Tag: seattle

TAFC – SEATTLE

July 22, 2024 / Todd Veney

It was one 5.46 after another for Annie Whiteley at the NHRA Northwest Nationals, where she won in 2015 and nearly did again last year. The first one, a 5.469, came right off the trailer Friday morning, and she got only quicker from there with an even better 5.465, her quickest run all year, at 270.05 mph (top speed of the meet) that afternoon.

Following a shut-off 10.48 at 114 mph on an aborted shoot-for-the-moon blast Saturday morning in last-ditch qualifying, Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing team was right back in the 5.40s with another 5.46 that evening in the first round – right when it didn’t matter. It came on a bye she earned by qualifying No. 1, so any ol’ run would have been enough.

Sunday in the semifinals, where all four cars ran in the 5.40s, Whiteley missed what would’ve been a fourth 5.46 by the closest possible margin, one-thousandth of a second, with a 5.470 that left her just short of Brian Hough’s nearly identical 5.48. Nine-thousandths of a second quicker at the Tree or on the quarter-mile and Whiteley, who finished second to outgoing world champion Doug Gordon here last year, would’ve been part of the first all-female final round in Top Alcohol Funny Car history. (Gordon’s daughter, rookie phenom Maddi Gordon, went on to beat Hough in the final and became the 100th different woman to win an NHRA national event.)

With an .088, light Whiteley wasn’t exactly late, but if she’d had another .077 like she did on her first-round single, or Hough had had another .121 like the one he had last weekend at Woodburn, where she left on him and beat him in the first round, and she’d have been in her 22nd career national event final. “With this two-step, you really want to get in there first,” she said. “Hough always used to want to stage last, but now he always wants to go in first – everybody with a two-step does. This is a crappy way to lose, but the guys really have this car running good.”

PRO STOCK – SEATTLE

July 22, 2024 / Todd Veney

With a just handful of burnouts and a few runs to draw from, Cory Reed, already an accomplished racer in one category, made his debut in another and looked like a pro doing it. At the Northwest Nationals at picturesque Pacific Raceways, the former Pro Stock Motorcycle racer shot to No. 1 on the Pro Stock grid with an outstanding 6.53 on his first full run ever.

In the first round, Reed might have been even more impressive – in a losing effort. An in-the-bag win over two-time 2024 tour winner Troy Coughlin Jr. dissolved in the last few hundred feet when the loose, dicey conditions forced him to lift. A lesser driver might have crashed.

“You hate to get out of it when you don’t see the other guy, but I didn’t want to wad this thing up in my first round in Pro Stock,” Reed said. “Troy was like, ‘Man, you had me,’ but the car was spinning the tires hard, and I really didn’t want to crash.”

Delayed hours by repeated rain delays and two crashes in the first round of Funny Car, Reed/Coughlin was the first pair down the track in Pro Stock. After Reed’s brush with disaster, the other 14 Pro Stock teams returned to the pits, NHRA officials immediately went to work on the track, and the remaining seven pairs were run way later under drastically different (and better) conditions.

Utterly inexperienced but encouraged after licensing, Reed and the J&A Service team made their official debut at the furthest track from K-B/Titan headquarters in faraway North Carolina. “It shook on the first qualifying run – I may have done a few bone-headed things because I’m still learning – and that 6.53 in Q2 was the first full pass I ever made in a Pro Stock car,” he said.

“Before we went to Seattle, I did six burnouts in the burnout car, wore the transmission out, then did a few more burnouts in Darlington. The first test pass at Rockingham, I destroyed the transmission, and for a minute there I was thinking, ‘Do I really want to do this? What are these guys thinking about me?’ But after running a 6.59 without even taking it all the way to the finish line, I felt a lot better about it.”

All things considered, Seattle was a successful, rewarding debut. “I was about over the bikes anyway,” Reed said. “We were going to start all over with our own engine program with K-B Titan, but you get to thinking about it and it’s like, ‘This could take a while.’ I was talking to my dad, and he said, ‘What about Pro Stock?’ We’re already right there with K-B and it was like, ‘Hey, why not?’ And here we are.”

TAFC – SEATTLE 2023

July 24, 2023 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley, still the fastest Alcohol Funny Car driver alive – man or woman – with a national-record speed of 276.18 mph, just missed her latest national event victory with a runner-up finish at the Northwest Nationals. At expansive, multipurpose Pacific Raceways, the Grand Junction, Colo., veteran, a winner here in 2015 in her only previous Seattle final-round appearance, was unerringly consistent from start to finish – until the final.

Whiteley, a six-time national event champ, rolled off the trailer Friday afternoon with a 5.56 at 264.80 mph for the early qualifying lead and got only quicker from there, with a 5.51/265.59 that evening to match reigning world champ and No. 1 qualifier Doug Gordon, and a 5.52/264.86 Saturday in last-shot qualifying. “We got better and better all weekend,” she said. “The guys [led by crew chief Mike Strasburg] kept finding a little more each time.”

From the No. 3 spot, behind only Gordon and Mike Doushgounian, the only other driver in the 5.40s (barely, with a 5.499), Whiteley opened eliminations against Alaska’s Ray Martin, who’s driven just about every kind of car legal in NHRA national event competition, including nitro Funny Cars. She left right with him and pulled away to a lopsided 5.52/265 win while Martin got his brains beaten in by tire shake. In the semifinals, her best run of the weekend, a 5.50-flat at 262 mph, would not have been enough to advance opposite Doushgounian’s outstanding 5.46, but he wasted it on a foul start she never noticed.

“I had no clue he red-lighted,” Whiteley said. “I saw him out there and thought, ‘Man, I just got my butt whipped’ because he was way out there. Hearing that he red-lighted was a whole ‘nother adrenaline rush. They tell you, ‘You’re in the final,’ and you’re like, ‘Wait a minute. What? How?’ I couldn’t believe it.”

In the final against Gordon, whom she beat for the 2015 Las Vegas title, she shook the tires and slowed to a coasting 7.37 while he shot ahead for a winning 5.47/268 to bolster his national points lead in his final season as a Top Alcohol Funny Car racer. Despite running just a partial NHRA schedule while concentrating primarily on the Mid-West Drag Racing Series tour, Whiteley is up to eighth in the NHRA national standings.

TAFC – SEATTLE 2019

August 4, 2019 / Todd Veney

2015 Northwest Nationals Top Alcohol Funny Car champion Annie Whiteley’s shot at a second Seattle title this year unraveled early when she was sidelined in a first-round loss to 2001 event winner Doug Gordon. She may have qualified No. 1 and lost to the slowest qualifier in the field, but Gordon, like Whiteley a perennial championship contender, can never be considered an upset first-round winner, no matter where he qualifies or who’s in the opposite lane.

If anything, it was more of a 50/50 proposition. “If you qualify No. 1, Doug Gordon is not who you ever expect to run first round,” said Whiteley, who entered eliminations ranked No. 1 for the second time in a row and the fourth time in 10 starts this year. “I mean, who’d ever think he’d be 12th in a 12-car field?” When the Tree flashed green, Whiteley’s YNot/J&A Service Camaro blew the tires off at the hit but not because the team overreacted to the tougher-than-anticipated opening round opponent and had her car too hopped up. Seeded No. 1 with a 5.47 at more than 271 mph (low E.T. and top speed of the entire event until Gordon ran one-thousandth of a second quicker and 0.28 MPH faster in the following round), Whiteley pedaled to a 6.73/194 that fell short of Gordon’s backpedaling 6.34 at 265 mph. It was her only first-round loss all year.

“No way we thought it was going to go up in smoke there,” said Whiteley, who, despite the aggravating setback is still in position for another Top 5. “We backed it down for that run – with the hotter conditions we would have no matter who we were racing. [Crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] richened the barrel valve and lowered the launch RPM 400 RPM. What else are you going to do? It was totally backed off and still it didn’t go anywhere. A 1.13 60-foot time?’ It’s tough. You know they struggled in qualifying, but you know they’re going to figure it out – you just don’t know when. When he won with a 6.30-something, I think we were more just bummed than disgusted or mad.”

TAFC – SEATTLE 2018

August 6, 2018 / Todd Veney

Perennial Top 5 driver Annie Whiteley, who won three times and reached at least the semifinals six straight times to open the season, fell in the first round for the third time in four races when traction problems set in at the Northwest Nationals. A winner in Belle Rose and Denver on the regional trail and in Charlotte on the national tour, she qualified a season-low sixth in Seattle despite an excellent 5.52, then barely made it to the Christmas Tree in the first round before she had to lift.

After an aborted 9.73 at 90 mph on her first of just two qualifying attempts for this race, Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Yenko Camaro tiptoed off the starting line with a relatively tame .970 60-foot time in last-shot qualifying, charged through the middle of the course, flew through the half-track clocks at more than 212 mph, and clocked a 5.52 at just short of 270 mph. It moved her from the last spot in the field to the middle of the pack and set up a tough first-round match with Alaska’s Ray Martin, driver of 2014 world champ Steve Harker’s “International Incident” Camaro.

Whiteley was off like a shot with one of her best reaction times of the season, .048, but was out of it early when Martin, who last year won in his Top Alcohol Funny Car debut just as Whiteley had in her 2012 rookie season, negotiated the quarter-mile with a shake-free 5.57. She tromped back on the throttle and chase but clicked it off in high gear when it was clear that she wouldn’t be getting around Martin and coasted to a disappointing 6.33 at 216 mph. “I have no idea why the car would do something that,” said Whiteley, a past finalist at this event. “It’s not like the guys were trying anything crazy – we qualified in the fast half and had lane choice. It just goes to show that with these cars, you never know.”

TAFC – SEATTLE 2016

August 8, 2016 / Todd Veney

Running better than she ever has – including four straight runs in the mid- to low-5.40s – defending Northwest Nationals champ Annie Whiteley reached the semifinals and continued her long climb back up the national Top Alcohol Funny Car standings.

In last-shot qualifying, the J&A Service YNot Racing team, just No. 7 in the field at the time with a usually great but suddenly ordinary 5.53, unloaded their all-time-best, 5.42, one of the greatest runs in class history, for the No. 1 spot. The speed, 271.13 mph was also a career best, and the 5.42 was good for not just low e.t. of the meet but also a new track E.T. record.

“I had no idea that it was a .42, but I could tell it was a good one just by how early the shift-light came on in both gears,” Whiteley said. “When I got out of the car down at the top end, it seemed like Funny Car driver that pulled off the end of the track had just set a career-best. It was ‘Candy Land’ for everybody. The air was really, really good and the track was perfect.

It took an unbelievable 5.51 to make the fast half of the field, and every car but one was at least in the mid-5.50s. Awarded a first-round bye run for being the No. 1 qualifier in a field with an odd number of cars, Whiteley ran a 5.45 – one of three mid-5.40s in eliminations – that would’ve crushed whatever hapless No. 16 qualifier had pulled into opposite lane had there been a full field.

Pitted against three-time Seattle winner Brian Hough in the quarterfinals, Whiteley ran a 5.46 to trounce Hough’s otherwise excellent 5.49 in the kind of race that typified the entire event. Another 5.45 in the semifinals, one of the last pairs completed before the skies finally opened for good and washed out the remainder of the event, wasn’t quite enough. The J&A/YNot team came out on the wrong side of a race nobody deserved to lose when opponent Nick Januik matched his career-best with an identical 5.45 and punctuated it with a .016 light.

“It’s too bad,” said Whiteley, who’d never lost to Januik before. “He had a .091 and a .092 the two rounds prior, but he pulled it out, so you have to give him credit.” Now seventh in the national standings, with fewer races claimed than nine of the other top 10, Whiteley and crew head to Brainerd, Minn, where in her rookie year she reached her first national event final.

TAFC – SEATTLE 2015

August 11, 2015 / Todd Veney

Already solidly in first place atop the Top Alcohol Funny Car standings when she got to Seattle, Annie Whiteley solidified her increasingly likely bid for a national championship with a dominant performance at the Northwest Nationals.

After back-to-back-to-back 5.51s in the preliminary rounds, Whiteley whipped nemesis Shane Westerfield, who lost traction right off the starting line, with a consistent 5.54 in the final. “My guys have given me an unbelievable car, and I just try to do my job and not screw up on the lights,” Whiteley modestly said of her J&A Service/YNot team, led by crew chief Mike Strasburg. “The car just runs smooth every time.”

Coming off a storybook weekend at Woodburn, where she qualified No. 1 and set both ends of the track record en route to her third win of the season, Whiteley annihilated the track record in Seattle qualifying with a 267.59-mph blast, the fastest of her career. She held down the No. 1 qualifying position until the last pair of the final session, when Mike Doushgounian edged her 5.502 with a 5.489.

Starting eliminations from the No. 2 spot on the grid, Whiteley, who had qualified No. 1 at five races in a row, mowed down the opposition with one spectacular run after another, starting with a 5.512 at 265.90 mph Saturday afternoon against rookie Chris Marshall, who veered crossed the centerline. Sunday in round two, her best run of eliminations, a 5.510 at 267.48 mph, dispatched former national event winner Jirka Kaplan, who got sideways in low gear, fell behind, and lost with a 6.32.

In the semifinals, Whiteley put a tenth on two-time Seattle winner Clint Thompson at the Tree with a .038 reaction time and drove away for another train-length win, 5.518, 265.90 to an up-in-smoke 15.88. Whiteley then won the final in another walkover against Westerfield, who had been 5-0 against her until this weekend, including a final-round win last year in Houston,

With four wins and seven final-round appearances already in 2015, Whiteley holds a 62-point lead over second-place Doug Gordon, who lost to Westerfield in the semi’s at Seattle. Next up for the J&A Service/YNot team is the Lucas Oil Nationals Aug. 21-23 in Brainerd, Minn.