Tag: pro mod (Page 9 of 9)

PRO MOD – ATLANTA 2015

May 18, 2015 / Todd Veney

The father-and-son team of Jim and Steven Whiteley was locked in the five-second zone on five of six qualifying runs at the NHRA Southern Nationals at Atlanta Dragway, the third race of the 10-race J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod Series. That’s the good part. The bad part is that neither took the green for the first round of eliminations.

Jim’s YNot Racing/J&A Service ’69 Chevelle was still in the pits when scheduled opponent Troy Coughlin won the first round over alternate Gerry Capano. Steven’s ’14 CTS was about one inch from the starting line – pre-staged but not quite staged – when the Tree flashed, and veteran Steve Matusek had the track all to himself as Steven was timed out.

“I was taking my time, trying to stage as shallow as I could, and didn’t notice that he was all the way in or I’d have sped it up a little,” Steven said. “It’s too bad. The car was really running good – mid .90s every time.”

Steven ran a 5.970 at 243.63 mph off the trailer Friday afternoon and followed with an even better 5.957 at 244.25 that evening. After a 5.976/245.45 in Saturday’s final qualifying session, everything seemed to be in place for a deep run in eliminations.

“We’ve finally gotten to where we want to be with the new car,” Steven said of his Haas-built CTS. “We had a setup that was working pretty good with the old Camaro, and we put the same thing in this car and just nit-picked it until we found what it wanted. Now that it’s happy, we just need to throw power at it. It’s going down the track every time; we just need to get a little more aggressive.”

Jim’s car was performing even better than Steven’s – especially on his final qualifying attempt. Coming off his first career semifinal appearance as a Pro Mod driver, the former Top Alcohol Dragster world champ ran a 5.93 at just 236 mph, coasting across the finish line after his engine expired in high gear.

“Dad’s car was flying this weekend – outrunning mine – but it grenaded a motor on that last one,” Steven said. “They had it all put back together and ready to go for first round. They would have made the call, but there wasn’t enough time to get everything totally right, so they decided not to run it, and it was the right decision. The important thing is that both cars are really running good right now.”

PRO MOD – HOUSTON 2015

April 28, 2015 / Todd Veney

At the NHRA Spring Nationals, the second event of the J&A Service Pro Mod Series, in by far the best outing of his Pro Mod career, two-time Top Alcohol Dragster world champ Jim Whiteley whipped the reigning Pro Mod champ to reach the semifinals for the first time as a Pro Mod driver.

“Now, that was an awesome weekend,” said Whiteley, who also went a couple rounds in Top Alcohol Dragster. “It’s hard to hop from car to car, and Pro Mod and Alcohol Dragster were stacked right on top of each other all weekend, so there wasn’t much time to get ready mentally, but it turned out pretty well.”

It wasn’t looking good with one session to go, but a tire swap Saturday morning brought Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing ’69 Chevelle to life. “A few feet off the line, it was obvious that putting the new Goodyear tire like we run on Annie’s Funny Car was the right move,” he said. A 5.92 on that run put Whiteley well into the field and set up a first-round match with the second-ranked driver in Pro Mod this season, Gatornationals runner-up Pete Farber.

Whiteley’s car stumbled off the line, but Farber disqualified himself with a red-light, advancing Whiteley to the quarterfinals. “You never like to have one given to you like that,” he said. “I hated it for Farber – he was way up there in points. I told him, ‘You really shouldn’t have done that,’ and I never even knew he red-lighted till they pulled me off the track – the car shook so hard that it shook the kill switch off, and I coasted forever.”

34 seconds after he left the starting line, Whiteley rolled silently across the finish line at 22 mph, the winner. “You don’t pay any attention to what’s going on in the other lane in a situation like that,” he said. “I was so mad that I lost, I was just looking for the first place to turn off.”

In the second round, Whiteley didn’t need any lucky breaks. In a performance reminiscent of his dominant days in Top Alcohol Dragster, he hit the Tree for an outstanding .043 reaction time, cracked the 5.8-second barrier for the first time as a Pro Mod driver, and whipped the most accomplished Pro Mod driver of the past several years, two-time and defending world champ Rickie Smith, on a 5.89 to 5.88 holeshot.

Whiteley slipped to a 5.94 in the semifinals and fell to eventual winner Don Walsh, who would have been hard to beat regardless with a 5.82, low e.t. of the meet. “The video shows that it put a hole out about 60 feet out, then it picked it back up,” Whiteley said. “The car kind of sashayed through low gear, and that was it. Doesn’t matter. I’m so pumped – I’m ready to race again right now. I wish there was another race this weekend.”

PRO MOD – GAINESVILLE 2015

March 17, 2015 / Todd Veney

Steven Whiteley barely missed the cut at the NHRA Gatornationals in the official unveiling of his spectacular new ’14 Cadillac CTS. With an aggregate best of 6.00 at 244.92 mph at the J&A Service Pro Mod season opener, he wound up just outside the field, tied with former Top Fuel driver Khalid Balooshi.

Whiteley overcame early tire-spin in the first qualifying session for a solid 6.03 at 244 mph that seeded him seventh in the field at the time. Mechanical problems in Friday’s second session prevented him from making it to the line, but father Jim Whiteley, the two-time Top Alcohol Dragster world champ, charged to a 6.02 at 242 for the 12th spot on the provisional grid.

With one session remaining, both Steven and Jim were in the field – Steven on the bubble with his off-the-trailer 6.03 and Jim in the No. 14 spot with his 6.02 – but both got pushed out in Saturday’s last-ditch session. Jim’s immaculate ’69 Chevelle ran a consistent 6.06 and Steven matched the 6.00 bump time on the scoreboard but missed the 6.005 necessary to make the program by the invisible margin of two-thousandths of a second with a 6.007.

“We had 6.0 cars at a 5.90 race,” Jim said. “We’re right on the edge of making it in there, but everywhere we go, these Pro Mod fields are just unbelievable. When you’ve got nearly 30 cars trying to qualify for 16 spots, everything has to be perfect to get in.”

The next stop for the J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod tour is the Spring Nationals April 24-26 at Royal Purple Raceway in Houston.

PRO MOD – LAS VEGAS 2014

November 3, 2014 / Todd Veney

At the Toyota Nationals at the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Steven Whiteley wrapped up his first full season of Pro Mod racing with a clutch five-second pass in last-shot qualifying to break into one of the fastest fields in the history of drag racing’s toughest class.

Eleventh on the grid with a solid 6.00 when the session got under way but just 18th and unqualified by the time he crept into the beams, Whiteley belted out a 5.95 at 244.03 mph to zoom all the way back up to the No. 11 spot in what turned out to be an all-5-second field. Twenty-eight drivers attempted to qualify, and two of them ran in the fives without even making the cut – Bob Rahaim and Steve Matusek, who finished just ahead of Steven’s dad, Jim Whiteley, who fell just .033-second short of making the program with a 6.01.

In the first round of eliminations against 2012 world champ and 2013 championship runner-up Troy Coughlin, Steven got off the line with a solid .066 reaction time. He maintained the lead all the way to the half-track mark but faded late in the run and bowed out with a slowing 6.31 at 180 mph while Coughlin kept his dwindling title hopes title alive with a 5.880, low e.t. of the entire event to that point.

“We’re just getting started,” said Whiteley, who wraps up the season 12th in the NHRA standings, just 6 points out of the prestigious Top 10. “We’re not going anywhere. We’ve experimented all year with my car and my dad’s car, with converters and clutches, and they both just keep running better and better. I’m getting more experience and learning more about driving every time out, and we’ve got big plans for 2015. We’re in this for the long haul.”

PRO MOD – CHARLOTTE 2014

September 17, 2014 / Todd Veney

At the Carolina Nationals at zMax Dragway in Charlotte, one of the biggest Pro Mod races of all time and one that attracted nearly 30 cars, Steven Whiteley outran everybody – not just once, but twice.

The second-generation driver has gotten faster and faster as the season has progressed, and after qualifying a career-high fourth at the prestigious U.S. Nationals at Indy, he was No. 1 at Charlotte with an outstanding 5.87 at 246 mph right off the trailer, followed by an almost identical 5.89 at 245 that was low e.t. of the second session.

Whiteley topped a mammoth field that attracted nearly 30 cars and had a bump (6.03) too fast for past NHRA Pro Mod champs Mike Castellana and Jay Payne, and, unfortunately, for Steven’s dad, Jim, who just missed the cut with a 6.07. “The biggest thing with my car is that we got it to stop kicking the rods when I shut it off,” said Jim, who, during pre-race testing in Rockingham, N.C., blew two engines – not during the runs, but after he’d completely lifted off the throttle and was coasting through the shutdown area.

In the first round of eliminations Saturday evening, Steven became the second No. 1 qualifier in a row to be upset by No. 16. Again it was by the smallest of margins, again it was on a holeshot, and again it came when the No. 1 qualifier nearly duplicated his qualifying time and the No. 16 driver made the only run he’d made all weekend that would have been enough. At the U.S. Nationals, Bill Glidden ran nearly a tenth better than he’d run in his entire career, 5.90, to nip No. 1 qualifier Don Walsh’s 5.87; this time, Jim Laurita picked up a tenth to a 5.92 that edged Whiteley’s consistent 5.90 by just 12-thousandths of a second.

Laurita got the jump at the line with a .055 reaction time, Whiteley was right behind him with an .087, and the chase was on. The cars were never separated by more than 25-thousandths of a second at any point on the track, and Whiteley just missed running him down in a tight 5.92 to 5.90 decision. The run tied for low e.t. of the round with No. 2 qualifier Danny Rowe, who ran an identical 5.907 and had almost exactly the same reaction time that Whiteley had – .086 to .087 – but had the good fortune to do it against an opponent who lifted right off the line.

Laurita actually ran a 5.92 in the last-shot session that would have qualified him fourth, but the run was disqualified when his car came up light at the scales and he had to settle for 16th with an earlier 6.03. “Steven got a lot tougher opponent than you’d usually get as a No. 1 qualifier,” said Jim, who was No. 1 countless times in a Top Alcohol Dragster career that ended last year with consecutive national championships. “That’s OK, though. He’s still just getting started. The important thing is that he’s getting better every time out, and the car is too.”