Tag: las vegas (Page 3 of 4)

TAFC – LAS VEGAS NATIONAL 2019

November 4, 2019 / Todd Veney

Mired in the toughest stretch of her eight-year career just as the year winds down, Annie Whiteley bowed out early at the Dodge NHRA Nationals. In her penultimate start of 2019, at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where she’s enjoyed more success than at any other track (and more than any active Top Alcohol Funny Car has had anywhere on the circuit), Whiteley was out after a single round of eliminations.

Qualifying got off to a rough start when the YNot/J&A Service team, Las Vegas winners in both regional (many times) and national competition, blasted the tires just off the line for an abbreviated 9.12 at 119 mph and followed with an equally disappointing 8.75 at 109. Closing in on another Top 5 finish in the national standings but perilously close to not even qualifying, Whiteley and crew chief Mike Strasburg came through Saturday morning in last-shot qualifying.

Stuck in the first pair of that high-pressure session because of how far down on the grid she was at that point, Whiteley stepped up dramatically when it mattered most with a clutch 5.47 at more than 270 mph to skyrocket to the No. 5 spot. That should have assured her an imminently winnable first-round match with an opponent well down in the final order, No. 12. Instead, as has been the case a disturbingly disproportionate amount of the time this year – especially lately – she had to race someone who never should have qualified that low, pre-race favorite Chris Marshall, who, in three qualifying attempts, mustered a best of just 5.59.

In the first pair of the first round under the lights Saturday night, Whiteley drilled Marshall, consistently one of the best leavers in Top Alcohol Funny Car, with a reaction time literally twice as good as his – .076 to .152 – but blew the tires off and looked on helplessly as he sped away to a winning 5.46/265 while she coasted to a losing 13.54. “The guys had a whole new clutch pedal for me for this weekend and I really felt good up there,” she said. “I feel a lot more comfortable now, like I’m more in control, and I knew I had a good light, but when you go up in smoke in low gear there’s not a whole lot you can do.”

PRO MOD – LAS VEGAS 2019

November 4, 2019 / Todd Veney

Steven Whiteley’s final start as a Pro Mod driver (at least for now) and father Jim Whiteley’s last this season both went down as an unmitigated success: Jim wound up 2019 on an ascendant arc with his finest performance of the season, and Steven, runner-up the last time out with one teen light after another, reached the quarterfinals in easily the YNot/J&A Service team’s best overall 1-2 finish all year.

Both ran strong in qualifying at the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Steven with a best of 5.76, the same E.T. he ran under vastly different conditions in Charlotte, and Jim with exactly the same time he ran in Charlotte, right down to the thousandth of a second – 5.805. In the opening round of eliminations, Jim took a hard-fought holeshot win over Norwalk winner Khalid alBalooshi, 5.81 to 5.80, and Steven blew out Doug Winters with one of the best runs of the entire round, a 5.77 at 249 mph.

Just how tough NHRA Pro Mod racing can be was readily apparent in the quarterfinals when Jim fell to championship runner-up Todd Tutterow by just 27-thousandths of a second, 5.81 to 5.83. Steven, facing recent U.S. Nationals winner Mike Castellana two minutes later in the same lane, ran better than six of the other seven drivers that round, another 5.77 at 249 mph that left him just short of Castellana’s sinister black Camaro, which moved on with a 5.75/249.

“I’m done,” said Steven, who, by going rounds for the second race in a row while former Bristol winner Bob Rahaim lost first round for the fourth straight, cracked the season-ending Top 10. “As of right now, spending time with my family and kicking ass at work means more to me than running all over the country racing a Pro Mod car. As much as I love it, Pro Mod has nothing on being with your family.”

TAFC – LAS VEGAS REGIONAL 2018

November 5, 2018 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley took her rightful place in the quickest, fastest Top Alcohol Funny Car field of all-time, but at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, site of so much success in years past, she was gone early. Driving the repurposed John Lombardo/Rick Jackson Camaro she’d strapped into for the first time a week earlier at the Vegas national, Whiteley ran a 5.52/267 and an even better 5.51/268 that surprisingly didn’t land her in the fast half of the field.

It took a run in the 5.40s to do that and an unbelievable 5.53 to make the record bump. Newly crowned world champ Sean Bellemeur, who entered the event on a five-race win streak, locking up the first perfect 10-win season since Frank Manzo’s glory days, failed to qualify, and perennial contender Doug Gordon nearly did. Whiteley’s 5.51 was good only for the No. 6 spot, which set up a first-round match with Lombardo, who’d run a 5.47 for No. 3.

“[Crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] was saying at Dallas that the car wasn’t running that great, wasn’t doing what it was supposed to,” Whiteley said. “He could tell that something in the ignition wasn’t right because he was putting in timing maps all weekend that have never worked before but that the computer told him to run. Turns out the spark plug wires weren’t right, so we weren’t making the power every other part of the tune-up told him we should be making. Every run, he’d say, ‘It should have run better than that,’ and he never says stuff like that.”

Strasburg and crew threw a new set of wires on it for eliminations and voilà – instant power. Only now, with the rest of the tune-up hopped up to compensate, the car made too much power, and Whiteley blew the tires off right at the swap, allowing Lombardo to survive with a run barely over 200 mph. His engine blew in a flash of flame, slowing him to a 5.73/202, but he still made it across the finish line well ahead of Whiteley’s coasting 12.67 at 85 mph. “That showed Mike that the power had been there all along,” Whiteley said. “We just couldn’t run what we should have been running because the wires were bad. This was one time we almost didn’t even mind losing a round because now we know the car will be right for Pomona.”

TAFC – LAS VEGAS NATIONAL 2018

October 29, 2018 / Todd Veney

Anxious at the prospect of making her first run since she crashed off the end of the Texas Motorplex shutdown area on Oct. 7, Annie Whiteley swapped feet at the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the first time in a temporary new ride. “I was nervous as hell on that first qualifying run,” she admitted. “I had two weeks to think about getting back in there, but after that first run, it was over. I was fine for the second one and totally comfortable by the third.”

It was a solid effort not just for Whiteley but for her entire team, led by crew chief Mike Strasburg, who was unfamiliar with an altogether different car than the one they’d run the past two years. “People think this is the body off Lombardo’s car,” Whiteley said of the Camaro they borrowed from two-time championship runner-ups Rick Jackson and John Lombardo. “It’s not just the body; it’s that whole car – the body, the chassis, the computer, everything except the motor, transmission, and pedals out of my car. It’s actually the same one Lombardo was driving when I raced him in the final round last year at Pomona.”

It’s built for a driver about a foot taller than Whiteley. “It’s different, I can tell you that,” she said. “And when it’s not your car, you don’t fit in there quite right, and you definitely don’t want to hurt anything because you know it’s not yours.” The team stuffed padding in the seat so she could see over the injector, and soon she was used to the new cockpit – not 100% at home, but at least comfortable enough to compete.

Eliminations didn’t last long when Whiteley came out on the wrong end of an exceptionally tight first-round match with Brian Hough, who had never beaten the YNot team in national competition. Previously 3-0 against Hough, Whiteley ran four-thousandths of a second slower than the Oregon driver for a disappointing 5.538 to 5.542 loss. “Hey, it was good just to be back out here,” she said. “We’ll get a little closer with this thing at the regional and Pomona and be back with a brand-new car for 2019.”

PRO MOD – LAS VEGAS 2018

October 29, 2018 / Todd Veney

In the final race of the 2018 J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod tour, where Richmond winner Mike Janis was crowned champion when three-time series champion Rickie Smith went down in round two, Jim and Steven Whiteley wrapped up their seasons with solid performances. Steven qualified way up at the top, in the No. 4 position, with a 5.77, and Jim did better than 22 of the 26 teams at the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, advancing to the quarterfinals.

“I guess 5.77’s a good number for us,” Steven said. “That’s what we ran in the final round last year at Gainesville, and with the air up here in the mountains, that’s a way better run than a .77 in Gainesville. Pro Mod is so tough. You run within a tenth and a half of low E.T. in some classes, at least you’re going to get to race, maybe go a round in eliminations. A tenth and half from the No. 1 qualifier in Pro Mod means you’re not even close to making the show. 5.77 is a baller run, but when guys are running low .70s, it’s almost like, ‘.77? Thanks for playing.’ ”

Another 5.77 in the first round would have had Whiteley right in the thick of it against opponent Michael Biehle’s virtually identical 5.76, but Whiteley’s Camaro refused to cooperate, taking him the long way down the quarter-mile and he eventually forcing him to lift. “It just drove the tire off,” he said. “This was the first race in a long time – like, maybe two years – when I made it down all four times in qualifying, and I was really excited for the first round. First round sucks. I hate it – I think everybody does – and when it takes the tire off like that, you just think, ‘Seriously?’ I went to get back on it and saw him way out there and just thought, ‘Forget it. I know we weren’t stellar, weren’t in the low .70s, but we were right there all weekend, running good every time. Going up there for first round, I thought, ‘I have a bracket car. This is something I can work with.’ I really thought we could run .76, .77 all day long.”

Team leader Jim Whiteley didn’t run as quick but fared far better, going from the No. 15 qualifying position to the middle rounds with a pair of low 5.80s in eliminations. In the first round, his 5.84 was enough to take out wily veteran Todd Tutterow, who flickered the stage light, confusing NHRA’s autostart system into turning on the Tree right as his car rocked back out of the beams for a red-light start. A similar 5.82 in the second round, even when launched by a superior .031 reaction time, wasn’t enough to hold off Brazilian Sidnei Frigo, who advanced with a 5.75 and went on to his first Pro Mod victory with identical runs in the semifinals and final.

TAFC – LAS VEGAS NATIONAL 2017

October 31, 2017 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley’s late-season frustration continued at the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where she’s won almost as much as all other Top Alcohol Funny Car drivers combined since picking up her first win anywhere here as a rookie in 2012. When the smoke from qualifying literally had cleared Saturday evening, Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing team was positioned perfectly for eliminations in the No. 2 spot, with one great run after another in their wake – a 5.527 at 267.80 mph, 5.511 at 268.92, and 5.491 at 268.71.

As it turned out, No. 2 was exactly the spot not to qualify at Vegas. For possibly the first time in alcohol racing history, the No. 15 qualifier laid down low e.t. of the meet in the first round, a 5.487 that eclipsed No. 1 qualifier Doug Gordon’s 5.488 by just a thousandth of a second. Whiteley was even quicker in the other lane, resetting low e.t. a fraction of a second after opponent Nick Januik crossed the finish line with a slightly better 5.480 at 268.93 mph (top speed of the meet). It was her bad luck to cut a respectable .088 reaction time right when Januik was knocking the Tree down with a telepathic .028.

“It just keeps happening,” Whiteley said with a sigh. “As soon as they told me what Nick ran, I said, ‘Really?’ I’m always in the wrong place at the wrong time. When things aren’t going right, every now and then something gets in your head. I don’t know what it is – trying too hard, maybe? I know I can cut better lights, but lately it’s been getting worse, not better. An .080-something light isn’t bad, and as soon as I let the clutch out, I knew it was something decent. I just need to stop beating myself up so bad and get a little better at these last few races.”

PRO MOD – LAS VEGAS 2016

November 1, 2016 / Todd Veney

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.

LAS VEGAS NATIONAL 2016

April 4, 2016 / Todd Veney

At the Denso NHRA Nationals, Annie Whiteley didn’t do what she has so many times before at the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway – win – but she did take a big step in the right direction after the first-round loss at the Phoenix season-opener. Whiteley, the defending Top Alcohol Funny Car champion at this event, pounded out solid runs in two of three qualifying sessions, including a 5.58 at nearly 265 mph, her best run of the season, en route to a quarterfinal finish.

“Let’s just say it was an extremely tricky track,” said Whiteley, whose YNot Racing/J&A Service team was one of just two top-half qualifiers to survive the wild, wide-open first round. “When that many people struggle to figure out the track in the same round, you know something’s up.” No. 1 qualifier John Lombardo, No. 2 qualifier and many-time Las Vegas winner Tony Bartone, and No. 3 qualifier and national points leader Doug Gordon all were gone after one round, with Bartone’s backpedaling 5.82 the best run of the bunch. Whiteley, who qualified No. 4, backpedaled to a 6.20 to hold off Chris Marshall, who had upset her in the first round of eliminations here last fall.

Whiteley was off the line first with one of the best reaction times of her career, a near-perfect .004, and got the car under control enough to pull away from Marshall’s all-over-the-track 6.37/238 with a 6.20/252. “It spun the tires early, but I didn’t know where he was,” she said. “You have to be quite a way behind to see the other car, and I never did see him, so just I kept trying.”

She had no such luck in Sunday’s second round of eliminations against eventual winner Terry Ruckman, the only other driver from the fast half of the field (No. 5) to make it out of the first round. While Whiteley fought to keep her car off the wall, Ruckman was long gone with a 5.58, his best run of the weekend and low e.t. of eliminations. Whiteley steered back into the groove, chased him down until there was no way she could catch him even if he broke, and coasted to a 6.18 at 217 mph.

“Nobody wants to lose, but Terry’s a good guy and he’d never won a national event before,” said Whiteley, who hails from the same hometown as Ruckman, Grand Junction, Colo. “All in all, it was a decent weekend. We figured out a few things with the car and my reaction times. The whole team has been working to figure out something for my lights, and I think we got it. We kept repositioning my [throttle] pedal and repositioning it, and I’m a lot more comfortable now. I don’t have to bury my foot against the can anymore, it just feels a lot better, and that has me kind of excited about the rest of the season.”

TAFC – LAS VEGAS NATIONAL 2015

November 2, 2015 / Todd Veney

At The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where she has dominated Alcohol Funny Car racing since earning the first win of her career there in her 2012 rookie campaign, Annie Whiteley suffered one of her few early round losses ever in Las Vegas. The fourth-year pro, who swept both the national and regional events there earlier this season for her fifth and sixth career Vegas wins, went out in the first round.

Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro went into hard tire shake in low gear, and despite a quick pedal job, she was unable to run down Chris Marshall, coming up just 14-thousandths of a second short in the lights with a 5.71 – far from her outstanding qualifying effort. “I was catching him the whole time, and I really thought I was going to get there,” Whiteley said. “It shook at the top of low gear, and I thought I could drive through it. I kept thinking, ‘Come on, come on, we’re almost there,’ but I finally had to short-shift. You’ve basically got two options at that point – short-shift or pedal – and I finally had to hit the button at 8,100.”

Marshall shot into the lead and claimed by far the biggest win of his young career with a 5.74. “I didn’t know if I was going to catch him or not, but at least I gave myself half a shot at it,” said Whiteley, who crossed the finish line going a full 13 mph faster than Marshall, 260 to 247. It was a disappointing end to what had been a typically solid Vegas outing to that point. Whiteley qualified No. 5 with an excellent 5.558 at 263.20 mph.

Now the YNot team, which had topped the national rankings since Whiteley’s dominant victory at Woodburn four months ago, is second in the standings, just a single point behind Jonnie Lindberg, 626 to 625.

TAFC – LAS VEGAS REGIONAL 2015

April 21, 2015 / Todd Veney

Hot off a convincing victory at the SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals at the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last week, Annie Whiteley continued her mastery of the sprawling desert facility with her second straight and sixth career Vegas title.

For her third triumph at the West Regional, which she also won in 2012 (in just the fourth race of her Top Alcohol Funny Car career) and again in 2013, Whiteley wheeled the J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro to a final-round win over neighbor and friend Terry Ruckman, whom she defeated in the national event semifinals seven days earlier. Whiteley charged to a third straight run in the 5.60s at more than 260 mph, a 5.66 at 260.11, to score easily while Ruckman lost traction and coasted to a 7.18 at just 139.

After qualifying No. 2 behind John Lombardo with a 5.62/262.23, Whiteley stopped Doug Gordon in the first round of eliminations in a rematch of the SummitRacing.com Nationals final, 5.64/261 to 5.78/256. Then came the race that no one who saw it will ever forget.

While Whiteley was speeding to a consistent 5.64 and another Vegas final, Payne’s car got completely sideways in the first 50 feet, slammed into the Christmas Tree, flipped on its side, pitched the body off the chassis, and pointed itself back toward the starting line before the veteran driver was able to shut it off and avert further disaster.

With her second win in just three starts this season, Whiteley has shot all the way up to third in the national Top Alcohol Funny Car standings, behind only Jonnie Lindberg and Brian Hough. She’ll go for her eighth round-win and third event title in a row this weekend at the Spring Nationals in Houston, where last year she was runner-up.