Tag: Steven (Page 7 of 7)

PRO MOD – INDY 2015

September 8, 2015 / Todd Veney

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 – ENGLISHTOWN 2015

June 8, 2015 / Todd Veney

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.

PRO MOD – ST. LOUIS 2015

June 1, 2015 / Todd Veney

In the finest moment of his young Pro Mod career, Steven Whiteley assumed the early qualifying lead at the PDRA Mid-America Open at Gateway International Raceway in Madison, Ill., just across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Louis. With an outstanding 3.89 at 190 mph on the eighth-mile course – the only run in the 3.80s in that entire session – Whiteley put himself ahead of everybody in the huge 23-car field, which, in PDRA competition, is known as Pro Boost.

At the wheel of the stunning YNot Racing Cadillac CTS-V, Whiteley followed with a run nearly as good in the second session until problems set in in high gear, a coasting 3.94 at just 183 mph. In the final qualifying session, already solidly qualified in the fast half of the field with the off-the-trailer 3.89, the Grand Junction, Colo.-based team swung for the fences but the track couldn’t hold it and Whiteley had to click it off early.

Unfortunately, Whiteley was out of the gas early again Sunday afternoon in eliminations. Facing the ’00 Corvette of Georgia’s Colby Barber in the first race of the first round of professional eliminations at the rain-plagued event, Whiteley blasted off the line with a respectable .062 reaction time but was done in by massive tire-shake in low gear and slowed to a 6.69.