Tag: pro mod (Page 7 of 9)

PRO MOD – ENGLISHTOWN 2017

June 12, 2017 /

Steven Whiteley stared down the pressure in a first-round matchup against the only driver ahead of him in the J&A Service Pro Mod standings, whipping feared Mike Castellana from one end of the track to the other in a must-win first-round showdown at the NHRA Summernationals.

“That round carried more weight than any round I’ve ever competed in,” Whiteley said. “The stakes were big – we all knew it going up there. I felt the pressure but I’ve also gotten to where it doesn’t matter what’s going on outside the car, because if you think about what’s at stake, you’re done. Once we rolled under the tower, I wasn’t thinking about anything but driving.”

At venerable Raceway Park in Englishtown, N.J., just 45 minutes from the heart of New York City, Whiteley drilled Castellana, usually one of the quickest-reacting drivers in Pro Mod, with a clutch .047 reaction time. Castellana was uncharacteristically late with a .103 and could only watch the J&A/YNot driver motor away for an easy 5.82 win that not only prevented Castellana from stretching his lead but cut into it. Castellana, a winner at Charlotte and Atlanta, nearly matched Whiteley’s e.t with a 5.85 but was never in the race.

“I never saw him, never heard him, nothing,” Whiteley said. “He’s a good dude, probably my favorite driver out there – good driver, doesn’t mess around on the starting line. That was a big race was big for us, no doubt about it. Mike was too far ahead for us to catch him this weekend, but there were a bunch of guys right behind us trying to take over second, and we held them all off.”

Cutting further into Castellana’s once seemingly insurmountable lead with a second-round decision over former Top Fuel driver Sidnei Frigo, Whiteley took the long way to a 5.91 victory. “The car moved around quite a bit that time,” he said. “I really had to do some driving on that one. We backed it down a little bit that time – maybe a little too much, actually – but it made it. For the semi’s, we had the tune-up a lot closer to where it would normally be, and the track said, ‘No way.’ It just kicked the tire off of it. I got back into it, but when I saw Rickie [Smith] off to my right, I knew I was done right there even if he blew up, and I lifted.”

Down 178 points coming into the Englishtown, Whiteley now trails the top-ranked Castellana by just seven rounds. “It’s going to take a while to catch him, but if we can keep cutting into the lead every time, we might just be OK,” he said.

PRO MOD – TOPEKA 2017

May 23, 2017 /

Steven Whiteley persevered through tornadoes that touched down across the Kansas plains early in the weekend, off-and-on rain that plagued qualifying, and horrendous mechanical carnage in eliminations to maintain second place in the Pro Mod standings.

In contention for the points lead all year with one consistent outing after another, Whiteley’s YNot Racing team bowed out in the Heartland Nationals quarterfinals after posting a strong 5.85 that positioned him 5th of more than 20 drivers in the first qualifying session. He slipped to 15th when a banzai attempt in the only other session ended in severe tire shake and found himself a huge underdog in the first round against Khalid Balooshi.

The former Pro Mod world champ and Top Fuel winner cut a perfectly fine .057 light but Whitely drilled him with a clutch .028 reaction time to win on a holeshot. With its tongue hanging out, his powerful Cadillac CTS, which easily would have run in the 5.70s on all eight cylinders, made it across the finish line first, but at just 244 mph. Balooshi’s turbocharged ’17 Camaro blew past him at 249, but only after they’d crossed the stripe in a 5.81 to 5.81 loss.

“That was a cool run,” Whiteley said. “We got lucky – he had a good light too – but we got the win. I used to cut .00s in my bracket car, but your leg is never going to be as quick as you hand is. I’ve worked at this for a long time, and I think it’s starting to come around. A deal like that, it’s pressure, and that actually helps – when you’re No. 15 and the other guy’s No. 2, you’ve got to cut a light.”

With no idea why the cylinder went out, the team, led by crew chief Jeff Perley, played it safe and changed everything for Sunday – new wire set, new coil, new cap. The power was there against second-round opponent Steven Matusek, but after leaving first Whiteley was left fighting for control when his car tried to shake itself apart.

“It destroyed basically everything,” he said. “The drive shaft, a couple 4-link bars, the wishbone, a rocker panel, a tire, the main hoop. The yoke was half-gone. The carbon driveshaft tunnel: destroyed. Looking at everything, you can’t really tell what happened first. The car will be fixed and heading back to North Carolina by Tuesday night, and then we’ll test the wheels off it, maybe at GALOT [Motorsports Park], where we’ve never run before. When Englishtown gets here, we’ll be ready.”

PRO MOD – ATLANTA 2017

May 9, 2017 /

After reaching the semifinals for the second time in a row and the third time in four races this season, Pro Mod star Steven Whiteley finds himself second in the J&A Service standings. Whiteley, who won the season opener in Gainesville, knocked off former national record holder Jonathan Gray in the first round of the NHRA Southern Nationals at Atlanta Dragway and former world champ Khalid Balooshi in the semifinals before losing to eventual winner Mike Castellana, the only driver ahead of him in the standings, in a photo-finish semifinal matchup.

“I should’ve had a better light that time, that’s all there is to it,” said Whiteley, who was anything but late with a solid .060 reaction time that gave him an imperceptible early lead on Castellana’s similar .065. They were locked side by side until the end of the quarter-mile, where Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Cadillac CTS came up five-thousandths of a second short, 5.77 to 5.78. The margin at the stripe was just 22 inches.

“If I would’ve pulled a .030 light or even a .040 that, we would’ve won,” said Whiteley, who actually just needed anything quicker than a .055. He was consistent throughout eliminations, with reaction times of .064, .058, and .060, E.T.s of 5.83, 5.82, and 5.78, and speeds of 248, 249, and 250 mph.

“Things are definitely going in the right direction, and ever since Gainesville there’s just been a new motivation around the team that we’ve never experienced before,” Whiteley said. “There’s a lot of pressure on our shoulders – the good kind, the kind you put on yourself. The way all these cars are running now, you really have to go for it every single time. If you don’t, you’re not going anywhere. I felt pretty good coming into Atlanta, but now, I feel better about this team than I’ve ever felt before – even better than when we won Gainesville.”

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2017

May 2, 2017 /

Jim and son Steven Whiteley both reached the semifinals in Pro Mod’s highly anticipated debut at the unpredictable 4-Wide Nationals, which fans love and drivers in other classes have come to dread. “I know what the pros have said in the past, but I loved it,” said Jim, whose sentiments were echoed by not just Steven but 85 percent of the dozens of Pro Mod drivers who descended upon zMax Dragway for the first time.

“It’s hardest for the guys in the inside lanes,” Steven said. “It’s not just that there are four stage lights to keep track of instead of just two; it’s that if you’re in lane 2 or lane 3, you’re not looking at the Tree the way you have at every other track you’ve ever been to. That’s what messes everybody up. You’ve really got to train yourself ahead of time.”

Just qualifying, as is the case at every event on the J&A Service Pro Mod tour, where 30 drivers are vying for a spot in the field every weekend, is an accomplishment. Jim made the top half of the field with a 5.83 at 247 mph for the No. 7 spot and Steven, despite running just two-hundredths slower than his dad, a 5.85 at 249, was six spots behind him in 13th.

In the first round of eliminations, Jim left on everybody in his quad and advanced easily with a 5.836, matching his qualifying time right to the thousandth of a second. He finished second to eventual winner Mike Castellana and well ahead of former Pro Stock great Larry Morgan, who’s in his first season of Pro Mod, and veteran Danny Rowe. (In 4-wide competition, the top two drivers from each quad move on to the next round.)

Coming from the bottom half of the field, Steven beat everybody with by far his best run of the weekend, an outstanding 5.79 at 251 mph. Jonathan Gray survived with a 5.85, Michael Bowman lost on a holeshot with a 5.81, and Pete Farber, who outqualified them all, shook hard and shut off early.

Steven had his pick of the four lanes for his semifinal matchup, but violent shake did him in not far off the line. “I could see the guy on the same track as me way ahead and knew I was never going to catch him,” he said. “I might have tried to get back on it because you never know what the guys on the other track are doing, but I could actually see Troy [Coughlin] over the wall when he passed me, and there was no way I was going to beat them both.”

Jim suffered a similar fate, coasting to a 12.05 at 99 mph, but once again he left on all the other drivers. Both Whiteleys walked away with a smile on their faces. “This whole thing was awesome,” Steven said. “It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be, and it was actually a lot of fun. I can’t wait to get back here next year.”

PRO MOD – LAS VEGAS 2016

November 1, 2016 /

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.

 

PRO MOD – ST. LOUIS 2016

September 27, 2016 /

Back with the other top runners in Sunday eliminations, Jim Whiteley advanced to the quarterfinals at St. Louis in his best outing since he beat soon-to-be 2016 world champ Rickie Smith in the wild Houston final for his first NHRA Pro Mod title.

At the wheel of his powerful J&A Service/YNot Racing ’69 Chevelle, Whiteley forced his way into the tough AAA Nationals field with a 5.94 at 235 mph Friday afternoon and hung in there with a 5.93/243 Saturday morning. That afternoon in the first round of eliminations, qualified just 14th in the field, Whiteley lined up against No. 3 qualifier Sidnei Frigo, the Brazilian whose frightening over-the-wall crash at Houston made it possible for Whiteley to get back into the race as an alternate and eventually win.

Whiteley drilled Frigo with a telepathic .009 reaction time and drove away from Frigo’s state-of-the-art ’16 Corvette to win handily. “With Chuck’s clutch, you almost can’t not cut a good light,” Whiteley said of his new crew chief, master blower builder Chuck Ford, a former door-car driver himself. “We did three or four hits in testing, and the lights kept coming up -.005 red, -.001 red, -.002 red – the same thing every time. The spread was so close that Chuck said, ‘Stay right where you’re at and we’ll adjust it and be good,’ and he was right.”

Whiteley’s winning time against Frigo, who was off the throttle early, was a 5.90-flat, his best run all year outside of Indy. In qualifying, son Steven Whiteley ran even better – a 5.87 at 247 mph for the No. 8 spot – but he fell by the wayside in a first-round loss to Smith, who virtually locked up his third J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod championship with a runner-up to Troy Coughlin.

Jim was out one round later when he blew the tires off against past Top Fuel and Pro Mod winner Khalid alBalooshi – but not before getting the jump with another great reaction time, .021. “It’s just great to be going down the track again,” he said. “The car’s running better and better, no doubt about it.”

The NHRA Pro Mod season officially ends after the next race, the Toyota Nationals at Las Vegas – but not for Whiteley, who’ll be “racing” in Comp next weekend at Dallas. Actually, he won’t be racing at all; he’ll just be using that race to test for Vegas under the only kind of conditions drivers see at NHRA events – an NHRA-prepped track. “We’ll just treat every qualifying run a test run,” Whiteley said. “Same thing in the first round. If I accidently beat somebody with a good run, we’ll bypass the scales so they can get back in. We don’t want to mess anybody up – we just want to test under NHRA national event conditions.”

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2016

September 20, 2016 /

In much tougher conditions than at Indy, where everybody was running 5.80s, Steven Whiteley qualified a season-high third at the Carolina Nationals at zMax Dragway with an outstanding 5.840. He actually led qualifying at the palatial Charlotte, N.C., facility for a while and was in the No. 2 spot until the 11th hour in what turned out to be his best outing of the NHRA season.

For Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot team, it was one mid-.80 after another in qualifying – 5.87, 5.84, 5.86 – then nothing but trouble in eliminations, starting against Eric Latino in Saturday’s opening round. “I had to pedal the car to get around him,” Whiteley said. “I got aggressive, stayed in it, then blipped the throttle and got back into it and it made it down through there.”

Whiteley turned that potentially disastrous situation into a winning 5.91 at 247 mph, well ahead of Latino’s distant 6.25/204, but there was no saving it Sunday afternoon in the second round. “It started further out than it did in the first round,” he said. “I stayed in it again and hoped it would clean up, but I couldn’t catch it quick enough – when I blipped the throttle, it turned toward the wall.”

Whiteley wisely got the car straightened out before hammering the gas again, but by then opponent Todd Tutterow was long gone. “When the other guy’s laying down a 5.93 like that, there’s not much you can do,” he said. It was his first trip to the quarterfinals in 2016, but there’s still time for a late charge to the Top 10 like brother Cory Reed pulled off at Indy with his Pro Stock Motorcycle.

“The car was running well in qualifying,” said Whiteley, whose highest qualifying position this season had been No. 5 at Englishtown (5.88). “We backed it off a little on the last qualifier to get a race-day tuneup and basically left it alone for the first round, but I guess we didn’t compensate enough for the track. The thing is, we have the power to do this. All those .80s in qualifying mean we can go rounds at the last two races and still get in the Top 10 – that’s our goal.”

PRO MOD – INDY 2016

September 6, 2016 /

At the all-5.80 NHRA U.S. Nationals, the biggest race of the season, Jim and Steven Whiteley both qualified for the fastest lineup in Pro Mod history, Jim with 5.86 at 246 mph in his immaculate ’69 Chevelle and Steven with a 5.89 at 246 in his ’14 Cadillac CTS.

Steven opened with a 5.95 off the trailer and a nice 5.90-flat that would have qualified him for any other Pro Mod race ever but would’ve left him 17th for this 16-car field had he not improved in later sessions. Jim started with a 5.96. Steven unloaded a 5.89 in the third session that ultimately landed him on the bump for the record field and Jim moved up 16 spots to No. 7 at the time with the 5.86/246, the quickest and fastest run of his Pro Mod career.

The wheels came off in eliminations when Jim was chased down in the first round by yearlong points leader Rickie Smith’s come-from-behind 5.83 after drilling Smith on the Tree with a .034 light. Facing No. 1 qualifier Troy Coughlin, the reigning J&A Service Pro Mod Series champ, in the first round, Steven got out of shape early, brought it back from the wall and went after Coughlin until there was no way he could catch the Jeg’s driver, even if he broke, and coasted to a 6.61 at 216 mph. Coughlin, the eventual runner-up who dipped into the 5.70s multiple times in qualifying, advanced with a 5.83.

It may have been an off weekend for the J&A Service/YNot Pro Mod cars, but it was anything but for teammate Annie Whiteley, who reached the Top Alcohol Funny Car final for the third time in four career trips to Indianapolis, and Cory Reed, whose career-first semifinal appearance in the Pro Stock Motorcycle semifinals leapfrogged him over three other riders on the last day of the regular season for the final Countdown position and a shot at the championship.

The Pro Mods will be back in action next weekend in the heart of door-car country, Charlotte, N.C., at the Carolina Nationals at ZMax Dragway.

PRO MOD – BRISTOL 2016

June 22, 2016 /

The Thunder Valley Nationals at historic Thunder Valley Dragway in Bristol, Tenn., ended early for the father-and-son YNot Racing/J&A Service Pro Mod team of Jim and Steven Whiteley. Jim, whose classic ’69 Chevelle won the Houston event last month and reached the semifinals last week in Englishtown, N.J., shook hard and fell to points leader Rickie Smith in the first round of eliminations. Steven did likewise and dropped his first-round match against No. 1 qualifier and 2015 runner-up Bob Rahaim.

“We needed to get the car to run a little better early, so we made a move – a big move,” Jim said. “It didn’t work, and we got our legs cut off.” He opened qualifying with a respectable 6.02 in the first qualifying session and backed it up with a consistent, quicker 5.99. Steven made his best run of the weekend, a 6.04, right off the trailer that put him third on the qualifying grid at the time.

Steven shut off to a 10.44 in the late Friday session, one of the few times he and his dad have run side by side. “He got me on the Tree, which I’m sure he enjoyed,” joked Jim, who dipped into the five-second zone on that run for the No. 10 spot at the time. Neither driver put down a representative run in Saturday’s final qualifying session, but hopes were high when the first round went off that evening.

Unfortunately, it was more of the same for both YNot Racing entries. Jim, one of few drivers on the J&A Service Pro Mod circuit with a .500 record against Smith, had to shut down in in a rematch of the wild Houston final won by Whiteley. “We took a little power out for that run, but it didn’t work,” he said. “We almost got by with it in the third qualifying session, and I really thought we could again in the first round. I figured running after the nitro cars would make the track better.”

In the last pair of the round, Steven’s flawless Cadillac CTS fared no better in a shut-off loss to Rahaim, who advanced all the way to the final and had the race won until he lost control near half-track and narrowly avoided a crash.

PRO MOD – ENGLISHTOWN 2016

June 13, 2016 /

With his second late-round finish in the past three races, former Top Alcohol Dragster world champ Jim Whiteley now holds a 6-1 win-loss record in J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod competition this season.

Whiteley, who catapulted from the second alternate position to victory at the Spring Nationals in Houston May 1, backed it up with another late-round finish at the Summernationals in Englishtown, N.J. In the first round there, as in his wild final-round win over Rickie Smith in Houston, Whiteley shook the tires and thought he was done, only to see his opponent veer across the track and into his lane for an automatic disqualification.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Whiteley said of his upset first-round win over perennial contender Danny Rowe, the No. 1 qualifier (5.823). “Right when I thought it was over, there he was, coming into my lane.” Fortunately, Rowe, also driving a supercharged car, eased back onto his side of the track instead of careening off both walls as Smith’s out-of-control nitrous Camaro had in Houston.

Earlier in that same round, son Steven Whiteley, who rebounded from his qualifying crash in Atlanta to qualify a strong 5th in his rebuilt Cadillac CTS, shook the tires in a loss to Khalid alBalooshi.

In Sunday’s second round, Jim parlayed the unexpected first-round gift into a semifinal showing and kept himself undefeated in side-by-side competition in 2016 with a wire-to-wire decision over Michael Biehle, 5.94 to 7.94, leaving first by a mile with a .043 reaction time. Whiteley, who hasn’t had a reaction time worse than a .040-something all year, then cut a .047 in the semifinals and made his best run of the weekend, 5.92, in a close loss to defending event champion Billy Glidden, who reached the final in his debut in Harry Hruska’s Precision Turbo entry.

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