Tag: pro mod (Page 5 of 9)

PRO MOD – HOUSTON 2019

April 15, 2019 / Todd Veney

At Houston Raceway Park, defending SpringNationals champion Jim Whiteley missed the cut and and son Steven Whiteley reached the quarterfinals before being ousted by Gatornationals winner Todd Tutterow, who took his sixth of seven consecutive round-wins to open the season. Jim, who also won Pro Mod at Houston in 2016 (and scored in Top Alcohol Dragster in 2011 and 2012), was in the 5s on three of four attempts but not far enough under the six-second threshold to crack the 5.790 bump.

Steven went rounds for the second race in a row and left his dad’s favorite track on the J&A Service Pro Mod tour tied for fifth in the standings. Jim opened with a 5.94 at 244 mph that had him well in the field, 11th of 26. Steven shut off early in that session, coasting across the finish line at just 209 mph and still running in the 5s with a 5.98. Both stepped way up Friday evening, Jim to a season-best 5.83/245 to bump his way back into the show for the time being and Steven to a 5.78/249 that got him in the fast half at the time, and both shook hard, got out of the groove, and had to lift Saturday morning.

Saturday afternoon in last-shot qualifying, Steven shut off to a 9-second time, but all was not lost – he was already safely in the field. For Jim it was all over, despite making yet another competitive run, a 5.86/244, because the bump, for the second race in a row, was in the 5.70s. The entire 16-car field crammed itself in the unbelievably tight spread of less than six-hundredths of a second, from leader Jose Gonzalez’s 5.731 to former world champion Rickie Smith’s 5.790.

Though he qualified 13th and first-round opponent Rick Hord was fourth, Steven was down only three-hundredths going into their first-round matchup. With a clutch .037 reaction time, he shot of the line in the lead, as he has all year, and when problems set in downtrack he still coasted home a winner with a 6.93 at just 148 mph. Hord, last year’s Carolina Nationals winner, went into brutal shake early and was never in the race. Steven then gained an imperceptible starting-line lead on Tutterow in the quarterfinals, .053 to .054, but his nemesis outran him, 5.76/251 to 5.82/250, en route to his second final of the season.

PRO MOD – GAINESVILLE 2019

March 17, 2019 / Todd Veney

A disappointing 28th and 29th in the order entering second-day qualifying for the 2019 J&A Service/Pro Mod season opener with respective bests of 8.63 and 10.98, Jim and Steven Whiteley veered in opposite directions. Jim continued on the same trajectory, getting loose and clicking it early for the third time in a row, but son Steven stepped up dramatically to a 5.76 at more than 252 mph that catapulted him all the way to the No. 4 spot on the provisional grid.

Jim’s killer ’69 Chevelle finally made a representative run in last-shot qualifying, an early-shutoff 5.92 that still wasn’t quick enough to make the cut. The two-time world champion and two-time event winner in Pro Mod ended up 26th of 29 in the final order, ahead of friend Clint Satterfield, veteran Chip King, and Mike Castellana, who led the standings for much of the 2017 but crashed this weekend in his first appearance without many-time TAFC world champion Frank Manzo as his crew chief.

Steven made another quantum leap forward in that session, to a blistering 5.71 at 252.28 mph that surprisingly was good for only the No. 9 spot in the quickest field ever (bump: 5.753). “Stevie Fast” Jackson set the pace with the best NHRA Pro Mod run of all time (5.665), Jose Gonzalez set the national speed record (259.31 mph), and six drivers (Steve Matusek, Sidnei Frigo, Pete Farber, Doug Winters, Alex Laughlin, and Erica Enders) ran in the 5.70s and still didn’t qualify.

Steven, who picked up the first national event title of his career at this race in 2017, won the first round over former Top 5 driver Bob Rahaim, who qualified a few thousandths of a second of him with a nearly identical 5.713. The YNot driver coasted across the finish line with a 6.17 at just 157 mph but still advanced easily when Rahaim went into violent shake early in the run and had to lift. He was unable to appear for the second round against “Stevie Fast,” who would go on to lose the final on a holeshot by mentor Todd Tutterow despite resetting his own national record with an unbelievable 5.643.

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.

PRO MOD – DALLAS 2018

October 8, 2018 / Todd Veney

In his first official appearance at the Texas Motorplex, which immediately rocketed to the top of his all-time personal least-favorite-tracks list, Steven Whiteley, who qualified No. 1 in Bristol and No. 2 with a brand-new car in Topeka, landed in the No. 4 spot with an excellent 5.80-flat at more than 251 mph. Not bad – especially for a field that, like all J&A Service Pro Mod Series fields, attracted nearly 30 cars.

Didn’t matter. “I still hate it this place,” said Whiteley, who’s never voiced his opinion about any other track on the NHRA tour. “I hate dragging our stuff through the pits here.” Texas has always been kind to the father-and-son YNot Racing team of Jim and Steven Whiteley, but most of that good fortune has taken place to the southeast of Dallas at Houston Raceway Park, where Jim has gone the distance two of the past three years. Here Jim DNQed, missing the 5.852 bump by a mere 18-thousandths of a second with a 5.870, but Steven, despite his distaste for the entire facility, managed to go rounds.

The second-generation driver left unheralded Jader Krolow sitting on the starting line Sunday morning in the first round, winning a 5.79-5.89 race that wasn’t nearly as close as the E.T.s would indicate. Whiteley got off the line ahead of his inexperienced and obviously distracted opponent by the unimaginable margin of three-tenths of a second, and was reaching for second gear about the time Krolow left.

The wheels came off in the second round when Whiteley was eliminated by teammate Jeremy Ray. He again took a huge holeshot lead of more than a tenth of a second but had to lift when tire shake set in and was driven around by the eventual winner’s consistent 5.79. “It wasn’t a bad weekend,” Whiteley said. “But I don’t ever want to run here again. We won’t be back next year.”

PRO MOD – ST. LOUIS 2018

September 24, 2018 / Todd Veney

At the second-quickest race in the history of the J&A Service NHRA tour (behind only this race last year), Jim Whiteley charged to the greatest run of his Pro Mod career, a 5.72 at more than 250 mph, to qualify a season-high sixth. It took a 5.77 just to make the cut, and two drivers – Todd Tutterow and, unfortunately, YNot’s Steven Whiteley – ran in the 5.70s and didn’t qualify.

“I absolutely should’ve run between a .71 and a .73 here,” said Steven, understandably disappointed. “I didn’t run good enough in the one [atmospherically] great session, which was a huge kick in the butt. This is probably the biggest disappointment of my whole year. I was a grouch all day Sunday when everybody else was racing and I wasn’t.”

Near-perfect conditions at Gateway Motorsports Park in Madison, Ill., just across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Louis, had the Pro Mods flying all weekend. After a single qualifying session, the entire field was packed within a tenth of a second and the bump was already down to a 5.82. Steven’s 5.80-flat Saturday morning put him 12th at the time but ultimately did him no good, and his subsequent 5.77 left him two-thousandths of a second too slow, 17th in a 16-car field.

Throw out Mike Castellana’s ridiculous 5.67 national record run, and the entire field was separated by just five-hundredths of a second – 5.72 to 5.77. Jim qualified 6th with a 5.729, but Mike Janis, who also ran a 5.72 (5.725), was all the way up in the No. 2 spot. In eliminations, Jim strapped a holeshot on PDRA star Jason Scruggs in the opening round and pulled away to a 5.80 to 5.82 win, then fell in the quarterfinals to eventual winner Stevie “Fast” Jackson, 5.74 to 5.79, for his best finish since he won Houston.

PRO MOD – INDY 2018

September 9, 2018 / Todd Veney

The biggest race in all of drag racing, which two-time world champion Jim Whiteley won in his second of two championship seasons in Top Alcohol Dragster, wasn’t kind to the J&A Service/YNot Racing Pro Mod team this year. Teammate Annie Whiteley, who has reached at least the semifinals of Top Alcohol Funny Car at Indy almost every year in her career, did so again this year, but neither of the YNot Pro Mods made the field – not that they didn’t run hard.

Both Jim Whiteley and son Steven ran well down into the 5.80s, but neither Jim’s ’69 Camaro nor Steven’s late model Camaro was quite fast enough to qualify, which at Indy required a 5.85. At the first stop on the NHRA J&A Service Pro Mod tour since Norwalk in June, Jim missed the cut by a hundredth of a second with a 5.86 at 245 mph and Steven fell short by two-hundredths with a 5.87 at 246. Jim wound up 18th on the final qualifying ladder, Steven 20th.

“We got a little greedy,” Steven admitted. “We just bolted the converter back in the week before the race, and that’s not the easiest way to go. [Trans-brake] button racing is nothing new to me – I’m an old Top Sportsman racer – but when you’re racing all the turbo guys and “Stevie Fast” [Jackson] and all these people who’ve been running one all year, it’s kinda tough. We’ll go back to what we know, finish out the year, and go from there.”

PRO MOD – DENVER 2018

August 12, 2018 / Todd Veney

Unlike last year, neither Jim nor Steven Whiteley made it to the final round of the $100,000-to-win World Series of Pro Mod, but the father-and-son team enjoyed its second-best outing of the season behind only Jim’s victory at the NHRA Spring Nationals in Houston. Key word: enjoyed.

“This is my favorite race of the year,” Jim said of the 2nd annual World Series of Pro Mod at picturesque Bandimere Speedway. “If I could only go to a couple races a year, it would have to be this one and Gainesville. And if I had to pick just one, it would be this one, no doubt about it. It’s just a fun deal all around – the atmosphere, the competition, no E.T.s on the scoreboard in qualifying … everything. There’s just nothing else like it.”

Just as at the inaugural in 2017, the event – billed by promoter Wes Buck of Drag Illustrated as “The Biggest, Richest Pro Mod Race in the History of the Known Universe – attracted the top names in the sport: folk hero “Stevie Fast” Jackson, perennial title contender Danny Rowe, Pro Stock world champion Erica Enders, former national event winner Shane Molinari, cagey veteran Todd Tutterow, and, of course, the Whiteleys’ YNot team. Contested just outside Denver and literally right over the hill from the world-famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre, it was five rounds of brutal competition, and the Colorado-based YNot crew was right in the middle of the fray all night.

The invitation-only affair was open to 32 drivers, but six were unable to attend, leaving 13 head-to-head showdowns in the opening round of eliminations. Both Jim and Steven advanced, Jim over Tutterow and Steven over Justin Jones with a stout 6-flat at 239 mph in the power-robbing mile-high air. Steven, who went all the way to the final last year before dropping a heartbreaker when he was forced to lift, and Jim both bowed out in the second round, but both will be back in 2019. “I wouldn’t miss it,” Jim said. “I’ve been looking forward to this weekend since we left here last year.”

PRO MOD – NORWALK 2018

June 25, 2018 / Todd Veney

Steven Whiteley persevered through rain-shortened preliminaries to once again qualify high in the Pro Mod field, as he has every race since he debuted his 5.7-second Camaro, only to bow out early in eliminations. The second-generation racer, who has yet to miss the top half of the field since debuting a new Jerry Haas-built piece last month in Kansas, took the provisional pole with an off-the trailer 5.79 at 251 mph and eventually landed in the No. 6 spot with that time.

Rain stopped the action six different times Saturday and trimmed qualifying from the usual four sessions to just two. In the first round of eliminations early Sunday morning, in just his second run all weekend in the left lane, Whiteley faced nemesis Todd Tutterow, who had upset him from the No. 16 a week earlier in Bristol. Tutterow, as experienced as anyone in the J&A Service Pro Mod Series and a known leaver, cut a near-perfect .005 reaction time, but by then the outcome of this one had already been decided.

“That third pedal makes driving these cars a little harder, doesn’t it?” asked Whiteley, who disqualified himself with a rare foul start. “I knew Todd was good on the Tree, so I was hanging on the pedal with just my big toe like I’ve done a million times before. It came off the clutch and I tried to save it, but I rolled the beams.” Tutterow rattled the tires in low gear, lifted, got back on the gas, and sped to a winning 6.51 at 240 mph while an aggravated Whiteley coasted across the stripe at 68 mph nine seconds later with a shut-off 14.28.

“I double-clutched, and when I got back on the throttle it picked the front end up,” said Whiteley, who’ll have two months to think about it before the tour resumes Labor Day weekend at the biggest race of all, the U.S. Nationals. “I heard him pedal it and thought, ‘Here’s my opportunity.’ Then it was like, ‘Oh, wait, there is no opportunity – I already red-lighted.’ It leaves a pretty sour taste in your mouth, trust me. I don’t think I’ve ever been this mad at myself.”

PRO MOD – BRISTOL 2018

June 19, 2018 / Todd Veney

At the Thunder Valley Nationals in picturesque Bristol, Tenn., another promising weekend ended in frustration for Steven Whiteley, who’s been qualifying at the top of drag racing’s most competitive class all year, when he got bounced again in the first round. This time he was at the very top of the Pro Mod qualifying charts – No. 1 – with a 5.823 that held up all weekend as low e.t. “I knew that was a decent run,” he said, “but I couldn’t believe it ran that quick, especially in these conditions. That was right on the edge of not making it – I don’t think the car could have run another .82 five minutes later.”

It wasn’t the only time Whiteley would top all qualifiers at Thunder Valley. Saturday afternoon, when steamy conditions made it impossible for anyone to approach his .82 for the top spot, he established low e.t. of that session, too, with a 5.88. “We knew that No. 1 run from Friday wasn’t going be taken down in these conditions,” he said Saturday, “so we used the day as a test session to have more data for race day.”

The wheels came off again in the first round opposite cagey old pro Todd Tutterow, who would go from the bump spot all the way to the final. Tutterow, seemingly down 13-hundredths of a second, matched his 16th-best 5.95 qualifying time while Whiteley reluctantly lifted early. “It was too weak,” he said. “What’s funny is that the car was set up exactly the same as it was on the No. 1 run, just backed up a little to account for the conditions. Jeff [Perley, Whiteley’s crew chief] figured it would run slower, but not that much slower. It’s bitten us before, and we thought we were getting pretty good at not backing up too much, but a run like that almost makes you wish ran bad all the time so you don’t look like a bunch of idiots losing in the first round after running good all weekend.”

PRO MOD – RICHMOND 2018

June 11, 2018 / Todd Veney

Hot off the promising debut of his new Camaro in Topeka, Steven Whiteley starred in qualifying at the Virginia Nationals in Richmond, setting top speed at 252.71 mph and claiming the No. 5 spot with a 5.82. “Everything we learned off the old car we applied to the Camaro,” he said of the venerable Cadillac he drove to victory last year in Gainesville. “We ran the wheels off that old car – it had 960-some runs on it – but this new car has development from Pro Stock.”

The new Camaro went 0-for-2 on Friday, shaking on the first run and being pushed off the starting line on the second, but hopes were high for Sunday’s eliminations after Whiteley pounded out back-to-back 5.82s in Saturday’s qualifying sessions, first a 5.828 and then a 5.821 late in the day after a storm blew through and drastically changed the conditions. “Jeff [Perley, Whiteley’s crew chief and a key member of several championship Pro Stock teams] figured out a lot on his own and brought it to this team. A lot of what we’ve done is what Pro Stock guys were doing – Jeff just applied it to Pro Mod before other people got on to it.”

Right when a long run in eliminations seemed a foregone conclusion, Whiteley was stopped in the first round by Chicago-area driver Dan Stevenson, who stepped up to a 5.81 while Whiteley’s car inexplicably slowed from earlier in the weekend. The team underestimated the completely resurfaced Virginia Motorsports Park quarter-mile, and Whiteley, who had never lost to Stevenson, slipped to a disappointing 5.89. “We just missed it on the tune-up,” he said. “No excuses – there was a lot more out there, and we didn’t realize it.”