Tag: Jim (Page 6 of 7)

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2017

September 17, 2017 /

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.

PRO MOD – BRISTOL 2017

June 20, 2017 /

Knowing they were at a distinct disadvantage before they ever pulled through the Bristol Dragway gates, the father-and-son team of Jim and Steven Whiteley fought the good fight at the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals. Both made the Pro Mod show, but when eliminations commenced, both got an unwanted reminder of something they already painfully aware of: supercharged cars like theirs will always be fighting with one hand tied behind their back when the altitude’s that high.

Jim’s immaculate ’69 Chevelle, tuned by supercharger authority Chuck Ford, ran a 5.96 to anchor the field, and son Steven Whiteley’s Cadillac CTS, tuned by Jeff Perley and already locked into the field before last-shot qualifying, improved to a 5.94 in that session to improve to the No. 12 spot. Jim, a huge underdog against No. 1 qualifier and eventual runner-up Shane Molinari, left first, as usual, but went up in smoke in low gear.

Steven, the second ranked driver in the J&A Pro Mod series, drew the toughest possible opponent in round one: reigning world champion Rickie Smith, who was undefeated in 2017, a winner in his only appearance since returning from back surgery. He cut a clutch a .047 light – the exact same light he had one week earlier in Englishtown in a must-win first-round matchup against the only driver ahead of him in the standings, Mike Castellana – but wily “Tricky Rickie” produced the second-quickest reaction time of the entire event, a .020, and outran Whiteley’s weekend-best 5.92 with a 5.86.

“Rickie can still pull out a light like that every once in a while,” Steven said. “That’s probably the quickest he’s ever staged against me – he’s not called ‘Tricky Rickie’ for nothing – but give him credit: he cut a great light. We could have beaten a lot of guys in that round with a .92 but not the guy we were racing.

“5.90s aren’t that great anymore,” Steven said, “but for a blown car at Bristol, they’re not too bad. You really can’t keep up with the nitrous cars and the turbo cars here on the mountain. That’s just the way it is. We get to Charlotte, we’re deadly. But here or Vegas – especially here – you know you’re at a disadvantage. To beat the turbo and nitrous cars, you have to outrace them. You have to be smarter than them, and that’s what we’ve tried to do all year: race smart.”

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2017

May 2, 2017 /

Jim and son Steven Whiteley both reached the semifinals in Pro Mod’s highly anticipated debut at the unpredictable 4-Wide Nationals, which fans love and drivers in other classes have come to dread. “I know what the pros have said in the past, but I loved it,” said Jim, whose sentiments were echoed by not just Steven but 85 percent of the dozens of Pro Mod drivers who descended upon zMax Dragway for the first time.

“It’s hardest for the guys in the inside lanes,” Steven said. “It’s not just that there are four stage lights to keep track of instead of just two; it’s that if you’re in lane 2 or lane 3, you’re not looking at the Tree the way you have at every other track you’ve ever been to. That’s what messes everybody up. You’ve really got to train yourself ahead of time.”

Just qualifying, as is the case at every event on the J&A Service Pro Mod tour, where 30 drivers are vying for a spot in the field every weekend, is an accomplishment. Jim made the top half of the field with a 5.83 at 247 mph for the No. 7 spot and Steven, despite running just two-hundredths slower than his dad, a 5.85 at 249, was six spots behind him in 13th.

In the first round of eliminations, Jim left on everybody in his quad and advanced easily with a 5.836, matching his qualifying time right to the thousandth of a second. He finished second to eventual winner Mike Castellana and well ahead of former Pro Stock great Larry Morgan, who’s in his first season of Pro Mod, and veteran Danny Rowe. (In 4-wide competition, the top two drivers from each quad move on to the next round.)

Coming from the bottom half of the field, Steven beat everybody with by far his best run of the weekend, an outstanding 5.79 at 251 mph. Jonathan Gray survived with a 5.85, Michael Bowman lost on a holeshot with a 5.81, and Pete Farber, who outqualified them all, shook hard and shut off early.

Steven had his pick of the four lanes for his semifinal matchup, but violent shake did him in not far off the line. “I could see the guy on the same track as me way ahead and knew I was never going to catch him,” he said. “I might have tried to get back on it because you never know what the guys on the other track are doing, but I could actually see Troy [Coughlin] over the wall when he passed me, and there was no way I was going to beat them both.”

Jim suffered a similar fate, coasting to a 12.05 at 99 mph, but once again he left on all the other drivers. Both Whiteleys walked away with a smile on their faces. “This whole thing was awesome,” Steven said. “It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be, and it was actually a lot of fun. I can’t wait to get back here next year.”

PRO MOD – HOUSTON 2017

April 23, 2017 /

Jim Whiteley entered the NHRA SpringNationals in Houston as the defending event champ and son Steven did so as top-ranked driver on the J&A Service Pro Mod tour, winner of the season-opening Gatornationals. It ended in disappointment for both drivers, Jim in qualifying when he surprisingly failed to make the cut and Steven in the first round of eliminations.

“This was a big letdown after everything that happened in Gainesville,” said Steven, who fell in the first round to eventual winner Steve Matusek. “Winning Gainesville took a little bit of pressure off, just getting that first win, but it added some too because now everybody wants to take you out.”

Steven, twice a No. 1 qualifier already in his young career, entered last-shot qualifying just 25th in the field with a shutoff best of 6.35. Under immense pressure, he pounded out a 5.85 at 247 mph to make the program in the No. 12 position. Jim, whose earlier 5.93 had him comfortably in the field at the time, slipped to 21st by the time he staged in the final session and missed the race with a tire-shaking shutoff run.

In the first round, after lengthy delays for oildowns and the cleanup from Bob Rahaim’s scary double-wallbanger crash, Steven bolted off the line with a .053 reaction and was well on his way to a run well into the fives when the car got loose beyond half-track. He stayed with it until the very end, getting right on the edge of disaster without crossing it before finally relenting and reluctantly stepping off the gas. Matusek charged ahead and took the win with a 5.81, matching his qualifying time.

“This was the last thing I wanted after how well everything went in Gainesville,” Steven said. “These cars are so hard to keep consistent and you don’t want to let yourself fall into ‘Here we go again’ after a weekend like this, so we’ll just pick up from here and move on. I know what this team is capable of doing – we just did it in Gainesville.”

PRO MOD – LAS VEGAS 2016

November 1, 2016 /

In his probably his best outing since he beat world champ Rickie Smith in the Houston final early this season, Jim Whiteley capped off a successful 2016 campaign with his third semifinal showing in the 10-race J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod Series.

Whiteley catapulted from the bubble to the final four at the NHRA Toyota Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with increasingly quicker runs in his J&A Service/YNot Racing ’69 Chevelle. He made the cut with a pair of five-second runs in qualifying, including a 5.959 at 242.23 mph, then picked up the pace in eliminations.

Against former Top Fuel racer Sidnei Frigo, whose qualifying crash at Houston enabled Whiteley to go from the first alternate spot to the winner’s circle, Whiteley picked up dramatically to a 5.92 but didn’t need it when Frigo blatantly red-lighted with a -.246 light. Frigo, winless against Whiteley in three career meetings, nearly duplicated his 5.82 No. 1 qualifying time with a wasted 5.83.

In the second round, Whiteley met Clint Hairston, who prevented a father-son matchup by defeating son Steven Whiteley in the first round despite Steven’s outstanding .026 reaction time. Jim also had a .026 light against Hairston and parlayed it into another round-win with his quickest run of the weekend, a 5.90 at 243 mph. Hairston trailed with a solid .056 light and a right-there 5.93.

The show came to an end in the semifinals when Whiteley, who almost never gets left on, even in qualifying, was too quick for his own good. He red-lighted by 0.25-second, sending door-car legend Todd Tutterow to his first career final, where he lost to championship runner-up Troy Coughlin.

Smith edged Coughlin for the 2016 J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod Series championship by an even points, 794 to 744. Steven and Jim Whiteley barely missed the Top 10, finishing 11th and 12th, respectively, with 340 and 307 points, just behind second-generation star Billy Glidden, who anchored the Top 10 with 380.

 

PRO MOD – ST. LOUIS 2016

September 27, 2016 /

Back with the other top runners in Sunday eliminations, Jim Whiteley advanced to the quarterfinals at St. Louis in his best outing since he beat soon-to-be 2016 world champ Rickie Smith in the wild Houston final for his first NHRA Pro Mod title.

At the wheel of his powerful J&A Service/YNot Racing ’69 Chevelle, Whiteley forced his way into the tough AAA Nationals field with a 5.94 at 235 mph Friday afternoon and hung in there with a 5.93/243 Saturday morning. That afternoon in the first round of eliminations, qualified just 14th in the field, Whiteley lined up against No. 3 qualifier Sidnei Frigo, the Brazilian whose frightening over-the-wall crash at Houston made it possible for Whiteley to get back into the race as an alternate and eventually win.

Whiteley drilled Frigo with a telepathic .009 reaction time and drove away from Frigo’s state-of-the-art ’16 Corvette to win handily. “With Chuck’s clutch, you almost can’t not cut a good light,” Whiteley said of his new crew chief, master blower builder Chuck Ford, a former door-car driver himself. “We did three or four hits in testing, and the lights kept coming up -.005 red, -.001 red, -.002 red – the same thing every time. The spread was so close that Chuck said, ‘Stay right where you’re at and we’ll adjust it and be good,’ and he was right.”

Whiteley’s winning time against Frigo, who was off the throttle early, was a 5.90-flat, his best run all year outside of Indy. In qualifying, son Steven Whiteley ran even better – a 5.87 at 247 mph for the No. 8 spot – but he fell by the wayside in a first-round loss to Smith, who virtually locked up his third J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod championship with a runner-up to Troy Coughlin.

Jim was out one round later when he blew the tires off against past Top Fuel and Pro Mod winner Khalid alBalooshi – but not before getting the jump with another great reaction time, .021. “It’s just great to be going down the track again,” he said. “The car’s running better and better, no doubt about it.”

The NHRA Pro Mod season officially ends after the next race, the Toyota Nationals at Las Vegas – but not for Whiteley, who’ll be “racing” in Comp next weekend at Dallas. Actually, he won’t be racing at all; he’ll just be using that race to test for Vegas under the only kind of conditions drivers see at NHRA events – an NHRA-prepped track. “We’ll just treat every qualifying run a test run,” Whiteley said. “Same thing in the first round. If I accidently beat somebody with a good run, we’ll bypass the scales so they can get back in. We don’t want to mess anybody up – we just want to test under NHRA national event conditions.”

PRO MOD – INDY 2016

September 6, 2016 /

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 ’69 Chevelle and Steven with a 5.89 at 246 in his ’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 would’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 Smith’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 Jeg’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 – BRISTOL 2016

June 22, 2016 /

The Thunder Valley Nationals at historic Thunder Valley Dragway in Bristol, Tenn., ended early for the father-and-son YNot Racing/J&A Service Pro Mod team of Jim and Steven Whiteley. Jim, whose classic ’69 Chevelle won the Houston event last month and reached the semifinals last week in Englishtown, N.J., shook hard and fell to points leader Rickie Smith in the first round of eliminations. Steven did likewise and dropped his first-round match against No. 1 qualifier and 2015 runner-up Bob Rahaim.

“We needed to get the car to run a little better early, so we made a move – a big move,” Jim said. “It didn’t work, and we got our legs cut off.” He opened qualifying with a respectable 6.02 in the first qualifying session and backed it up with a consistent, quicker 5.99. Steven made his best run of the weekend, a 6.04, right off the trailer that put him third on the qualifying grid at the time.

Steven shut off to a 10.44 in the late Friday session, one of the few times he and his dad have run side by side. “He got me on the Tree, which I’m sure he enjoyed,” joked Jim, who dipped into the five-second zone on that run for the No. 10 spot at the time. Neither driver put down a representative run in Saturday’s final qualifying session, but hopes were high when the first round went off that evening.

Unfortunately, it was more of the same for both YNot Racing entries. Jim, one of few drivers on the J&A Service Pro Mod circuit with a .500 record against Smith, had to shut down in in a rematch of the wild Houston final won by Whiteley. “We took a little power out for that run, but it didn’t work,” he said. “We almost got by with it in the third qualifying session, and I really thought we could again in the first round. I figured running after the nitro cars would make the track better.”

In the last pair of the round, Steven’s flawless Cadillac CTS fared no better in a shut-off loss to Rahaim, who advanced all the way to the final and had the race won until he lost control near half-track and narrowly avoided a crash.

PRO MOD – ENGLISHTOWN 2016

June 13, 2016 /

With his second late-round finish in the past three races, former Top Alcohol Dragster world champ Jim Whiteley now holds a 6-1 win-loss record in J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod competition this season.

Whiteley, who catapulted from the second alternate position to victory at the Spring Nationals in Houston May 1, backed it up with another late-round finish at the Summernationals in Englishtown, N.J. In the first round there, as in his wild final-round win over Rickie Smith in Houston, Whiteley shook the tires and thought he was done, only to see his opponent veer across the track and into his lane for an automatic disqualification.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Whiteley said of his upset first-round win over perennial contender Danny Rowe, the No. 1 qualifier (5.823). “Right when I thought it was over, there he was, coming into my lane.” Fortunately, Rowe, also driving a supercharged car, eased back onto his side of the track instead of careening off both walls as Smith’s out-of-control nitrous Camaro had in Houston.

Earlier in that same round, son Steven Whiteley, who rebounded from his qualifying crash in Atlanta to qualify a strong 5th in his rebuilt Cadillac CTS, shook the tires in a loss to Khalid alBalooshi.

In Sunday’s second round, Jim parlayed the unexpected first-round gift into a semifinal showing and kept himself undefeated in side-by-side competition in 2016 with a wire-to-wire decision over Michael Biehle, 5.94 to 7.94, leaving first by a mile with a .043 reaction time. Whiteley, who hasn’t had a reaction time worse than a .040-something all year, then cut a .047 in the semifinals and made his best run of the weekend, 5.92, in a close loss to defending event champion Billy Glidden, who reached the final in his debut in Harry Hruska’s Precision Turbo entry.

PRO MOD – HOUSTON 2016

May 2, 2016 /

Former Top Alcohol Dragster world champion Jim Whiteley earned his biggest Pro Mod victory to date at the NHRA Springnationals in easily the wildest final in J&A Service Pro Mod Series history. While favored Rickie Smith was bouncing off both walls at Houston’s Royal Purple Raceway, Whiteley dodged Smith’s careening, out-of-control nitrous Camaro to win a race he didn’t even qualify for.

After getting into the field as an alternate for former Top Fuel driver Sidnei Frigo, Whiteley parlayed the opportunity into his first career Pro Mod final and first win, leaving on all four drivers he faced – usually by a lot. With his best reaction time of the event, .023, Whiteley opened a huge lead on Smith, the runaway early points leader who won the only other race this season, qualified No. 1 at this one, and hadn’t lost a round all year.

“It felt like a good light when I left, but I barely made it to the Tree,” Whiteley said. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s it – I lost,’ but now I’m glad it took the tire off. If I’d still been on the throttle, Rickie would have been into the side of me for sure.”

Smith’s car got up on two wheels, careened across the centerline into Whiteley’s lane, just missed clipping Whiteley’s car, then slammed into the wall in Whiteley’s lane while Whiteley, for the first time in his career, jammed on the brakes in the middle of a run. “I saw Rickie coming into my lane and realized I’d just won the race,” he said. “But I couldn’t really focus on that yet because I was still trying not to run into the back of him.”

The final was a fitting conclusion to a crazy, rain-plagued, crash-marred event – and the cars that crashed weren’t just any old cars. Of all the drivers in the massive 29-car field, the three who crashed were the No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 qualifiers after the opening session – Smith, Frigo, and former Pro Stock racer Jonathan Gray.

Gray began the carnage when he banged into the wall beyond the finish line after his left rear tire exploded right as he completed a 257-mph that held up all weekend as top speed of the meet. Frigo suffered by far the worst crash, catapulting over the left wall and barrel-rolling through the grass and mud in the second qualifying session after nailing down the No. 2 spot on his only previous attempt.

Seeded into Frigo’s spot on the ladder and pitted against Pete Farber in the opening round, Whiteley took a huge early lead – .044 to .122 – and held on for a narrow holeshot win, 6.02 to 5.95. The margin of victory was an invisible 8-thousandths of a second. Another massive holeshot in the quarterfinals against Shane Molinari, .026 to .170, left Whiteley well ahead at the finish line despite their similar E.T.s, 5.92 to 5.96. In the semifinals against reigning series champ Troy Coughlin, Whiteley again was off the mark first, .031 to .044, and needed it for a close 5.92 to 5.93 win that set up the unforgettable final.

“We still need to get this thing running a little better,” Whiteley said of his flawless J&A Service/YNot Racing ’69 Chevelle, “and I really think we will. If I can stay this sharp on the starting line and we get the car running a little quicker, we can really do some damage this year.”

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