Tag: Phoenix

TAFC – PHOENIX

February 26, 2024 / Todd Veney

Long established veteran handler Annie Whiteley kicked off her 13th season of Top Alcohol Funny Car competition with a semifinal finish at the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series’ Western Region opener. “Not bad,” she assessed. “Things got a little stressful at times, changing the ignition to something we’ve never run before, but, all in all, I’d say it turned out all right.”

Frustrated by an erratic MSD command module that single-handedly cost the J&A Service/YNot Racing team three races last year, crew chief Mike Strasburg made the switch to a FuelTech setup for 2024. “From inside the car, the motor just sounds different now,” Whiteley said. “The idle is deeper. Throatier. We’re up there for the first test run and I look out the window at Jeff [Strasburg], like, ‘This thing sounds like a mud truck – you sure it’s OK?’ “

After a couple of test runs – one too soft and one a little too hard – the team got down to business Friday when qualifying officially got under way. Strasburg split the difference, and the car charged to the 1,000-foot mark, where, as planned, Whiteley clicked it off, coasting to a 5.71. On her second and final attempt, the “Shattered Glass” Camaro produced a fine 5.47 at 263.82 mph, good for No. 2 behind rookie Maddi Gordon, who went low with a 5.43 in her first start since taking over for her dad, outgoing world champion Doug Gordon.

Saturday afternoon in the first round of eliminations, Whiteley summarily dispatched the decent 5.60/262 of second-generation driver Will Martin, son of former nitro Funny Car racer John A. Martin, with a quicker and faster 5.46/265. In the semi’s, she narrowly lost to eventual winner Brian Hough, 5.47/265 to a right-there 5.48/267, just missing what would have been an all-female final round opposite Ms. Gordon.

Still, it was a decent start to the season and confirmation that the potentially perilous switch to an altogether different ignition system will pay dividends down the road. “That old command module cost us too many runs,” Whiteley said. “We didn’t even qualify at [the West Regional finale at] Vegas last year because of it. Nine cars, and who’s the one car that doesn’t qualify? Us. We kept sending it to them and they kept sending it back, saying, ‘It’s fine – run it.’ “

That won’t be the only major change to Whiteley’s machine for the season ahead. “We’re gonna try that thing Hough uses [the recently legalized two-step],” Whiteley said. “We’ve been struggling with this clutch-pedal extension and I’ve been struggling to cut a light for 12 years now. If I don’t roll in deep, I can’t get a light. I can tell you one thing, though: this car will still have a clutch pedal, no matter what. I’ll quit before I run a car without one.”

TAFC – PHOENIX 2023

February 27, 2023 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley opened the 2023 season not at Louisiana’s No Problem Raceway, where she’s run roughshod over outmatched Top Alcohol Funny Car teams for half a decade now, but rather in the Valley of the Sun. At Wild Horse Pass Raceway in suburban Phoenix, her weekend didn’t end in victory as it had five years in a row on the Louisiana bayou, but it didn’t turn out badly either, with lots of low 5.50s at nearly 270 mph and a late-round finish.

At Wild Horse, the latest track to be strong-armed out of existence by an ever-encroaching surrounding community, Whiteley just missed another final-round appearance, falling to Alaska’s Ray Martin in the semifinals by the invisible margin of seven-thousandths of a second.

The J&A Service team’s weekend got off to a promising start when Whiteley matched reigning world champion Doug Gordon stride for stride to half-track in Q1 before being forced to shut off to a 5.78 at 188 mph. She was actually faster than he was at the half-track mark – 211 mph to 210 – and he recorded a fine 5.48, so she was absolutely “on one.”

Fifth in a six-car field going into last-shot qualifying opposite newcomer Hunter Jones, Whiteley delivered an excellent 5.54 at 263.26 mph to catapult to the No. 2 spot. Jones ended up fifth with a career-best 5.57/263 and nearly duplicated that in the first round with a similar 5.58/261, but she had him all the way with her best run of the weekend, a superior 5.50/265 mph, the quickest and fastest non-Gordon run of the race.

Whiteley’s brand-new YNot Racing Camaro approached that performance in the semifinals, but still she narrowly lost to Martin. Hardly late with a .081 reaction time, she flew across the finish line with a 5.51 that left her just behind Martin’s 5.56. Naturally, no other run Martin made all weekend would’ve been enough to beat her, and, needless to say, any other light he had all weekend wouldn’t have been enough.

“Why does that always have to happen?” Whiteley asked. “It never fails. Just about any other run we made would have been enough to win – or any other light I had or any other light he had, but it just had to happen like that.”

Even a killer .031 light would have left Martin a few feet shy of Whiteley’s quicker, faster car in the lights, but he pulled off a telepathic .023 light at just the right time, nudging her out at the stripe by a scant three feet to advance to the final, where he upset Gordon for his first win in years.

TAFC – PHOENIX 2017

March 6, 2017 / Todd Veney

Filling in for Annie Whiteley, who was kept away from the track this weekend by business commitments, veteran driver Greg Hunter wheeled Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro to a career-best 5.47 at the 2017 season opener in Phoenix for the No. 1 spot in the quickest Top Alcohol Funny Car field of all time (5.55 bump).

“I didn’t know exactly how quick it was, but I knew it was the quickest, fastest run I ever made,” said Hunter, who boosted his career-best speed by a full 7 mph in his debut with the team, from 263 to 270, making him one of the fastest drivers in Alcohol Funny Car history. “We were getting ready for first round, and I had to think about it for a minute, get my head around having the fastest car in the field. I’ve never had that kind of feeling before.”

Adapting quickly to the unfamiliar confines of Whiteley’s car, Hunter got the job done in the first round with a .050 light and a wire-to-wire win over the converter car of Bill Bernard, 5.51/268 to 5.58/258. In the semifinals, another new career best – 5.478, just one-thousandth of a second quicker than the 5.479 he ran to top all qualifiers – left Hunter just short of Doug Gordon’s unbelievable 5.43 at nearly 270 mph.

“I’m not saying I know it would’ve run a 5.43, but it could’ve run better that time,” Hunter said. “When I put it on the clip, it didn’t go all the way to the rpm [crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] wanted. We were trying to leave higher, and the track would’ve held it.”

Hunter, longtime driver for the recently sidelined SynOil Top Alcohol Funny Car team, is a two-time winner on the NHRA tour, both times at the Lucas Oil Series race at Mission Raceway in Mission, B.C. “I couldn’t believe it when Annie’s team asked me if I wanted to test their car, and then I even got to race it,” he said. “I was totally honored that they would let me do it. After the race, I told them, ‘Hey, maybe I should test Annie’s new car at every national event for a about a year, just to make sure everything’s good to go.’ “

TAFC – PHOENIX 2015

March 2, 2015 / Todd Veney

At the West Region opener at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park, Top Alcohol Funny Car star Annie Whiteley had to dodge one bullet after another in her brand-new YNot Racing/J&A Service Camaro.

On Whiteley’s first qualifying attempt, opponent Terry Ruckman drifted over the centerline, sending the timing-block cones into the air and raining debris in her lane. “Terry’s a friend and from Grand Junction like us, so of course we had to give him a little grief about it the rest of the weekend,” she said with a laugh. Startled by the flying cone fragments, Whiteley lifted, coasted across the finish line, and still clocked a 6.30 at 179 mph that was fast enough to get in the field.

In the only other session, Whiteley again had no choice but to lift. “That time it wasn’t cones coming at me – it was a whole car,” she said. “We were almost starting to wonder if there was a magnet somewhere on the car that was pulling other cars into my lane.” Many-time national event winner Larry Miner, at the wheel of friend Steve Gasparrelli’s car, got into her lane when, after backpedaling out of shake, his car hooked up, carried the front end, and shot across the centerline.

First-round opponent Mike Doushgounian stayed on his side of the track, but Whiteley had to abort another run when she went up in smoke right off the line. “We’re still kind of dumbfounded about that one,” she said. “It never should have smoked the tires like that, but that’s what happens when everything’s new – new car, new tire, and a completely different kind of clutch. We just have to figure out what the new car wants, and we will in testing before our next race, at Vegas.”

The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway has always been Whiteley’s best track on the NHRA circuit: she’s won four times, sweeping the spring and fall regionals there in both 2012 and 2013.