Tag: pro mod (Page 6 of 9)

PRO MOD – TOPEKA 2018

May 21, 2018 /

Until the light turned green in the first round of eliminations, the debut of Steven Whiteley’s immaculate ’18 Camaro at the Heartland Nationals in Topeka, Kan., couldn’t have gone much better. The Jerry Haas-built beast’s first official run was a 5.84 at 251 mph that gave Whiteley the provisional qualifying lead, and after 16 cars had run he was still on top. Next came a better 5.80-flat, a 5.81 that was low for that entire session, and finally a 5.78 that landed him No. 2 of 24 cars on the final grid.

Then came the first round of eliminations, when Whiteley lost traction and Pro Mod veteran Todd Tutterow stepped up dramatically from his 15th-best qualifying time to a 5.80. Whiteley, a winner last year in Gainesville, shoved the clutch in and coasted to a 7.27 at 137 mph while Tutterow disappeared in the distance, bringing a disappointing end to what had been a promising debut.

“We made one full run at St. Louis after leaving Haas’ shop, loaded it up, and went to Topeka and ran that .84 off the trailer,” Whiteley said. “I really can’t complain about a weekend like this with a brand-new car, and I’m still trying to figure out how to drive it – it’s so different from the old car. I can see better, for one thing, but the biggest thing is that it has auto-shift. The old car was the last one out there with a clutch and no auto-shift. I hate auto-shift – it’s boring. You drive the car and it shifts itself and it just seems like, as a driver, you should be doing more. I wish they’d make it a rule that the driver has to shift the car himself, but there’s no rule and this thing shifts at exactly the right time every time, so there’s really no choice.”

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2018

April 30, 2018 /

Just days after the ultimate high of a victory at the Spring Nationals in Houston, Jim Whiteley found himself in a most unfamiliar place when qualifying concluded for the Four-Wide Nationals in Charlotte: on the outside looking in, unqualified along with son Steven, last year’s Gatornationals champion, who also missed the cut.

“I messed up on the Tree on the one run that definitely would have been good enough to qualify,” Whiteley said with characteristic modesty. “The Four-Wide Tree can really confuse you if you’re not careful, and I rolled right through the beams because I thought I was in a different lane than I actually was. To be in the what’s the left lane at any other track but one of the two right lanes on a four-wide track and have to look at the other side of the Tree … it’s just not natural. It gives you something to think about, and in drag racing that’s never a good thing.”

Positioned in Lane 3, Whiteley crept into the beams with a wall on his left and opponent Rickie Smith to his right. For 99.9% of the runs he’s ever made, that would have him looking at the left side of the Tree. But as the third of four drivers lined up across two adjoining tracks, the stage lights corresponding to his spot in the lineup actually were second from the right. Wondering why his staged light wasn’t coming on, he inched through both the pre-staged and staged beams and wasn’t on the starting line when the Tree dropped. Translation: his run wasn’t timed.

Naturally, it was that very run when Whiteley’s ’69 Yenko Camaro made had its best performance (about a 5.77, according to information downloaded from the data recorder), a run that otherwise would have qualified him in the top half of the field. In each subsequent session, he, like most Pro Mod drivers on the fast but tricky zMax surface, struggled for traction. He went up in smoke Saturday morning in the heat, and a backed-down 5.84 in last-shot qualifying late Saturday afternoon that was one of the better times of that session ultimately was good enough only for 19th on the final grid. “That won’t happen again,” he said of the opening-session slipup.

Son Steven fared no better, never making a representative run and landing 28th on the final qualifying chart with an aggregate best of 6.32 in the Friday evening session and a 231-mph speed Saturday morning. “There’ll be some big changes before we get to Topeka,” he said, undaunted. “We’ll be back.”

PRO MOD – HOUSTON 2018

April 23, 2018 /

Two-time Top Alcohol Dragster world champion Jim Whiteley nailed down the second victory of his Pro Mod career at the same place he claimed his first – Houston – but this one was a world apart from his wild 2016 Spring Nationals win. Instead of going the distance despite never qualifying for the field and shutting off early in the final but winning anyway because his opponent plowed into the wall, Whiteley made one strong run after another to bring home easily his most satisfying triumph to date.

Crew chief Chuck Ford had the J&A Service Yenko Camaro on a rail in all four qualifying sessions and all four rounds of eliminations, starting with an off-the-trailer 5.78 at 247 mph Friday afternoon. While others struggled with the green, slippery surface, Whiteley backed up that opening 5.78 with a 5.800-flat and back-to-back 5.82s. “Everybody was complaining about the track conditions, but you’ll never hear a bad word about this place from me,” said Whiteley, who drove to back-to-back Top Alcohol Dragster titles at Houston in 2011 and 2012. “I always loved racing here with the dragster, and I still do now. This place has always been good to me.”

Whiteley ended up just 14th on the final qualifying chart – one position and one-thousandth of a second behind son Steven’s 5.787 – but he placed among the top six of 30-plus entrants in all four qualifying sessions. When conditions improved Sunday for the first round of eliminations, Ford was ready, and the car responded with an outstanding 5.74 that easily covered 2017 championship runner-up Mike Castellana’s out-of-the-groove 8.55.

Whiteley, long established as one of the premier leavers in any kind of car, cut a season-best .022 reaction time in the quarterfinals to easily handle former Top Fuel racer Khalid alBalooshi with a consistent 5.77 and used those reflexes in the pressure-packed late rounds to go distance again on the tricky Houston surface. He drilled perennial title contender “Stevie Fast” Jackson for a holeshot semifinal win, 5.77 to 5.75, and did likewise to Rick Hord in a 5.83-5.81 final when both drivers’ engines expired with the finish line in sight.

“Now that was a good race,” Whiteley said of a classic final decided by less than a hundredth of a second. “When you’re in the right lane, you can’t see the win light on the wall [because the massive blower and injector sticking up through the hood totally blocks the driver’s view], but I knew it was close because I could hear him the whole way down.”

PRO MOD – LAS VEGAS 2017

November 1, 2017 /

Steven Whiteley wrapped up the finest season of his drag racing career with a tight first-round loss at the Toyota Nationals at the fabulous Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The points leader early in the season and a contender for the J&A Service Pro Mod championship until he sat out a race late in the season to be with wife Delaina for the birth of their daughter Bayslei, Whiteley wound up seventh in the final standings after holding steady in the Top 5 almost all year.

“Fifth or seventh in the points – what does it matter if you’re not number 1?” asked Whiteley, who would’ve finished in the Top 5 either by winning one more round anywhere all year or by merely attending the one event he skipped. “Nobody will remember exactly where I ended up in the standings, but I’ll always remember where I was the day my daughter was born and nothing could ever make me miss that.”

The Vegas race was shaping up to be another solid outing for Whiteley’s YNot Racing team, from qualifying right up until high gear in the first round of eliminations. He pounded out a 5.87 to make the fast half of the program, and father Jim Whiteley, the 2016 Spring Nationals Pro Mod champ, joined him in the race day field with a 5.91. Running alongside Troy Coughlin, who clinched the championship in a thrilling second-round showdown with Mike Castellana, Whiteley clocked a 5.879 at 245.49 mph in Q2 that seeded him seventh in the field at the time. He backed it up with a nearly identical 5.883/245.05 in last-shot qualifying and entered eliminations in the No. 8 slot, pitted against the powerful turbocharged Camaro of No. 9 qualifier Harry Hruska in what theoretically should’ve been the closest race of the day.

It didn’t disappoint – the race was decided by just 8-thousandths of a second – but Whiteley had Hruska all the way until an ignition failure in high gear made his engine drop a cylinder, costing him almost 10 mph and allowing Hruska, who trailed by almost a car length at half-track, to slip by for the narrow win, 5.864/250.64 to 5.888/237.46. “No complaints,” Whiteley said. “We won our biggest race ever [March 19 at the Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla.], led the points for a while, and won a lot of rounds. All in all, this was the best year I’ve ever had.”

PRO MOD – ST. LOUIS 2017

October 2, 2017 /

Steven Whiteley may have been gone by the quarterfinals at the Midwest Nationals, but not before he knocked out by far the greatest series of runs in J&A Service/YNot team history – 5.79, 5.75, 5.77, a career-best 5.74, and another 5.77 Sunday in the heat.

Just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis in Madison, Ill., almost in the shadows of the arch, Whiteley, who’d been beaten on a holeshot only one other time in his career, lost to eventual winner and new points leader Troy Coughlin in the second round of eliminations, 5.78 to 5.77. The .77 was low e.t. of the round, and his .74 in a first-round win over Danny Rowe was just a thousandth of a second from low e.t. of all of eliminations.

“That run against Troy would have been a nice time to run the .74, but sometimes you get so focused on staging as shallow as you can that you don’t cut as good a light as you could’ve,” said Whiteley, who fell short by just .026-second. “A .061 light – that’s slow for me. I mean, .029 was the worst I had in all four rounds in Denver. What happened to that guy? I never saw Troy. I didn’t look over – with blinders on your visor you can’t see anything anyway – but I never saw him till he went by me after the laundry was out.”

Whiteley, who skipped the last race, Charlotte, to be home with wife Delaina for the birth of their daughter, Bayslei, picked up right where he left off at Indy, hitting a 5.79 off the trailer for the No. 2 spot at the time and only running better from there. “Hands down, this is the best we’ve ever run,” he said. “You talk about a kick in the ass … I can’t believe I lost on a holeshot. Running the second round on Sunday makes it almost like another first round. There’s that pressure, those first-round jitters … I wish we ran all four rounds on one day – that’s when you can really get in a rhythm.”

The St. Louis race was the quickest race in the history of the J&A Service Pro Mod Series, with a bump of 5.80-flat. Team leader Jim Whiteley came through in the clutch with a 5.803 in last-shot qualifying, and the most recent winner on tour, Jonathan Gray, didn’t even make the cut, missing with a 5.807 that would have qualified for any other race ever.

“A 5.80 bump – that’s ridiculous,” Whiteley said. “We qualified No. 1 here just a couple years ago with a 5.84. Today, a 5.84 gets you nothing. I hate losing – I had the best car on race day and didn’t get it done – but I’m more impressed with the team running a 5.77 Sunday in the heat than I am with running our best ever, 5.74, in better conditions. I just want to get to Vegas for the last race of the season, kick ass, get back in the top five, and finish out the best year we’ve ever had.”

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2017

September 17, 2017 /

At the Carolina Nationals at spectacular zMax Dragway, Jim Whiteley, who won Houston last year despite not qualifying for the race, nearly became the only driver in drag racing history to pull of that incredibly rare feat twice.

Whiteley, who joined Clayton Harris (1973 Summernationals), Tom “the Mongoose” McEwen (1973 Supernationals), Ken Veney (1985 Gatornationals) and Michael Bartone (1995 U.S. Nationals) as the only drivers to get in as an alternate and go on to win an NHRA national event, barely missed the cut in Charlotte.

He wasn’t 17th in the 16-car field – he was 18th, five-thousandths of a second short of the 5.873 bump with a 5.878 – but No. 17 qualifier Dan Stevenson was literally driving out the gate when the word went out that Shannon “the Iceman” Jenkins wouldn’t be able to make repairs in time for the quick turnaround between the final qualifying session and the first round of eliminations. Whiteley was tending to business on the opposite side of the track when his crew frantically tracked him down and informed him that if he could get to the lanes in time, he was back in the race.

While other cars were parading past the J&A Service/YNot Racing pit area on their way to the lanes, Whiteley hustled back to his pit, where his ’70 Chevelle sat, ready to run. “I threw on my suit and they were already backing the car out,” he said. “If the guys hadn’t already done all the maintenance to have the car ready for testing tomorrow, we never would have made it in time.”

Whiteley’s first-round opponent was Sidnei Frigo, who survived a spectacular over-the-wall crash last year at Houston, where Whiteley beat eventual world champ Rickie Smith, who crashed, in the final. Frigo, who won the biggest race in drag racing, the U.S. Nationals two weeks before this event, took another wild ride opposite Whiteley in the first round, careening into the right lane behind Whiteley’s ’69 Camaro, which was long gone with a winning 5.90 at 247 mph.

“The car is pretty consistent but not quite quick enough right now,” said Whiteley, whose steady 5.92/247 in the quarterfinals fell short of 72-year-old Chuck Little’s 5.87/245. “We’re right in there, in the high 5.80s most of the time, but to win these races, you really need to be in the low .80s all the time and the high .70s when it counts.”

Son Steven Whiteley, a fixture in the top 5 of the J&A Service Pro Mod standings all year, slid from fourth place to seventh after skipping the event to be home with wife Delaina for the birth of daughter Bayslei.

PRO MOD – INDY 2017

September 5, 2017 /

Steven Whiteley pounded out three picture-perfect runs to open the prestigious U.S. Nationals, then survived a 1-for-3 stretch to record a quarterfinal finish and maintain fourth place in the J&A Service Pro Mod Series standings.

Whiteley, who won the season-opening Gatornationals, began the biggest race of the season with a 5.785/249, 5.840/248, and 5.795/249. He was up in smoke early in last-shot qualifying (“That was no surprise – we pushed the limit on purpose, just to see what we could get away with,” he said}, but when the tires broke loose again in the first round of eliminations, it was anything but OK.

It didn’t matter, though – opponent Shannon Jenkins, one of the true legends of Pro Mod racing, red-lighted. Whiteley was as surprised as anyone, and, as it turned out, the last to know. “All the way down the track and all through the shutdown area, I had no idea Shannon red-lighted,” he said. “I turned off the track and tried to swing wide to get of his way, but they kept pointing me over to where the winners go to be interviewed. When they told me, I couldn’t believe it.”

Granted the unexpected reprieve, Whiteley and the J&A Service/YNot crew didn’t capitalize Monday in the quarterfinals, bowing out with a good-but-not-good enough 5.91/247. Eventual winner Sidnei Frigo of Brazil took them out with a better 5.81/252 – exactly what Whiteley expected his own car to run. “As soon as I let the clutch out and made the 1-2 gear change, I knew we were screwed,” he said.

Whiteley’s second-round showing kept him in the top five in the standings, but he’ll be hovering in the lower reaches of the Top 10 the next time he straps in at an NHRA event – not because the team isn’t running well but because he has bigger priorities. Whiteley, whose wife, Delaina, is scheduled to give birth to a daughter right around the time of the next event on tour, Charlotte (Sept. 15-17), will skip that one and the following one, St. Louis.

“We’ll probably fall to sixth or seventh in the points by the time we’re back out there – lower, maybe – but as long as we change the car number [by finishing in the Top 10] for next year, I’ll be happy,” Whiteley said. “There are bigger things in life. This is my first child. I can race for the rest of my life.”

PRO MOD – DENVER 2017

August 6, 2017 /

Steven Whiteley outdrove and outran the top drivers in the world to reach the final round of the World Series of Pro Mod, the highest-paying race in class history, where, for maybe the first time ever for an event of this magnitude, no E.T.s or speeds appeared on the scoreboard.

There was no qualifying – pairings were completely random, drawn out of a hat in the weeks before the event. Everybody knew what they were running the whole time, but nobody ever knew what anybody else was. When the final was run and the tire smoke literally had cleared, it was revealed that just five 5-second times were recorded in the unfriendly climes of Denver’s mile-high Bandimere Speedway. Whiteley accounted for three of them all by himself, in the first, second, and semifinal rounds of eliminations.

One more 5-second run – anything close to a 5, actually – and Whiteley would have claimed the biggest payout in Pro Mod history, $100,000, but this was one time it didn’t pay to finish second. The World Series of Pro Mod, more than any drag race ever, was truly winner-take-all. Not only did first- and second-round losers receive no paycheck, but neither did the semifinalists. And neither did the runner-up. This one was all or nothing.

“That was a tough round to lose,” admitted Whiteley, who whose car annihilated the tires about 100 feet off the line in the final round. Upstart Michael Bowman had to lift, too, but he didn’t shake as severely as Whiteley did and got back on the throttle for a winning 6.27 at 239 mph – the only numbers to appear on the scoreboards all weekend – and the biggest payday in Pro Mod history.

“The car was straight as can be until the tire kicked out,” said Whiteley, who was off the mark first with a clutch .029 reaction time. “I got back on it, and it pushed me to the centerline. You never want to lift, but it wasn’t worth wrecking. Michael’s a good guy. He’s humble. He probably needed the money more than we did, and I’m just happy with how our car ran.”

Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot team ran between 5.97 and 5.99 in all three preliminary rounds, against local driver Tommy Johanns, Canadian Eric Latino, and Steve Matusek. Between them, the other 15 teams accounted for just two 5-second laps and Whiteley’s dad, YNot team leader Jim Whiteley, ran one of them. Matusek ran the other, a 5.98 in the semifinals, but Steven, whose worst light all weekend was a .032, beat him on a holeshot with a 5.99.

“It was a good weekend,” Whiteley concluded. “Bandimere’s basically our home track. We got to the final and the car ran great all weekend. I’m encouraged about Indy and the rest of the season, and I haven’t had this much fun racing in a long time.”

PRO MOD – NORWALK 2017

June 27, 2017 /

Steven Whiteley came through under huge pressure in last-shot qualifying at the NHRA Summit Racing Nationals to make the cut and extend the longest active consecutive-race qualifying streak in Pro Mod. Twenty-fifth on the list with a shutoff best of 9.13 when the session began, Whiteley was the first one down the track in the left lane. Charging off the line and speeding through the mid-range, he clocked a strong 5.87 at 248 mph – his highest speed since a 249-mph blast at Charlotte – for the No. 10 spot on the grid.

In the opening round, Whiteley cut one of the best lights of the entire event, .033, only to fall to Jonathan Gray when the former Pro Stock racer was even quicker with a .023 reaction time and a 5.83 opposite Whiteley’s otherwise fine 5.93. Whiteley, who opened the season with a victory at the Gatornationals, remains in the Top 5 in the J&A Service Pro Mod Series despite a second straight early exit in eliminations.

“It’s been a little rough the last two weeks, but it’s still the best season we’ve ever had, by far,” said Whiteley, who currently stands fourth in the rankings. “[Crew chief] Jeff [Perley] and all the guys have worked their tails off to make this car consistent, and you can tell by the number of rounds we’ve won and the number of times we’ve beaten higher-qualified cars.”

After racing on back-to-back-to-back weekends in New Jersey, Tennessee, and Ohio, teams get a two-month reprieve before the series picks back up with the biggest race of the season, the U.S. Nationals, in Indianapolis over Labor Day weekend. “That’s a lot of time to work on the car, test, and make everything better,” Whiteley said. “If we can stay in the Top 5 all season, maybe even move back up a couple spots, that would be incredible. You start out in this deal and you just want to qualify. Then you want to win rounds, and then you want to win a race. We’ve done all that now. We just need to keep going in this direction.”

PRO MOD – BRISTOL 2017

June 20, 2017 /

Knowing they were at a distinct disadvantage before they ever pulled through the Bristol Dragway gates, the father-and-son team of Jim and Steven Whiteley fought the good fight at the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals. Both made the Pro Mod show, but when eliminations commenced, both got an unwanted reminder of something they already painfully aware of: supercharged cars like theirs will always be fighting with one hand tied behind their back when the altitude’s that high.

Jim’s immaculate ’69 Chevelle, tuned by supercharger authority Chuck Ford, ran a 5.96 to anchor the field, and son Steven Whiteley’s Cadillac CTS, tuned by Jeff Perley and already locked into the field before last-shot qualifying, improved to a 5.94 in that session to improve to the No. 12 spot. Jim, a huge underdog against No. 1 qualifier and eventual runner-up Shane Molinari, left first, as usual, but went up in smoke in low gear.

Steven, the second ranked driver in the J&A Pro Mod series, drew the toughest possible opponent in round one: reigning world champion Rickie Smith, who was undefeated in 2017, a winner in his only appearance since returning from back surgery. He cut a clutch a .047 light – the exact same light he had one week earlier in Englishtown in a must-win first-round matchup against the only driver ahead of him in the standings, Mike Castellana – but wily “Tricky Rickie” produced the second-quickest reaction time of the entire event, a .020, and outran Whiteley’s weekend-best 5.92 with a 5.86.

“Rickie can still pull out a light like that every once in a while,” Steven said. “That’s probably the quickest he’s ever staged against me – he’s not called ‘Tricky Rickie’ for nothing – but give him credit: he cut a great light. We could have beaten a lot of guys in that round with a .92 but not the guy we were racing.

“5.90s aren’t that great anymore,” Steven said, “but for a blown car at Bristol, they’re not too bad. You really can’t keep up with the nitrous cars and the turbo cars here on the mountain. That’s just the way it is. We get to Charlotte, we’re deadly. But here or Vegas – especially here – you know you’re at a disadvantage. To beat the turbo and nitrous cars, you have to outrace them. You have to be smarter than them, and that’s what we’ve tried to do all year: race smart.”

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