Tag: Indy (Page 3 of 3)

PRO MOD – INDY 2016

September 6, 2016 / Todd Veney

At the all-5.80 NHRA U.S. Nationals, the biggest race of the season, Jim and Steven Whiteley both qualified for the fastest lineup in Pro Mod history, Jim with 5.86 at 246 mph in his immaculate â€™69 Chevelle and Steven with a 5.89 at 246 in his â€™14 Cadillac CTS.

Steven opened with a 5.95 off the trailer and a nice 5.90-flat that would have qualified him for any other Pro Mod race ever but wouldâ€™ve left him 17th for this 16-car field had he not improved in later sessions. Jim started with a 5.96. Steven unloaded a 5.89 in the third session that ultimately landed him on the bump for the record field and Jim moved up 16 spots to No. 7 at the time with the 5.86/246, the quickest and fastest run of his Pro Mod career.

The wheels came off in eliminations when Jim was chased down in the first round by yearlong points leader Rickie Smithâ€™s come-from-behind 5.83 after drilling Smith on the Tree with a .034 light. Facing No. 1 qualifier Troy Coughlin, the reigning J&A Service Pro Mod Series champ, in the first round, Steven got out of shape early, brought it back from the wall and went after Coughlin until there was no way he could catch the Jegâ€™s driver, even if he broke, and coasted to a 6.61 at 216 mph. Coughlin, the eventual runner-up who dipped into the 5.70s multiple times in qualifying, advanced with a 5.83.

It may have been an off weekend for the J&A Service/YNot Pro Mod cars, but it was anything but for teammate Annie Whiteley, who reached the Top Alcohol Funny Car final for the third time in four career trips to Indianapolis, and Cory Reed, whose career-first semifinal appearance in the Pro Stock Motorcycle semifinals leapfrogged him over three other riders on the last day of the regular season for the final Countdown position and a shot at the championship.

The Pro Mods will be back in action next weekend in the heart of door-car country, Charlotte, N.C., at the Carolina Nationals at ZMax Dragway.

PRO MOD – INDY 2015

September 8, 2015 / Todd Veney

The 2015 U.S. Nationals represented a huge step forward for the entire YNot Racing/J&A Service team. Not only did Annie Whiteley runner-up in Top Alcohol Funny Car and Joey Severance win Top Alcohol Dragster, but Pro Mod drivers Jim and Steve Whiteley turned in some of their finest performances of the season.

To qualify for the quickest field in the history of the J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod series (5.94 bump), Jim ripped off a 5.92 for the No. 15 spot. Steven did even better, making his best run all year and qualifying No. 7 with an outstanding 5.882 – one-thousandth of a second quicker than his 5.883 last year at Englishtown. “It’s been a long time and a lot of work by this whole team, but I think our program is really turning around now,” said Steven, whose car was on rails throughout qualifying. After back-to-back 5.92s at 245 mph in the first two sessions, he wheeled his ’14 CTS-V to a 5.89 at 246 and picked up even further to a 5.88 at 247 in Sunday’s last-shot session.

Jim got his ’69 Chevelle on the provisional grid with an off-the-trailer 6-flat, spun on the next qualifying run and slipped to a 6.06 on the next one, but he came through with a clutch 5.92 at 244 in last-ditch qualifying to crack the final lineup. With more than twice as many cars (33) in attendance as there were spots in the 16-car field, everyone knew that making the cut would be a major accomplishment, but no one could have predicted that a record bump would be established in such hot and humid conditions. Former series champion Mike Castellana, past Indy winner Jim Bell, and incoming points leader Bob Rahaim all failed to qualify.

Steven’s weekend came to an abrupt end when he ran into tire shake in the first round against nemesis “Tricky Rickie” Smith, the defending NHRA Pro Mod champ. Jim whipped No. 2 qualifier Sidnei Frigo, the former Top Alcohol Dragster and Top Fuel driver, in their first-round matchup, drilling the Brazilian on the Tree and driving away from him for a 5.96 to 5.97 victory. He then strapped a holeshot on Smith Monday in round two but ran into trouble downtrack and fell to Smith’s subpar 6.08.

Just three races remain on the 2015 J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod tour – Charlotte and St. Louis on back-to-back weekends later this month, and Las Vegas Oct. 29-Nov. 1.

TAFC – INDY 2015

September 8, 2015 / Todd Veney

At the NHRA U.S. Nationals, the most prestigious event in drag racing, YNot Racing/J&A Service driver Annie Whiteley padded her already commanding lead in the Top Alcohol Funny Car standings with her sixth final-round appearance already this season.

“The car ran good all weekend, but not quite good enough in the final,” said Whiteley, who appeared in the Indy final for the second time in three years. Whiteley, who won national events in Seattle and Las Vegas and regional events in Vegas and Woodburn earlier this season, came out on the wrong end of a close final-round match with Andy Bohl, 5.62 to 5.63.

The incoming points leader’s road to the final began with a solid 5.65 in Friday’s first qualifying session. She opened eliminations from the No. 6 qualifying spot with an impressive 5.57 in last-shot qualifying Sunday morning and ran at least in the low 5.60s at well over 260 mph on seven of eight runs over the long Labor Day weekend.

In the first round of eliminations late Sunday afternoon, Whiteley dispatched four-time national event champ Dan Pomponio with a good light and a smooth, trouble-free 5.60, one of the best e.t.s of the round. Monday in round two, her consistent 5.66 knocked off Mike Doushgounian, who was at the wheel of the same car Frank Manzo drove opposite her in the 2013 Indy final. Reigning Top Alcohol Funny Car world champ Steve Harker was the next to go. After laying down the only run in the 5.50s all day Monday to win round two, he slowed to an 8.53 in the semi’s while Whiteley sailed to a winning 5.64. She picked up to a 5.63 in the final, but Bohl also found a hundredth for a close 5.62-5.63 win.

“Nobody likes to lose, but I’m happier to have been in the final round than I am disappointed that I didn’t win it,” Whiteley said philosophically. “The best part is, this was a great weekend for points.” With another runner-up finish and the season rapidly winding down, her lead has ballooned to more than 100 points over second-place Jonnie Lindberg.

TAFC – INDY 2014

September 3, 2014 / Todd Veney

After tearing up the Top Alcohol Funny Car ranks from the time she broke through to win in just the fourth start of her rookie season, J&A Service/YNot Racing driver Annie Whiteley finally hit the first slump of her career.

An upset first-round loss at the biggest race of the season, the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis, where last year she made it to the final and barely lost, was Whiteley’s fourth first-round defeat in five races. It happened just four times in her entire rookie campaign, when she amassed a 26-11 win-loss record and tied for fourth in the national standings, and just five times all last year, when she put up a 23-12 mark and finished fourth in the nation.

2014 hasn’t been a washout – Whiteley currently is locked in a three-way tie for eighth place in the national standings and has three final-round appearances in the bank – but it’s been no 2012. “This stinks,” said Whiteley, who qualified No. 5 at Indy with an off-the-trailer 5.61 that covered the other 23 drivers by the almost unheard-of margin of half a tenth. She ended up No. 5, solidly in the fast half of the field as she has been at every race but one this year, but shook violently against Jay Payne, who qualified just 12th but went on to win the event.

“It was a weak shake,” she said. “It wasn’t that we overpowered the track – that track was way better than anyone thought it was going to be. Usually when you short-shift, the shake goes away, but that time, short-shifting just made the car shake harder.”

PRO MOD – INDY 2014

September 2, 2014 / Todd Veney

At the most prestigious race of the season, the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals, two-time NHRA world champ Jim Whiteley made his 2014 debut at what turned out to be the toughest Pro Mod race of all time and son Steven Whiteley qualified a career-high fourth with one of his best runs ever.

Steven, who ran a 5.87 earlier this year at the Southern Nationals in Atlanta and a 5.88 in last-shot qualifying for the Summernationals in Englishtown, N.J., blistered the Lucas Oil Raceway quarter-mile for a 5.89 that left him a scant three-hundredths of a second from the top spot. It was also low e.t. of the entire third qualifying session and the only run in the 5.80s all weekend by a supercharged car – including those of some of the biggest names in Pro Mod racing: past national event winners Von Smith, Danny Rowe, Mike Janis, and Jay Payne.

Jim, who hadn’t competed since a runner-up finish at the 2013 NHRA Finals locked up his second straight Top Alcohol Dragster championship, fell six-hundredths of a second short of making the field with a 6.05 that would have qualified him at virtually any other event in Pro Mod history. The 2014 U.S. Nationals attracted the largest contingent of blown, turbocharged, and nitrous entries of all time – 33 cars in all, led by Don Walsh’s 5.86 and anchored by second-generation star Bill Glidden’s 5.99. Even one of the alternates, Canada’s Eric Latino, ran in the five-second zone.

“This wasn’t the easiest place to get started, was it?” asked Jim, who won the Top Alcohol Dragster title at last year’s U.S. Nationals. “It’s still a thrill, an absolute adrenaline rush, every single time you let the clutch out in one of these cars because you never know what they’re going to do. They’re exciting. The dragster was too, but these cars are different, and I’m loving this whole Pro Mod deal. You absolutely have to be on top of everything every single time.”

TAD/TAFC – INDY 2013

September 5, 2013 / Todd Veney

With one flawless run after another, national Top Alcohol Dragster champ Jim Whiteley earned the 21st and biggest win of his career at the prestigious U.S. Nationals to reclaim the national points lead and wife Annie Whiteley fell just a round short of doubling up with a runner-up in Top Alcohol Funny Car.

In a classic final against his biggest rival, incoming points leader Chris Demke, Whiteley got off the line first, .025 to .041, and stretched the lead for a 5.35 to 5.37 victory. “That was a lot of pressure,” he said. “Winning Indy is something I really wanted to get done before I stop racing in Alcohol Dragster, and points-wise, this is just huge.” Whiteley now leads by 19 points, 668 to 649.

Whiteley’s YNot Racing/J&A Service dragster topped the charts until the second-to-last last pair of the fourth and final qualifying session, when Demke edged his 5.34 with a 5.33. Whiteley took out home state racer Paul Fishburn in the first round of eliminations with a 5.33, set low e.t. and top speed of the meet with a 5.32 at 270.54 mph in a second-round decision over Houston winner Randy Meyer, and erased Aaron Olivarez in the semi’s with a 5.34. A final-round 5.35 was just enough to cover Demke’s close 5.37.

“I always get up to race him,” Whiteley said. “It was a great race – when we run each other, it usually is – and it was everything it should have been. The final round of the U.S. Nationals ought to be side-by-side with both cars running great, and it was.”

One pair ahead of them in the Top Alcohol Funny Car final, Annie Whiteley lost a close one to 16-time world champ Frank Manzo, 5.56 to 5.57. “I’d love to beat him just one time before he’s done, but this was a lot different than the last time I raced him, last year at Brainerd,” she said. “This time, I wasn’t thinking, ‘That’s Frank Manzo over there, and this is the final’ or staring at the back of his car the whole way down the track.”

Until the final, everybody was staring at the back of her car. Like her husband, Whiteley led qualifying until the very end, when she improved from her No. 1 5.58 to a 5.55, but Manzo, who was in the other lane for her run, recorded a 5.53 for the top spot. Whiteley plowed through eliminations, taking out a top 10 driver in every round: two-time national event winner Dan Pomponio in round one with a 5.61, former world champ Tony Bartone in round two with a 5.57, and 2010 U.S. Nationals winner Jay Payne, who red-lighted, in the semifinals with a 5.58.

Whiteley made her best run of the long weekend, a 5.57, in the final, but Manzo edged her out for a record 11th U.S. Nationals title with a slightly quicker 5.56. “It was still an unbelievable weekend, even though we didn’t win,” she said. “I was happier just to have been in the final than I was bummed about not winning it.”