Tag: pro mod (Page 3 of 9)

Down to his last shot to get in, two-time NHRA world champion Jim Whiteley deftly guided his new ’69 Camaro down Gainesville Raceway’s treacherous left lane and into the Gatornationals Pro Mod field under the lights Saturday night. Minutes later, others wouldn’t fare so well: Whiteley’s crew chief, 2019-20 NHRA world champ Stevie Jackson, failed to qualify by two-thousandths of a second, and Brandon Pesz had it much worse, veering across the track at 200+ mph and careening into Dustin Nesloney in a fiery crash that destroyed both cars.

Under pressure, Whiteley drove his J&A/YNot Racing team into eliminations at the first race of the 2021 NHRA season with a 5.826 at 246.17 mph. He barely made it, 16th in the 16-car qualified field and just ahead of “Stevie Fast’s” indistinguishable 5.828/246.84. But had Whiteley gone the distance from the bump, it wouldn’t have been unprecedented – for him. The former Top Alcohol Dragster champ won Pro Mod at Houston five years ago from the No. 18 spot, slipping into the field as an alternate for Sidnei Frigo, who survived a horrifying high-speed qualifying crash that ended upside-down in a muddy ditch.

At Gainesville, Whiteley motored to a competitive 5.88 at 243 mph on his first qualifying attempt and picked up to a quicker and faster but ultimately disappointing 5.87/243 Saturday morning that left him just outside the field. The sun was down and darkness had long set in when he came through with the 5.82, then looked on helplessly as others pushed it to the limit – and, in Pesz’s case, over the limit – trying in vain to bump him out.

Race day ended early Sunday morning when Whiteley, victimized by his own intensity, disqualified himself as he never had before. He staged first, and, when it was time to leave, reacted to a corner of the Tree that had nothing to do with him: opponent Justin Bond’s staged light. When it came on, Whiteley took off. Bond, who’d qualified No. 1 with a national record 5.638, cruised unopposed to a 5.72 win, and one pair later eventual winner Jose Gonzalez swiped his record with a new all-time best of 5.621.

Two-time world champion Jim Whiteley, who claimed both of his Pro Mod victories in the Lone Star State and also scored here four times in his Alcohol Dragsters, rolled off the trailer at the NHRA Fall Nationals at the Texas Motorplex with a 5.73 at 248 mph for the No. 6 spot on the provisional grid. He followed with a 5.80-flat and a consistent 5.82 and went into race day solidly in the top half of the field for the second race in a row. He got stuck racing Rickie Smith anyway.

“Trickie Rickie,” winner of multiple NHRA Pro Mod championships and 11 series titles overall, managed to knock out Whiteley’s YNot/J&A Service Corvette again, this time by a closer margin than ever. In a replay of their second-round clash in Gainesville, where Whitely got off the line first, .030 to .060, he drilled Smith’s otherwise respectable .060 reaction time with a clutch .029. He led almost the entire quarter-mile, but Smith inched ahead at the end to prevail by the invisible margin of 1/500th of a second.

“I thought I had him,” Whiteley said. So did everybody not wearing Rickie Smith colors. Factoring in their reaction times, the grizzled old vet got there first by less than a foot, 5.79 to 5.82. Both cars blew through the speed traps at well over 240 mph, but Smith’s sleek 2020 Camaro had every advantage downtrack and steadily, incrementally stretched the lead over the last few hundred feet, 250 mph to 244. “It seems like I run him every weekend,” said Whiteley, who fell to Smith for the third race in a row, including the U.S. Nationals, where he went down in the first round, and Gainesville, where he lost in the quarterfinals.

Without question, Smith’s superior top end speed – 250.78 mph to Whiteley’s 244.74 in his unaerodynamic ’63 Vette – was the deciding factor in an otherwise dead-even contest. “Rickie’s Rickie,” Whiteley said. “He does what he does. He’s tough. He’ll even tell you, ‘Don’t start your car till I do my burnout,’ but it doesn’t matter. Running this car probably costs me 2 miles per hour and 2-3 hundredths every time I go down the track, but no way am I getting rid of it. Hot rods like this are what Pro Mod’s all about to me.”

At the only Gatornationals ever contested in the Fall and the only one that likely ever will be, two-time NHRA Pro Mod winner Jim Whiteley sailed through qualifying with back-to-back 5.8s, advanced to the middle rounds of eliminations solely on his reflexes, and finally bowed out against career-long nemesis “Trickie Rickie” Smith, the eventual winner, in the quarterfinals.

Whiteley, whose son, Steven, won this race in 2017 on the biggest day of his racing career, cut a killer .026 light and streaked down the track straight and true to a 5.89 at 243.85 mph in the Friday evening session. Saturday afternoon in teams’ only attempt to qualify, he picked up to a 5.86/244 that carried him to the No. 5 position in the final order, his highest all year.

The YNot/J&A Service driver faced Aeromotive owner Steve Matusek, a national event winner himself, in the opening round in Matusek’s first start in a ’20 Mustang that replaced the spectacular turbocharged Tequila Comisario Mustang he destroyed in the first round at Indy in that car’s debut. With a .068 reaction time, Matusek wasn’t exactly late, but Whiteley, reminiscent of his glory days as a Top Alcohol champion, had him all the way with a superior .032 reaction time for a holeshot win.

Matusek’s 5.850 in the unfamiliar new machine was only marginally quicker than Whiteley’s 5.856 in his ’63 ‘Vette, and their reaction times made for a margin of victory of just 11 feet in the traps. For Whiteley, the weekend came to an end in the quarterfinals, when Smith, the former IHRA star and many-time NHRA Pro Mod champ, rumbled to a 5.79/249. Whiteley got loose in low gear, got back in the gas just in case Smith encountered difficulties downtrack, and coasted silently across the finish line four and a half seconds later with a 10.30 at 83 mph.