Tag: las vegas (Page 1 of 4)

TAFC – LAS VEGAS REGIONAL

November 11, 2024 / Todd Veney

“Double bulbing” – going from not staged to pre-staged to fully staged in one swift motion to catch an opponent off guard – blindsided Annie Whiteley at the final regional event of 2024, where she absorbed a exasperating holeshot loss to Ray Martin.

In the Top Alcohol Funny Car semi’s at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, site of her first major victory a dozen years ago, Whiteley, who’s cut some of her best lights ever this season, got caught flat-footed when Martin rolled right into both beams. When the Tree flashed, he was ready, she wasn’t, and her best of four great runs went for naught in a 5.52 to 5.46 loss. “When I let go, I just thought, ‘Damn…’ ” she said. “I knew I was late.”

The weekend had gotten off to a promising start when Whiteley stormed to an outstanding 5.47 at 266.79 mph right off the trailer for the early qualifying lead. A subsequent 5.49/265 positioned the J&A Service/YNot Racing “Shattered Glass” team well for eliminations … until the ladder came out and she found herself paired up with husband Jim first round.

As it turned out, mechanical gremlins sidelined Jim’s team, and alternate Hunter Jones, who enjoyed the finest day of his career here earlier this season, assumed Jim’s spot on the ladder. Annie drilled him on the Tree and drove away for an easy 5.50/265 win while Jones, who’d mustered a best of just 5.97 in qualifying, rattled the tires, pedaled, and briefly gave chase before lifting for a 7.46/142 loss.

In the semifinals, Whiteley picked up to the 5.46 at more than 266 mph but couldn’t run down Martin’s engine-damaging 5.52 at 252. “As soon as you pre-stage, Ray just rolls right in,” she said. “I wasn’t ready – the whole way downtrack, I was just hoping he’d break something. Ray bracket races all the time now, so he’s got this whole deal figured out and just cuts .020 or .030 lights every time.”

PRO STOCK – LAS VEGAS

November 4, 2024 / Todd Veney

Qualified in the fast half for the first time since Sonoma, where he started a career-best 6th and made his first Pro Stock final, Cory Reed didn’t have to do anything special to go rounds here. He just needed to do his thing. But how was he supposed to know?

No one has any idea what kind of light the other driver is about to cut or how his or her car is going to run, and this would have been a perfect time to be late, short-shift, or shake the tires. Anything would’ve done – anything but a red-light, which, unfortunately, is exactly what happened. Gunning for a killer light, Reed came within thousandths of a second of a perfect one, but instead of a near-perfect .006 light it was an imperfect -.006 foul.

Camrie Caruso advanced with a 10-second run, coasting silently behind Reed while he blasted across the finish line at 204 mph thinking he’d won. “I was really trying to kill it that time,” he said. “.010, .012 – something like that. I figured if I went .010 all day long I could win the race. That double-0 red-light wasn’t a mistake. I wasn’t like, ‘How could I do that?’ It felt good. I’ve had enough good lights now to know a good one, and that really felt like one.”

Reed/Caruso shaped up to be a close matchup – the closest possible, actually. Not only was it the No. 8 qualifier against No. 9; both ran exactly the same e.t., right down to the thousandth of a second, at virtually identical speeds: 6.631s at 205 mph. (Reed got eighth and Caruso ninth on the speed tie-breaker, 205.57 mph to 205.38.)

The foul made it a moot point and Caruso’s shake-riddled shutoff pass made it that much harder a loss for the J&A Service/YNot Racing driver to take. “I knew going up there it was going to be the flip of the coin, .00 green or .00 red,” Reed said. “That’s how this game is played.”

TAFC – LAS VEGAS NATIONAL

November 4, 2024 / Todd Veney

The same thing that’s plagued Annie Whiteley’s Top Alcohol Funny Car team all year struck again at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway: the clutch – or, more specifically, its sporadic inconsistency.

“The discs are wearing in the middle now,” Whiteley said. “It’s like we’re ‘clutch light’ [not enough counterweight] but we’re not. It just looks like we are. If we really were, this would be something completely different. It’s not like it happens once every 10 runs – it’s more like once every five or six. It happened in the final round at Reading [where she blew the tires off after running five straight 5.40s], and the same thing happened again here.”

Whiteley laid down one good lap after another in qualifying, as she almost always does, charging past the half-track mark at more than 210 mph and storming to a 5.51 at 265.12 mph right off the trailer. She followed with an unerringly consistent 5.52/264 and a steady 5.519/263.87 in last-shot qualifying that left her No. 6 on the grid.

A huge favorite in the first round against No. 11 qualifier Doug Schneider, Whiteley didn’t disappoint, trouncing Schneider, who competes infrequently and qualified with a career-best 5.59, by almost two tenths of a second on the leave, .059 to .252. She pulled steadily away for a runaway win with a pass almost identical to her qualifying efforts, a 5.52/262, while Schneider trailed with a distant 6.81/239.

It was in the quarterfinals that misleading clutch readings doomed the J&A Service/YNot team. It wasn’t that the car smoked the tires out of nowhere; it’s that crew chief Mike Strasburg didn’t have as much clutch in the car as he otherwise would have, so it didn’t run as quick as it could have. Whiteley got opponent Bob McCosh, who’s rumored to be moving to the fuel ranks next season, at the Tree with an excellent .039 light, but he outran her, 5.49/262 to 5.54/263, to win by about a car length.

“Mike will say, ‘I think I know what’s wrong,’ and then we’ll make a run and he’ll say, ‘Well, that wasn’t it. That didn’t fix it,’ ” Whiteley said. “It’s bitten us several times this year, and it’s driving him nuts. It doesn’t make any sense.”

TAFC – LAS VEGAS

April 15, 2024 / Todd Veney

Quietly putting together a solid season with one late-round finish after another, Annie Whiteley kept the ball rolling at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, always one of her favorite tracks. Fourth in the standings and third in final qualifying coming into eliminations, she moved first with a .052 light and charged ahead of bucks-down upstart Charles McLaws and second-generation driver Will Martin in the first round, advancing easily with a 5.49/267 over McLaws’ 5.62/257 and Martin’s 5.60/260.

With three or four cars on the track at the same time, it isn’t necessary to “win” – to reach the finish line before every other car – to advance through the preliminary rounds. You just have to finish in the top two, but Whiteley had the best reaction time and the best E.T., leaving first and easily outdistancing the others despite her unfamiliarity with (and barely disguised disdain for) her new two-step.

“With this thing, I still have to tell myself not to go up on the throttle when I’m pre-staged,” she said. “I’ve done it the old way so many times, muscle memory still tells me to start revving it up to 7,000, and I really have to go out of my way stop myself from doing it.”

Whiteley’s new setup proved to be her undoing in the semifinals, where she lost to eventual winner Sean Bellemeur and Hunter Jones in a race not nearly as close as the E.T.s alone would indicate. Bellemeur ran a 5.50, Jones a .51, and Whiteley a .52, but Bellemeur and Jones hit the Tree while she, clearly distracted, did not. (McLaws finished a distant fourth with a 5.72.)

“I was late going down on the throttle that time,” Whiteley explained. “At this point – I’m still learning – I have to get in there [stage] first. If you do, you have more time to get set. I used to just barely have to let go of the brake and the car would roll in [to the staged beam], but with this two-step, I have to move the clutch pedal to get the car to roll. I have to think … and when you’re up there on the starting line, thinking is the absolute last thing you want to do.”

TAFC – LAS VEGAS REGIONAL 2023

November 6, 2023 / Todd Veney

It’s hard not to qualify for an eight-car show when only nine cars show up, and it’s really hard when you were No. 1 at the last two national events, including one just days earlier at the same track. But that’s the fate that befell Annie Whiteley’s luckless team at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, site of some of the truly great days of her 12-year Top Alcohol Funny Car career.

It wasn’t the tune-up – the car just ran mid-5.40s three times in a row here last week at the Nevada Nationals. And it was nothing mechanical, nothing that could be easily diagnosed through a routine parts inspection. It was the ignition, that invisible, delicate system whose complexities can be understood only through a piece-by-piece replacement of every component from the magneto to the coil to the spark plugs to every last connection.

“We never really did figure it out,” said Whiteley, who blew the tires off at the hit Friday afternoon in the first qualifying session. Three hours later in Q2, it was all systems go … until it wasn’t. Charging downtrack on an otherwise fine run until about half-track, the power suddenly cut out and she coasted to a harmless 5.87 at just 195 mph that kept her in the field (barely, in the No. 8 spot) until the next driver down the left lane three minutes behind her, Ray Martin, recorded a 5.73 and knocked her out of the field.

Martin blew the engine on that run and never returned, which gave Whiteley and crew chief Mike Strasburg one last chance. An aborted 6.31 at 164 mph left the “Shattered Glass”/YNot Racing/J&A Service entry on the outside looking in, but when Martin was unable to return for eliminations, Whiteley got a much-needed reprieve. It wasn’t a clear path to victory because she’d be paired with the No. 1 qualifier in the first round, but it at least it was one more chance to track down the mysterious electrical gremlin before Pomona.

It didn’t matter. Hamstrung by the same ignition problems that plagued the team all weekend, Whiteley was out of it early against Marshall, who, with a 5.47, would have been hard to get around anyway. “What the hell?” she said. “Sometimes, it just doesn’t go your way.”

PSM – LAS VEGAS 2023

October 30, 2023 / Todd Veney

Joey Gladstone was never going to win the Nevada Nationals. He wasn’t there to win.

As a replacement rider for veteran Angie Smith, who crashed Sept. 30 at St. Louis, Gladstone was in Las Vegas solely to block for her husband, reigning world champion Matt Smith, who still has a microscopic chance to overtake unbeatable Gaige Herrera for the 2023 Pro Stock Motorcycle championship.

So when Gladstone had to roll out of the throttle and watch his opponent pull around him and drive away to victory, it was nothing he wasn’t prepared for. “Does it suck knowing you have to lose if you race a teammate?” he asked. “It would if you didn’t know what you were signing up for, but I knew. When someone like Matt Smith calls and asks you to drive a V-Twin for him, you say yes. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances are, you say yes.”

With far more torque and far less rpm than the Reed Motorsports Suzuki he rode to second place in the 2022 NHRA standings, Gladstone had an altogether different experience than what he’s become accustomed to. “Riding this Buell is taming an angry bull,” he said. “You’re really busy for that first eighth-mile, shifting five times in four and half seconds, and then you’re in high gear forever. It’s a rowdy beast, like a Pro Stocker with an extra shift.”

Gladstone was absolutely “on one” in Friday’s first qualifying session but had to click it and coast to a 7.19 at just 152 mph, and it more of the same later that afternoon when he put up an identical 7.18/151. After skipping the early Saturday session, he intentionally lifted early and then got back on it for an incongruous, ridiculous E.T. and speed of 9.05 at 194 mph.

“It’s impossible to know exactly where you’re supposed to shut off and where you should get back on it to get good data but not qualify too high,” Gladstone said. “One thing I do know: qualifying that bad on purpose pisses off everybody else. Who’s to say what I could have run all out? I probably could’ve been the No. 2 or 3 qualifier.”

Instead, the shutoff 7.18 from back in Q1 placed him 14th on the grid and set up a first-round match that couldn’t have worked out any better: perennial threat Hector Arana Jr, who qualified No. 3 with a 6.84. Arana cut a .010 light and nearly duplicated his qualifying time with a 6.85 but Gladstone left right with him and, like No. 14 qualifiers never, ever do, outran him with a 6.84.

In the quarterfinals, Gladstone faced Matt Smith Racing team rider Jianna Evaristo, who had never beat him, which, for him, meant just one thing: the end of the line. He produced another .011 light and was well ahead at half-track and still perilously close to beating her at the 1,000-foot mark when politely lifted and fell back with a 7.24 at just 146 mph while she scooted ahead for a winning 6.95/192.

“It’s all good,” Gladstone said. “Qualifying where I did kept Hector away from Matt, and losing to Jianna might help her make the Top 5. I did what I was here to do.”

TAFC – LAS VEGAS NATIONAL 2023

October 30, 2023 / Todd Veney

Jim Whiteley took out one of the top two Top Alcohol Funny Car drivers of the past half-decade at the Nevada Nationals … but, by mere hundredths of a second, not both of them. Paired against 2020-22-23 world champion Doug Gordon in the semifinals, he left first and ran quicker but fell just short of toppling 2018-19-21 champ Sean Bellemeur in the final.

“Almost got ’em both,” said Whiteley, who was side by side with Gordon in the Texas FallNationals final two weeks ago until a shaft in the driveline snapped near the half-track mark. This time, he was right in lockstep with Gordon for the length of the quarter-mile and emerged victorious, 5.45 to 5.45. Gordon was right there with a .040 light, but Whiteley came up with one of his best reaction times yet in a Funny Car, a telepathic .012, to win by three-hundredths of a second. It wasn’t even a holeshot – he ran quicker, too, 5.453 to 5.457.

The former Top Alcohol Dragster champion qualified just eighth with a 5.54 but roared to life in eliminations, whipping Ulf Leanders, who scored here six years ago, in the first round with an outstanding 5.47. In the second round, Whiteley faced wife Annie, who qualified No. 1 for the second race in a row, in the first of three straight rounds in which both he and his opponent were well down into the 5.40s.

Annie, who usually does great against her husband on the Tree, and Jim, who usually does great against everybody, laid down nearly identical runs – an event-best 5.45 for her and an event-best 5.44 for him. Following the 5.45-5.45 semifinal classic against Gordon, Jim set up for the final against Bellemeur, whose team, led by crew chief Steve Boggs, singled in the other semifinal after a member of opponent Bob McCosh’s crew was injured in a freak between-rounds pit accident and he didn’t show.

Bellemeur carried the front end, smoked the tires, and bounced all over the lane on his semifinal freebie but was back in championship form in the final with a 5.44 that nipped Whiteley’s right-there 5.45. “I thought that was another teen or at least a .020,” said Whiteley, who reacted with an otherwise excellent .034. “It was close but I could tell he got me. That’s two runner-ups in a row now. I used to do all right in finals [23-7 in Top Alcohol Dragster and 2-0 in Pro Mod], but we’re running better all the time and this car should run even better next year. There’s probably five more numbers [hundredths of a second] in it right now.”

TAFC – LAS VEGAS NATIONAL 2023

April 17, 2023 / Todd Veney

The once-friendly confines of The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway were anything but this year for Annie Whiteley, who lost the absolute last way she or any driver would ever want to: on a holeshot. This one was particularly frustrating – the dreaded “double holeshot.”

Either of her Saturday qualifying runs would have been more than enough to run down Randy Parker and Jake Guadagnolo in the first round of eliminations, and any other light she had all weekend would have eliminated the need for any come-from-behind heroics in the first place. It wasn’t that the sometimes-confusing four-at-a-time format at NHRA’s Four-Wide Las Vegas Nationals confounded Whiteley, nor were there any staging shenanigans on the part of her opponents.

“I don’t know what the hell it was,” Whiteley said. “Nobody really did anything to mess me up, and it wasn’t a long Tree or a short Tree or anything like that. My light really didn’t feel that bad – definitely not a .180-something. I knew it wasn’t a .020 or .030, but I damn sure didn’t think it was over .100.” But a .180 came up on the reaction timers nonetheless, leaving Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro – recently redubbed “Shattered Glass” in honor of her late father Don, who loved the Brad Paisley hit song of that name – third in a three-car race.

She blew the tires off Friday morning on her first of four qualifying attempts – one in each lane. Sneaking up on the combination from the back side after that, crew chief Mike Strasburg delivered a decent 5.60-flat at 263 mph Friday afternoon and picked up from there, to a 5.56/262 and a 5.53/264 on Saturday that left the team a solid fourth in the final order.

In the first round, Whiteley shook the tires off the line, short-shifted to get out of it, and set sail after Parker, who hadn’t gotten down the track all weekend, and Guadagnolo, who was on the same track as her, just out the side window to her right the whole way down. “I knew I wasn’t going to catch him,” she said, “but I hoped maybe Parker was somewhere behind me on the other track. What a crappy end to a crappy weekend. Losing on a holeshot is even worse than red-lighting. When you red-light, it’s almost like, ‘Well, at least I tried.’ “

TAFC – LAS VEGAS REGIONAL 2022

November 7, 2022 / Todd Veney

Though she fell short of the ultimate goal – another event title – Annie Whiteley turned in yet another rock-solid performance at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with a semifinal appearance at the final NHRA regional event of the year. Whiteley, who’s reached at least the semi’s in six of her past seven starts, came out on the wrong end of a tight semifinal match with Chris Marshall after beating him on a holeshot in the same round at the same facility last week at the Nevada Nationals.

The Whiteleys’ Mike Strasburg-tuned J&A Service/YNot Racing machine came off the trailer with a blistering 5.47 at more than 270 mph in the opening qualifying session to set the tone for another successful weekend, a trend long established as 2022 winds to a close. The whole top half of the Top Alcohol Funny Car field, which year after year is the toughest to make in any region in the country, was locked in the 5.40s, with Whiteley in the No. 3 slot, behind the matching 5.42s of Marshall and national championship contender Doug Gordon.

Pitted against No. 6 qualifier Kris Hool in the first round of eliminations, Whiteley, who swept both Vegas regionals in her rookie season of 2012, advanced easily when he red-lighted and smoked the tires just off the line in what might have been his last launch ever in a Funny Car. She got off the line cleanly, and with a steady 5.52/267 powered to an easy win to move into yet another semifinal.

There, Whiteley’s weekend came to a close when, despite the best reaction time of the entire round and despite an even quicker run than she put up in her first-round win (5.528 to 5.523), she still fell to Marshall, who made just one run out of the 5.40s all weekend. Marshall got back in the .40s with a 5.49/266 to run down her early lead and second straight 5.52 to win by a scant 14-thousandths of a second.

PSM – LAS VEGAS 2022

October 31, 2022 / Todd Veney

No matter what happens, 2022 has been, unequivocally, the best year of Joey Gladstone’s drag racing career. Which is nice, because the points lead that began to evaporate a couple races ago is gone.

Gladstone, who won the first three races of his career over a span of just four events late this summer, has been eliminated in the quarterfinals of the past two races while the rider heavily favored to beat him for the championship, Matt Smith, won Dallas and made the final here.

Gladstone qualified sixth for the Nevada Nationals field and drew, for the third time in the past five events, national record holder Karen Stoffer in the first round. He put her away, 6.91/194 to 6.98/192, but not with a performance likely to carry him much further. “It was making too much wheel speed at the top of low,” he said. “We just don’t have enough data for these conditions – we’ve never run this track with this program. We didn’t want to get ahead of ourselves. I knew she’d go .00 on me, and she did [with a .008 reaction time], but I couldn’t just take it easy up there. I couldn’t lay up, but I couldn’t go red, either.” With a .016 light, he absolutely didn’t.

Then the Diamond W/Fatheadz Hayabusa team pulled off a massive between-rounds thrash or Gladstone wouldn’t even have made it to line for the quarterfinals. “There was no time for [team owner and co-crew chief] Cory [Reed] and I to deliberate on the tune-up,” he said. “It all comes down to priorities. You can’t fine-tune something until you have an engine in the bike.”

They made it but didn’t make the kind of run that’s catapulted them to the top of the Pro Stock Motorcycle world this season. Facing points leader Matt Smith’s wife, former national event winner Angie Smith, Gladstone came up with a 6.92 but fell short of her 6.91 by 12-thousandths of a second. Matt Smith beat pseudo-teammate Chip Ellis three pairs later and Jerry Savoie in the semifinals but was upset in the final by Hector Arana Jr., who has come out of nowhere to win two races in a row.

Down 104 points with one race to go, the NHRA finals in Pomona, Calif., Gladstone knows the championship is a long shot. “It probably took an hour and a half until I was over losing,” he said. “I’d much rather win the championship – who wouldn’t? – but if I finish second to someone who had a dominant second half like Matt’s had, I can’t feel too bad, can I? He’s a Smith – he knows how to play the game.”