Tag: pro mod (Page 8 of 9)

PRO MOD – ATLANTA 2016

On his only run at the NHRA Southern Nationals, Pro Mod racer Steve Whiteley crashed for the first time in his career … and still qualified with a 5.96 at just 206 mph. “Not bad – a five-second run probably breaking the beam with the right header,” he joked. “Crashed on our only run and still made the show.”

Whiteley banged into Atlanta Dragway’s unforgiving left wall, but not nearly as hard as he could have because he got the chutes out just in time. “The car was fighting its way to the right the whole time, and I kept trying to get it to move back into the groove,” he said. “By the time I decided, ‘No, it’s not worth it,’ and lifted, all the weight shifted. That’s when it made its way over the centerline.”

When opponent Shane Molinari saw Whiteley’s J&A Services/YNot Cadillac veer across both lanes after the lights and sideswipe the wall, Molinari – who had to pedaled twice and had already given up on the run – jammed on the brakes and immediately was sideways and pointed at the opposite wall. He slammed into it while Whiteley was well beyond the finish line, bouncing off the left wall in a shower of sparks and rolling safely to a stop on all four wheels.

“The chute coming out as quick as it did really saved me,” Whiteley said. “There was definitely a little pucker factor going on, but I was focused on not hitting wall head-on. In a situation like that, you don’t think – it’s all reaction. By the time I had cognitive thoughts, I was more pissed than scared. I figured that was gonna be the last time I got to drive a race car, but my dad said, ‘He’s fine,’ and my mom was OK.”

The impact caved in the rear quarterpanel, smashed up the headers and left door, and trashed the left door tree. “It was a lot of little stuff, really – nothing too big,” Whiteley said. “The left side of the car is dinged up, but the actual chassis itself is OK. I’m just glad it happened now, right when we were about to have some downtime.”

It’s a full three weeks until the J&A Service Pro Mod Series picks back up with events in three consecutive weeks – Englishtown (June 10-12), Bristol (June 17-19), and Norwalk (June 24-26). “The car’s already at [chassis builder Jerry] Haas’ shop getting fixed, and we’ll be testing it in a week or two,” Whiteley said. “By the time we get to E-Town, we’ll be ready to go.”

PRO MOD – HOUSTON 2016

Former Top Alcohol Dragster world champion Jim Whiteley earned his biggest Pro Mod victory to date at the NHRA Springnationals in easily the wildest final in J&A Service Pro Mod Series history. While favored Rickie Smith was bouncing off both walls at Houston’s Royal Purple Raceway, Whiteley dodged Smith’s careening, out-of-control nitrous Camaro to win a race he didn’t even qualify for.

After getting into the field as an alternate for former Top Fuel driver Sidnei Frigo, Whiteley parlayed the opportunity into his first career Pro Mod final and first win, leaving on all four drivers he faced – usually by a lot. With his best reaction time of the event, .023, Whiteley opened a huge lead on Smith, the runaway early points leader who won the only other race this season, qualified No. 1 at this one, and hadn’t lost a round all year.

“It felt like a good light when I left, but I barely made it to the Tree,” Whiteley said. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s it – I lost,’ but now I’m glad it took the tire off. If I’d still been on the throttle, Rickie would have been into the side of me for sure.”

Smith’s car got up on two wheels, careened across the centerline into Whiteley’s lane, just missed clipping Whiteley’s car, then slammed into the wall in Whiteley’s lane while Whiteley, for the first time in his career, jammed on the brakes in the middle of a run. “I saw Rickie coming into my lane and realized I’d just won the race,” he said. “But I couldn’t really focus on that yet because I was still trying not to run into the back of him.”

The final was a fitting conclusion to a crazy, rain-plagued, crash-marred event – and the cars that crashed weren’t just any old cars. Of all the drivers in the massive 29-car field, the three who crashed were the No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 qualifiers after the opening session – Smith, Frigo, and former Pro Stock racer Jonathan Gray.

Gray began the carnage when he banged into the wall beyond the finish line after his left rear tire exploded right as he completed a 257-mph that held up all weekend as top speed of the meet. Frigo suffered by far the worst crash, catapulting over the left wall and barrel-rolling through the grass and mud in the second qualifying session after nailing down the No. 2 spot on his only previous attempt.

Seeded into Frigo’s spot on the ladder and pitted against Pete Farber in the opening round, Whiteley took a huge early lead – .044 to .122 – and held on for a narrow holeshot win, 6.02 to 5.95. The margin of victory was an invisible 8-thousandths of a second. Another massive holeshot in the quarterfinals against Shane Molinari, .026 to .170, left Whiteley well ahead at the finish line despite their similar E.T.s, 5.92 to 5.96. In the semifinals against reigning series champ Troy Coughlin, Whiteley again was off the mark first, .031 to .044, and needed it for a close 5.92 to 5.93 win that set up the unforgettable final.

“We still need to get this thing running a little better,” Whiteley said of his flawless J&A Service/YNot Racing ’69 Chevelle, “and I really think we will. If I can stay this sharp on the starting line and we get the car running a little quicker, we can really do some damage this year.”

PRO MOD – GAINESVILLE 2016

Coming off a career-best stretch to close the 2015 NHRA J&A Service Pro Mod season and fresh off a big win at the RPM (Real Pro Mod) event earlier this month in West Palm Beach, Fla., Steven Whiteley was riding an all-time high entering the NHRA Gatornationals.

Driving the supercharged YNot Racing Cadillac, Whiteley was as high as 8th in the field at world-famous Gainesville Raceway but had the misfortune in the first round to line up opposite his nemesis, eventual winner Rickie Smith, who laid down low e.t. of the meet at the time, a 5.78 – the seventh-quickest run in Pro Mod history. “With a low-5.90 two years ago, when I debuted here, you’d be in the top three,” said Whiteley, who lost despite an otherwise excellent 5.90. “Now, that puts you in the slow half of the field. It’s not enough when guys are running .80s and even .70s. Everybody just keeps getting faster and faster and that’s cool, that’s how it should be. We should be running that too, and in certain conditions, we do.”

Whiteley shook and shut off on his opening qualifying attempt and stormed to a 5.92 at 246 mph in the second session, and it’s a good thing he did: He was pushed off the starting line in the final session. “The bolts on the back side of the ring gear came lose,” he explained. “I didn’t know exactly what it was, but it would roll freely and then lock up, roll freely and then lock up, so I knew it had to be something in the rear end. If that had been eliminations, I would’ve parked it in the beams and hoped the other guy made a mistake, but on a qualifying run there was nothing to do but shut it off.”

Whiteley made his best run of the weekend when it counted most, in the first round, but his 5.90 wasn’t enough against Smith’s 5.78 – even though the J&A driver drilled him on the Tree with a .053 reaction time. “I don’t know where Rickie came up with that, but we didn’t go for it and he did,” Whiteley said. “We’re better than that. Right now, what we struggle with is high-humidity conditions. It just kills the power and makes it shake the tires. When it does get down, it’s dead slow. When we have ‘Disneyland’ conditions, we’re tough, and we’re going to see those conditions again soon.”

PRO MOD – LAS VEGAS 2015

Steven Whiteley wrapped up the best season of his young Pro Mod career at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with his fourth late-round appearance in a row. Whiteley, coming off a No. 1 qualifying effort the last time out, at St. Louis, qualified high in the field again at the Toyota NHRA Nationals in Vegas and took a wild first-round win over Dan Stevenson before dropping a close quarterfinal match with eventual winner Khalid alBalooshi.

Whiteley put a holeshot on Stevenson with one of his best reaction times of the season, .030, and gutted out a hard-fought win when the car wanted to go every which way but straight. “I almost shut it off two times on that run,” said Whiteley, whose J&A Service/YNot Racing was loose throughout both first and second gear. “When it made it the first time, I thought, ‘OK – we’re good,’ and then I about had to shut it off again, but Dan was doing the same thing in the other lane.”

After winning that round with a 5.86 that actually turned out to be his quickest run of the weekend and qualifying sixth with a 5.87, Whiteley slipped to a 5.92 Sunday in the quarterfinals against alBalooshi, who was entrenched in the 5.80s throughout eliminations. “I short-shifted a little on that run,” he said, “and when you hit the first shift a little early, it’s like a timer goes off, and when that time’s up, you hit the next one a hair early, too. It’s a timing thing. I probably cost me three- or four-hundredths of a second.”

Whiteley finishes the season ranked 15th in points, just three points behind father Jim Whiteley, who missed the cut this weekend with his immaculate ’69 Chevelle. It was close – the bump was a 5.94, and Jim ran a best of 5.98.

“We’re all encouraged about 2016,” said Steven, who qualified in the top half of the field at the last four races in a row. “The car ran better and better as the year went on, and we’ll be running the CTS again all next year and in all of 2017. We’ve got a lot of good data now, and things have really turned around going into next year.”

PRO MOD – ST. LOUIS 2015

In the finest performance of his young Pro Mod career, Steven Whiteley dominated qualifying at the NHRA Midwest Nationals in St. Louis, covering the entire field by the unheard-of margin of more than half a tenth for most of the weekend.

After an opening 5.83 at a career-best 249.07 mph earned the YNnot Racing/J&A Service team the early qualifying lead, Whiteley was on a single to close out the second session of qualifying. All he did was unload an unbelievable 5.820, the quickest run of his career, at an even better 249.35, the fastest speed of his career, that put him almost six-hundredths up on No. 2 qualifier Troy Coughlin Jr.’s 5.878.

“Both of those runs and this whole weekend was all about my guys,” Whiteley said. “We were struggling earlier this year, but they stayed with it and you can see the results. I didn’t know exactly what those runs were, but from inside the car I could tell they were really good because they felt just like a lot of great testing runs we’ve made this year.”

Whiteley just missed continuing the all-5.8 barrage with a 5.900 in the final session that actually was a positive despite being slower than previous efforts. “We tried to slow the car down that time,” he said. “We wanted to know that we could take a little out of it without getting into a weak-shake run that doesn’t make it down the track. The car did exactly what it was supposed to, and we felt ready for eliminations.”

Facing No. 16 qualifier Harold Martin, who was no slouch himself with a 5.94 that anchored yet another all-5-second field, Whiteley pounded out another 5.83, again at nearly 250 mph, for a train-length win. The weekend finally came to an end in the second round when he made his worst run of the weekend, a still-good 5.92, in a loss to eventual winner Mike Knowles’ nearly identical 5.91.

“He got out on me, and it screwed me up,” Whiteley admitted. “I short-shifted because I knew I was behind, or the car would’ve run another 5.80-something. That’s on me, but it was still a great weekend. I owe it all to my mom and dad and all my guys who’ve stuck it out and really got this car running the way it is.”

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2015

In the best overall performance of their Pro Mod careers, the father-and-son team of Jim and Steven Whiteley qualified solidly in the all-five-second field at the Carolina Nationals and advanced deep into eliminations – Jim reached the quarterfinals for the second race in a row, and Steven made it to the semifinals for the first time in his young career. “Finally,” Steven said. “What a relief. I was hoping Dad and I would race each other in the semi’s so that one of us was sure to be in the final, but it didn’t quite work out that way.”

Driving his popular YNot Racing/J&A Service ’14 Cadillac CTS-V, Steven went from outside the field all the way to the No. 4 spot in last-ditch qualifying with an outstanding 5.89 at 247.93 mph, one of the quickest runs of his career and his fastest speed all year. It was his second 5.80 qualifying effort in a row, including a 5.88 two weeks ago at the U.S. Nationals.

Jim clocked a 5.94 on his second qualifying attempt for the provisional No. 7 spot on the grid, slipped to 13th by the time he got back to the line for Saturday’s lone session, then picked up to a 5.92 at 245 mph to shoot back up to the 10th spot. Numerous past event winners – Don Walsh (No. 18, 6.00), Jay Payne (No. 19, 6.02), reigning series champ Rickie Smith (No. 22, 6.05), Kenny Lang (No. 23, 6.05), and Mike Castellana (No. 25, 6.12) failed to make the cut.

When eliminations for the third-to-last race of the 10-race 2015 J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod series kicked off, both Whiteleys powered through the first round, trailering a pair of “name” drivers. Jim got around Gatornationals winner and early season points leader Bob Rahaim in a great race, leaving first by a few thousandths of a second and leading Rahaim door handle to door handle right to the lights for a thrilling 5.93 to 5.94 win. The margin of victory was just 15-thousandths of a second. One pair later, Steven strapped a huge holeshot on veteran Chip King and drove away from him, not just winning but establishing low e.t. of the entire round with a 5.92.

Sunday in round two, Steven knocked off one of the biggest stars in Pro Mod, Englishtown winner Bill Glidden, son of legendary Pro Stock racer Bob Glidden, with the second-quickest run of the round, 5.93. Jim’s ’69 Chevelle dropped that round to eventual winner Danny Rowe, 6.08 to 10.11, after getting a slight jump at the line. Steven also left on Rowe in the semifinals but came out on the wrong end of a much closer race, 5.91 to 5.99.

“We just missed the setup that time,” Steven said. “It was way too soft, our worst full run of the weekend, and I could tell right away. I Tree’d him, and I still saw his fender right away. As soon as we got past the Tree, I knew. He never really did pull away from me, but I couldn’t get around him.”

With just a few days off before the penultimate event of the season, Jim and Steven head to Gateway Int’l Raceway in St. Louis with a ton of momentum eyeing the very real prospect of the YNot Racing/J&A Service team’s first Pro Mod title.

PRO MOD – INDY 2015

The 2015 U.S. Nationals represented a huge step forward for the entire YNot Racing/J&A Service team. Not only did Annie Whiteley runner-up in Top Alcohol Funny Car and Joey Severance win Top Alcohol Dragster, but Pro Mod drivers Jim and Steve Whiteley turned in some of their finest performances of the season.

To qualify for the quickest field in the history of the J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod series (5.94 bump), Jim ripped off a 5.92 for the No. 15 spot. Steven did even better, making his best run all year and qualifying No. 7 with an outstanding 5.882 – one-thousandth of a second quicker than his 5.883 last year at Englishtown. “It’s been a long time and a lot of work by this whole team, but I think our program is really turning around now,” said Steven, whose car was on rails throughout qualifying. After back-to-back 5.92s at 245 mph in the first two sessions, he wheeled his ’14 CTS-V to a 5.89 at 246 and picked up even further to a 5.88 at 247 in Sunday’s last-shot session.

Jim got his ’69 Chevelle on the provisional grid with an off-the-trailer 6-flat, spun on the next qualifying run and slipped to a 6.06 on the next one, but he came through with a clutch 5.92 at 244 in last-ditch qualifying to crack the final lineup. With more than twice as many cars (33) in attendance as there were spots in the 16-car field, everyone knew that making the cut would be a major accomplishment, but no one could have predicted that a record bump would be established in such hot and humid conditions. Former series champion Mike Castellana, past Indy winner Jim Bell, and incoming points leader Bob Rahaim all failed to qualify.

Steven’s weekend came to an abrupt end when he ran into tire shake in the first round against nemesis “Tricky Rickie” Smith, the defending NHRA Pro Mod champ. Jim whipped No. 2 qualifier Sidnei Frigo, the former Top Alcohol Dragster and Top Fuel driver, in their first-round matchup, drilling the Brazilian on the Tree and driving away from him for a 5.96 to 5.97 victory. He then strapped a holeshot on Smith Monday in round two but ran into trouble downtrack and fell to Smith’s subpar 6.08.

Just three races remain on the 2015 J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod tour – Charlotte and St. Louis on back-to-back weekends later this month, and Las Vegas Oct. 29-Nov. 1.

PRO MOD – NORWALK 2015

At the SummitRacing.com Nationals at Norwalk, Jim Whiteley qualified higher than he ever has in his brief Pro Mod career – No. 5 – and then proceeded to run even better in eliminations. But, tired of watching turbocharged and supercharged clutch cars drive around him on the top end, he’s taking out his torque converter setup after this race and going back to a clutch for the U.S. Nationals.

The two-time Top Alcohol Dragster world champ backed up an out-of-the-box 5.91 with an outstanding 5.90 in the second qualifying session, just missing the 5.80s and claiming the provisional No. 4 spot on the grid. He ended up fifth, ahead of 23 of the 28 entrants in the typically huge Pro Mod field and in the first round faced Pro Mod rookie Troy Coughlin Jr., son of the 2012 NHRA Pro Mod champ and 2013-14 championship runner-up.

Whiteley cut a decent .089 light, young Coughlin was off like a shot with a .024, and Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Chevelle immediately overcame the Jegs car’s quicker start and sailed into a sizable lead. He was out front by more than half a tenth at the 330-foot mark, still held a noticeable advantage at half-track, and finally relinquished it around the 1,000-foot mark.

“I never saw him until the very end,” said Whiteley, whose reaction times usually are in the .030s and .040s. “Those turbocharged cars have 6 or 7 mph on the converter cars at the top end, and he got around me. When the converter slips like that, you just give away too much speed, and that thing’s about to come out of there. It’s not easy to make a change when the car runs as good as it did this weekend, but in the end, I think this will be for the best.”

PRO MOD – BRISTOL 2015

At the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals at historic Bristol Dragway, YNot Racing’s Jim Whiteley ran deep into the 5.90s for the third race in a row and for the second in a row ran stride for stride with fellow two-time NHRA world champ, Rickie Smith. If he’d run just 1/200th of a second quicker, it would’ve been two straight upset wins over Smith.

Whiteley, who won the 2012 and 2013 NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster championships, gained an imperceptible jump at the line, .056 to .059, and his blown car and Smith’s nitrous-injected machine were locked doorhandle to doorhandle the entire length of the quarter-mile in a race won by Smith, 5.97 to 5.98. The margin of victory: four-thousandths of a second.

“I never saw him,” said Whiteley, who was just 20 inches behind Smith when they went through the lights. Whiteley led by more than half a tenth at the 330-foot mark and by more than two-hundredths as he passed the 1,000-foot cone, but Smith’s better top-end charge, 244 mph to 239, was just enough to get around Whiteley’s ’69 Chevelle.

“I couldn’t hear him either, because a blower engine is louder,” Whiteley said. “He’s been around for a long time and has won a lot of races a lot of ways. He backed out after I pre-staged, but that’s just Rickie being Rickie. I don’t have a problem with him.”

Whiteley powered into the 5.80s for the first time officially on the way to his semifinal finish Houston, but considering the altitude, humidity, and oppressive heat at Bristol, this might be his most impressive performance in a Pro Mod to date. “I’m really excited about this,” he said. “Pro Mod is just a fun, fun class to run, and the car keeps getting better and better every time out.”

 

PRO MOD – ENGLISHTOWN 2015

While father Jim Whiteley was spending the weekend, as promised, on the Colorado River with daughter Alicia to celebrate her high school graduation, second-year Pro Mod driver Steven Whiteley was thousands of miles away in Englishtown, N.J., battling the stars of the NHRA at the Summernationals.

The weekend got off to a rough started with a bang – literally – when Whiteley’s engine gave up in a huge explosion before half-track. The YNot Racing Cadillac CTS-V, which hadn’t put a drop of oil on the track all year, rolled silently across the finish line at 51 mph, smoke pouring out from under it as Whiteley brought it safely to a stop and bailed out. The damage was extensive enough to keep the team from making the quick between-rounds turnaround in time to make it to the lanes for the Friday evening session, when the track and atmospheric conditions almost always are the best.

Whiteley had one more shot at breaking into the program in Saturday’s last-ditch session – just like last year at this race. But instead of an outstanding 5.88 that catapulted him from outside of the field all the way up to the No. 6 spot as in 2014, a decent 6.08 at 245 mph left him on the outside of the all-five-second field. He wound up 25th in the final order. 50-year-old Billy Glidden, son of all-time great Bob Glidden, went on to win his first NHRA title exactly 20 years after Bob won his last.

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