the No. 10 position after laying down a string of 6.90s. Both were eliminated in the first round, but Reed, who’s suffered through way too many aggravating outings already this year, remains undeterred.

“We still haven’t got it all figured out,” Reed said. “We’ve been locking up the clutch too hard and not keeping the motor freed up enough to drive through it and run like it wants to. We didn’t want to take a bunch of clutch out of it again this time and get too far on the other side of it, and we didn’t.” Facing rookie Mark Paquette in the opening round, Gladstone came out on the wrong end of one of the closest matches of the entire weekend. He and Paquette tore off the line separated by just thousandths of a second, and Gladstone came out on the wrong end of a heartbreaker, 6.968/192 to 6.970/192. They crossed the finish line separated by less than a hundredth of a second. Two pair later, Sampey followed with a similar 6.937/193 that wasn’t quite enough against former world champion Andrew Hines’ 6.880/195.

“We’re getting there,” Reed said, “getting closer and closer all the time. It was actually kind of nice to just be there without all the responsibilities and the stress of racing the bike, trying to get in your zone, and for once just standing back and watching how everybody else was working together. Losing in the first round with both bikes was frustrating because there’s nothing you can do about it, but not riding wasn’t the torture I expected it to be. I’m fine. Both bikes qualified at Indy and things are starting to click.”

TAFC – INDY 2017

September 6, 2017 / Todd Veney

She still hasn’t joined Frank Manzo, Pat Austin, Bob Newberry, and the all-time greats of Top Alcohol Funny Car as a U.S. Nationals champion, but with another solid performance at the sport’s most prestigious event, Annie Whiteley continued to add to her Indy legacy.

Whiteley, who has not reached the semifinals at Indy just once in her career, reached to the final four again with one low 5.40 after another in qualifying and one 5.50 after another in eliminations. Whiteley, who qualified No. 2 with a career-best 5.420 at nearly 275 mph, wiped out Ohio’s Tony Bogolo and Alaska’s Ray Martin in the preliminary rounds before bowing out in the semifinals against national points leader and eventual winner John Lombardo, 5.49 to 5.54.

“I don’t know why we always seem to run so good at Indy, but I’m getting tired of doing good but not quite good enough,” said Whiteley, who has three runner-ups in five career appearances at the Big Go, in 2013, 2015, and 2016. “Runner-up sucks, and losing in the semifinals isn’t much better.” Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot team, led by Bonneville Salt Flats record holder Mike Strasburg, fell just short of victory this year with another successful but ultimately frustrating late-round finish.

She blistered the Lucas Oil Raceway quarter-mile in qualifying with easily the best series of runs in team history if not in the history of the entire class – 5.445/273.11, 5.432/272.78, and 5.420/274.55. When eliminations commenced Sunday under much less favorable conditions, it was more of the same – back-to-back 5.50-flats that obliterated Bogolo’s competitive 5.66 in the first round and Martin’s similar 5.64 in the second.

Even with the semifinal loss to Lombardo, who went on to top title contender Doug Gordon in the final, Whiteley has forged one of the finest Top Alcohol Funny Car win-loss marks ever at the U.S. Nationals: 13-6 (.684). “That’s great,” she said. “But before I’m done I’ve got to win this thing at least once.”

PSM – INDY 2017

September 5, 2017 / Todd Veney

Forced to sit out qualifying sessions at the biggest race of the year for fear of destroying the only engine he had left, second-year pro Cory Reed hung on to make the U.S. Nationals Pro Stock Motorcycle field and just missed going rounds for the second race in a row.

After a tire-rattling 7.01 under the lights Friday night, Reed laid down a 6.94 early Saturday afternoon, then sat out the next three sessions at the only race on the NHRA tour with five qualifying sessions. “It was weird not running, but we saved parts and it got us to race day,” he said. “If we’d run every session we probably could have gone a .90-flat, but it wasn’t worth trying to blow it up.”

When everybody else got three more shots at the track, Reed eventually slid down to the No. 14 position, setting up a first-round match with No. 3 qualifier Hector Arana Jr., who had reached the Indy final last year. Reed, who broke through for his first round-win of the season two weeks earlier in Brainerd, got a huge jump on Arana with a clutch .018 reaction time, held it until well past half-track, but eventually was overtaken on the big end for a 6.89/194 to 6.97/190 loss.

“I knew I was ahead of him,” said Reed, who maintained the lead to the 1,000-foot mark. “It wasn’t like when I raced Scotty Pollacheck at Brainerd, where I was so far ahead I actually had to turn around to see where he was. I heard him – it’s not hard when there’s a V-twin in the other lane – and I knew he was coming.”

Well aware that Team Liberty might be forced to sit out more qualifying sessions as the season winds down, Reed and crew made the difficult decision to skip the next four races – Charlotte, Maple Grove, St. Louis, and Dallas – and come back with a vengeance at Las Vegas and Pomona. “We’re not in the Countdown and we don’t need to blow up any more motors,” he said. “It’s better to spend more time in the shop, show up at the last two races, maybe shake up the points standings a little, and remind everyone what we can really do when we have all our power.”

PRO MOD – INDY 2017

September 5, 2017 / Todd Veney

Steven Whiteley pounded out three picture-perfect runs to open the prestigious U.S. Nationals, then survived a 1-for-3 stretch to record a quarterfinal finish and maintain fourth place in the J&A Service Pro Mod Series standings.

Whiteley, who won the season-opening Gatornationals, began the biggest race of the season with a 5.785/249, 5.840/248, and 5.795/249. He was up in smoke early in last-shot qualifying (“That was no surprise – we pushed the limit on purpose, just to see what we could get away with,” he said}, but when the tires broke loose again in the first round of eliminations, it was anything but OK.

It didn’t matter, though – opponent Shannon Jenkins, one of the true legends of Pro Mod racing, red-lighted. Whiteley was as surprised as anyone, and, as it turned out, the last to know. “All the way down the track and all through the shutdown area, I had no idea Shannon red-lighted,” he said. “I turned off the track and tried to swing wide to get of his way, but they kept pointing me over to where the winners go to be interviewed. When they told me, I couldn’t believe it.”

Granted the unexpected reprieve, Whiteley and the J&A Service/YNot crew didn’t capitalize Monday in the quarterfinals, bowing out with a good-but-not-good enough 5.91/247. Eventual winner Sidnei Frigo of Brazil took them out with a better 5.81/252 – exactly what Whiteley expected his own car to run. “As soon as I let the clutch out and made the 1-2 gear change, I knew we were screwed,” he said.

Whiteley’s second-round showing kept him in the top five in the standings, but he’ll be hovering in the lower reaches of the Top 10 the next time he straps in at an NHRA event – not because the team isn’t running well but because he has bigger priorities. Whiteley, whose wife, Delaina, is scheduled to give birth to a daughter right around the time of the next event on tour, Charlotte (Sept. 15-17), will skip that one and the following one, St. Louis.

“We’ll probably fall to sixth or seventh in the points by the time we’re back out there – lower, maybe – but as long as we change the car number [by finishing in the Top 10] for next year, I’ll be happy,” Whiteley said. “There are bigger things in life. This is my first child. I can race for the rest of my life.”

PSM – INDY 2016

September 6, 2016 / Todd Veney

In the final event of the 10-race regular season, in the best race of his young drag racing career, Pro Stock Motorcycle rookie Cory Reed catapulted over three other riders to move from 13th place into the Top 10 and into championship contention.

Reed qualified in the fast half of the field yet again and drew 10th-ranked Steve Johnson in a titanic head-to-head first-round matchup that meant the end of a potential title run for the loser. Reed was off the line like a shot with a .027 reaction time and drove away from Johnson, 6.93 to 7.06, and just like that, he was on the doorstep of the Countdown.

“I knew what I had to do before we ever got here: go one round further than Michael Ray, Karen Stoffer, and Steve Johnson,” Reed said. “I figured if we got to the semi’s I was in, but it turned out that I just had to get to the second round because everybody else lost first round. I watched Ray lose [to eventual runner-up Hector Arana Jr.] right in front of me, so that was one. I was running Johnson, so if I won he was automatically out. So then I just needed Karen to lose.”

She accommodated him with a loss to perennial championship contender Eddie Krawiec, 6.83 to 6.89 – but first Reed had to get around the wily Johnson, who has more starts than anyone in NHRA bike history. “Steve’s always been nice to me,” Reed said, “but I thought he’d try to play a game on the line – that’s his style – but he didn’t roll it back out of the beams or try anything.”

Reed had the lead from start to finish, and by the time he returned to the PSE/Star Racing pits, he was in the Countdown. “What I didn’t get was why nobody else seemed to know it,” he said. “I won first round, they all lost – I knew I was in.”

To put an exclamation point on the accomplishment, Reed, who had reached the quarterfinals at five of the past six races, took it one step further with a first career semifinal finish, topping teammate Angelle Sampey, who fouled away a 6.92. Reed’s .013 reaction time and quicker 6.88 meant that he actually got to the finish line first anyway.

In the semi’s, Reed fouled by the narrowest possible margin – one-thousandth of a second – against Arana, but by then the war had already been won: he was in the Countdown to the Championship. Now instead of trailing the points leader by an insurmountable 596 rounds, Reed finds himself just 110 points out of the lead because of the controversial Countdown format, which erases the points racers have accumulated all season and separates everyone in the Top 10 by just 10 points per position.

Now, anything can happen. “I really think making the Top 5 is a realistic goal, but I’m a racer – I want to win the championship,” he said. “We’re almost as fast as the Harleys now – maybe the next-fastest ones after them – and I do a little better with pressure, so we’ll see what happens. I definitely want to win at least one race.”

TAFC – INDY 2016

September 6, 2016 / Todd Veney

With another final-round performance – her third in four starts – Annie Whiteley is back in the Top 5 in the national Top Alcohol Funny Car standings. It wasn’t just her third runner-up in her past four appearances this season – it was also her third runner-up in four career appearances at the prestigious U.S. Nationals. “I’m getting a little tired of this,” she joked. “I guess it just means we’ll have to come back and try it again next year.”

In her entire NHRA career, Whitely has only not been in the final round at the “Big Go” once, in 2014, which, not coincidentally, was also the only time she ever didn’t make the final Top 10. She has one of the better win-loss records in U.S. Nationals history – an enviable 9-4 (.692) – but no hardware to show for it.

Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot team charged into the early qualifying lead with an off-the-trailer 5.52 at 267 mph and a 5.47 at nearly 268 for both low e.t. and top speed of the meet at the time. She was more than ready for eliminations with a consistent 5.52 in the third qualifying session and an up-in-smoke 28-second pass in last-shot qualifying when she was already second on the qualifying grid and there was no point in shooting for anything but No. 1.

With a steady 5.51/268 and a .043 light, Whiteley trounced newcomer Chris King, who got in as an alternate for the second time in his three-race career and went down with a fine 5.63/255, the best run of his career. Houston winner Steve Gasparrelli was the next to go. Whiteley had an even better .042 reaction time and advanced easily with a 5.55/267. She took out upstart Bryan Brown in the semifinals, 5.60 to 5.99, but lost traction immediately in the final against Jonnie Lindberg, who won the biggest prize in drag racing with just a 5.67.

“He had to pedal it, too,” said Whiteley, who coasted across the finish line with a 10.21 at 92 mph. “It probably looks like we went for it and got after it too much because it was the final or something, but the guys didn’t hop the car up at all. They actually backed it down a little knowing that we were going to be in the right lane.”

Overdue, Whiteley and the YNot team head into Woodburn, Ore., where she always performs well, including a win and three final-round appearances in her last three trips there.