Tag: Jim (Page 7 of 7)

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 – 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.

PRO MOD – NORWALK 2015

July 6, 2015 / Todd Veney

At the SummitRacing.com Nationals at Norwalk, Jim Whiteley qualified higher than he ever has in his brief Pro Mod career – No. 5 – and then proceeded to run even better in eliminations. But, tired of watching turbocharged and supercharged clutch cars drive around him on the top end, he’s taking out his torque converter setup after this race and going back to a clutch for the U.S. Nationals.

The two-time Top Alcohol Dragster world champ backed up an out-of-the-box 5.91 with an outstanding 5.90 in the second qualifying session, just missing the 5.80s and claiming the provisional No. 4 spot on the grid. He ended up fifth, ahead of 23 of the 28 entrants in the typically huge Pro Mod field and in the first round faced Pro Mod rookie Troy Coughlin Jr., son of the 2012 NHRA Pro Mod champ and 2013-14 championship runner-up.

Whiteley cut a decent .089 light, young Coughlin was off like a shot with a .024, and Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Chevelle immediately overcame the Jegs car’s quicker start and sailed into a sizable lead. He was out front by more than half a tenth at the 330-foot mark, still held a noticeable advantage at half-track, and finally relinquished it around the 1,000-foot mark.

“I never saw him until the very end,” said Whiteley, whose reaction times usually are in the .030s and .040s. “Those turbocharged cars have 6 or 7 mph on the converter cars at the top end, and he got around me. When the converter slips like that, you just give away too much speed, and that thing’s about to come out of there. It’s not easy to make a change when the car runs as good as it did this weekend, but in the end, I think this will be for the best.”

PRO MOD – BRISTOL 2015

June 22, 2015 / Todd Veney

At the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals at historic Bristol Dragway, YNot Racing’s Jim Whiteley ran deep into the 5.90s for the third race in a row and for the second in a row ran stride for stride with fellow two-time NHRA world champ, Rickie Smith. If he’d run just 1/200^th of a second quicker, it would’ve been two straight upset wins over Smith.

Whiteley, who won the 2012 and 2013 NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster championships, gained an imperceptible jump at the line, .056 to .059, and his blown car and Smith’s nitrous-injected machine were locked doorhandle to doorhandle the entire length of the quarter-mile in a race won by Smith, 5.97 to 5.98. The margin of victory: four-thousandths of a second.

“I never saw him,” said Whiteley, who was just 20 inches behind Smith when they went through the lights. Whiteley led by more than half a tenth at the 330-foot mark and by more than two-hundredths as he passed the 1,000-foot cone, but Smith’s better top-end charge, 244 mph to 239, was just enough to get around Whiteley’s ’69 Chevelle.

“I couldn’t hear him either, because a blower engine is louder,” Whiteley said. “He’s been around for a long time and has won a lot of races a lot of ways. He backed out after I pre-staged, but that’s just Rickie being Rickie. I don’t have a problem with him.”

Whiteley powered into the 5.80s for the first time officially on the way to his semifinal finish Houston, but considering the altitude, humidity, and oppressive heat at Bristol, this might be his most impressive performance in a Pro Mod to date. “I’m really excited about this,” he said. “Pro Mod is just a fun, fun class to run, and the car keeps getting better and better every time out.”

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.”