Tag: TAFC (Page 12 of 15)

TAFC – BRAINERD 2017

August 21, 2017 / Todd Veney

In the picturesque resort country of Brainerd, Minn., where she runner-upped last year and reached the first national final of her career in 2012, Annie Whiteley came up just short of another final-round appearance.

With a bye to the final round of the Lucas Oil Nationals on the line, Whiteley came out on the wrong end of a tight quarterfinal match against touring pro Kris Hool, 5.50 to 5.53. “The car ran great – exactly what we thought it would,” she said. “We didn’t know he was going to run a .50-flat. That’s kind of how things have been going all year.” The winner of that round earned a bye into the final, and, as has been the case far too often this year, the luckless YNot team came up a few hundredths of a second short at just the wrong time.

Whiteley qualified a solid fifth with a 5.566 at 269.13 mph in the first qualifying session, then followed with broken runs in the remaining two sessions and another in the first round. She lost traction early in that one but, for once, got a break – opponent Chris Foster, fresh off back-to-back regional wins on the same weekend in Indianapolis, broke a rear end and could only coast helplessly toward the far end.

Granted a rare reprieve, Whiteley tromped on back on the throttle for the easy win. Only from her perspective, it didn’t seem easy at all. “I kept wondering when he was going to come back around me,” she said. “I automatically shifted when the car shook, but that didn’t get rid of the shake, so I lifted. When I got back on it, I was already in 2nd gear. It took a loooooong time for that shift light to come on for high gear – almost to the 1,000-foot mark. Right when I was starting to think that I missed it, it came on.”

Whiteley hit high gear and scooped up the win with just a 6.48 e.t. but a speed that indicated what was to come in the following round and, hopefully, for the rest of the year. Despite lifting early and losing momentum in the most important part of the run, she charged across the finish line at more than 258 mph. On the losing 5.53 run in the quarterfinals, she obliterated the track record with top speed by a mile, running a track-record 273.33-mph speed on a weekend when no one else ever got out of the 260s.

TAFC – WOODBURN 2017

July 17, 2017 / Todd Veney

Filling in for perennial title contender Annie Whiteley for the second time this season, Greg Hunter, whose only previous start in the J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro, four months ago in Phoenix, yielded personal best E.T.s and speeds, went the distance this time, topping one of the quickest Top Alcohol Funny Car fields in history (5.58 bump) for his third career victory and biggest ever.

“It was an honor to drive Annie’s car,” Hunter said. “The whole thing just came out of nowhere Wednesday. I got a call from [crew chief] Mike [Strasburg.] Did I want to drive her car this weekend? Hell yes I did. I got there, and an hour later I was in the car. I was a little rusty at first, a little behind the car, but by the time we ran eliminations, I felt good in there.”

Starting from the No. 2 position behind surprise No. 1 qualifier Chip Beverett, Hunter drilled opponent Nick Januik on the Tree with a .027 reaction time and obliterated the Woodburn Dragstrip speed record with a 5.52 at 272.47 mph in the first round. Another 5.52 in the semifinals took out many-time Woodburn winner Steve Gasparrelli, who had just run a career-best 5.49 at 268 mph in the previous round.

“The car doesn’t fit me quite right,” Hunter said. “You’re all twisted up in there. You’re a little tight, your foot’s not quite where you want it, and you’re like, ‘Was it like this last time?’ Then they tell you that you ran 271 mph right out of the box for a new track record, and you’re like, ‘Maybe this isn’t too bad…’ Then you go 272.3 in qualifying and 272.4 in the first round, and the next thing you know, you’re in the final.”

Waiting for him was the second-ranked driver in the nation, Doug Gordon, who uncharacteristically qualified on the bump but picked up in eliminations, including a 5.521 in the first round that matched Hunter’s time right down to the thousandth. Gordon ran just a 5.59 in the semifinals, which forced Strasburg and the YNot crew to make a decision for the final: stay with the same tuneup or go for broke.

“They’d left it alone all day,” Hunter said. “That’s the thing – when you’re running like that, running those numbers in the heat all weekend, it puts pressure on the other team, so they didn’t touch a thing. We knew Doug would step up, but how much – .56? .55?”

Gordon actually ran a 5.53, so did Hunter, and he edged Gordon’s respectable .065 reaction time with a .055 to win on a slight holeshot. “I’ve never driven any car close to as fast as this,” Hunter said. “It just hauls ass. When I put it in high gear, I thought I left him in the dust, but you look at the numbers and it was close all the way. It was just a fantastic drag race, and I hope it helps Annie win the championship.”

TAFC – NORWALK 2017

June 26, 2017 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley set low e.t. of the meet and had top speed until the penultimate round of eliminations en route to a quarterfinal finish at the NHRA Summit Racing Nationals that solidified her hold on a Top 5 spot in the national standings.

Whiteley, a four-time winner on the national circuit with more than a dozen victories in regional competition, qualified the J&A/YNot Racing Camaro a solid 3rd in the Top Alcohol Funny Car field with an outstanding 5.53. She unloaded a 5.50-flat at more than 270 mph in the opening round of eliminations to establish low e.t. for the entire weekend and easily eliminate Canadian Tyler Scott, whose Larry Dobbs entry now is tuned by ex-YNot crew chief Roger Bateman.

In the second round against Chris Foster, who would go on to his third career runner-up finish at this event, Whiteley slipped to a 5.59 and lost a photo-finish match to Foster’s 5.62. Foster fought his car off the wall for much of the run but maintained the lead to win by the invisible margin of just seven-thousandths of a second.

“It shook and I had to short-shift 2nd gear,” Whiteley said. “That 5.50 was perfect, and you can’t help but wonder, ‘Why couldn’t I have run the .59 in the first round, when anything would have done, and the .50 that time?’ but there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s just the way things have been going lately.”

TAFC – MISSION 2017

June 5, 2017 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing team endured a frustrating weekend at Mission Raceway on the shores of the Fraser River in scenic Mission, B.C., struggling for traction throughout testing and qualifying and falling in the first round of eliminations despite running low e.t. of the meet.

The team’s frustration was compounded by the fact that the winner of that first-round matchup with recent nemesis Chris Marshall earned a semifinal single into the finals, making it a 32- or 53-point swing from the 64 runner-up points she’d have been guaranteed and the 85 point she would’ve received for winning the final, which she almost certainly would have.

“We got to the track ahead of time to test, but more than just trying stuff we were there to break in some tires,” Whiteley said “We never really get to – it rained. We ended up making two runs, didn’t make it down the track either time, and never made it down the track in qualifying, either – 0-for-3.”

Fifth on the grid when eliminations began with a shutoff best of 8.22, Whiteley stormed to a track-record 5.49 at one of the fastest speeds in Top Alcohol Funny Car history, 273.30 mph. It was her misfortune to do so right when opponent Chris Marshall laid down the best run of his young career, a 5.50-flat, and cut a better light to advance directly to the final.

“We put the exact tune-up in the car that we had in it at Belle Rose [where she dominated all weekend for her second victory of the season],” Whiteley said. “We thought, ‘Hey, maybe we were just misreading the track.’ Then we changed the transmission, but that didn’t work, either. Finally, [crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] figured, ‘OK, it’s not the track, it’s not the tune-up, and it’s not the transmission ratio.’ He realized that we’d really never had a weak shake since we started running Hoosiers, put some 47-run-old Hoosiers on the car and ‘boom,’ it went right down the track – 5.49, 273.”

A solid fourth in the Top Alcohol Funny Car standings, just 1 point out of third and well over 100 points up on fifth-place Ray Martin, Whiteley races next at the Summit Nationals June 23-25 in Norwalk, Ohio, where she just missed winning in 2015.

TAFC – CHARLOTTE 2017

May 2, 2017 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley qualified No. 3 at the 4-Wide Nationals at zMax Dragway with a 5.54 and got only quicker from there, easily winning the first round with a 5.536 and barely losing in the quarterfinals with a 5.535 at 269.24 mph – just 0.05-mph off of top speed of the meet.

It was her misfortune to make that run against off-and-on nemesis Andy Bohl, who ran .05-mph faster in the other lane, edging her 5.535/269.24 with a slightly quicker and faster 5.520/269.29. “We take turns beating each other – one for him, one for me, one for him, one for me,” Whiteley said. “I guess it was his turn. It must have been really close down there – I never saw him, and he never saw me. We got out of our cars and asked each other, ‘Who won?’ ”

By three-hundredths of a second, Bohl did and moved on to the semifinals. Whiteley’s identical 5.536 in the first round was more than enough against former East Region champion Matt Gill, who shook hard off the line trying to make up the distance between his No. 14 qualifying berth and her No. 3.

After breaking right off the line on the first qualifying attempt, Whiteley’s Mike Strasburg-tuned J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro was never out of the 5.50s or under 260 mph thereafter. She clocked a solid 5.561 at 267.59 mph in the second session and backed it up with a 5.545/268.87 in Q3. “After that first qualifying run, the car ran great all weekend,” she said. “If we keep doing what we’re doing now the rest of the year, we’ll be fine.”

TAFC – GAINESVILLE 2017

March 20, 2017 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley made the two greatest runs of her career in the semifinals and final round of the NHRA Gatornationals for her fourth career national title and first since Seattle in 2015.

“Sometimes you wonder if things are ever going to go your way again, but a weekend like this makes it all worthwhile,” said Whiteley, who ran a 5.40 (low e.t. of the meet) to edge defending champion John Lombardo in the semifinals and a 5.41 on a final-round single when 2013-2014 Gatornationals winner Dan Pomponio was unable to appear. “The car was just unbelievable all weekend.”

Despite an outstanding 5.45, Whiteley qualified just fifth in the field, then survived major scares in the early round of eliminations. In the opening round, she was just about to get strapped in for what she thought was a single when she was informed that, due to a mistake by NHRA officials, she would not have a bye run but instead would be racing Bill Naves. “We were really going for it that time because with a bye run, why not?” she said. “If it makes it, you know how hard you can push it for the next round, and if it doesn’t, you win anyway because there’s no one in the other lane.”

The car didn’t make it, shaking the tires violently and giving Naves, who qualifying attempt, a shot at the biggest round win of his NHRA career. Fortunately for the J&A Service/YNot Racing team, Whiteley was able to get the powerful beast back under control in time to blow past Naves for a 6.44 to 8.11 win.

In the quarterfinals, Whiteley got a scare of a different kind when opponent Andy Bohl, who had run one 5.4 after another until that point, veered completely into her lane, just missing her. “I’m glad I didn’t see how close he got,” she said. “People had pictures of it and were trying to show me, and I said, ‘I don’t want to think about that.’ ”

She advanced with a solid 5.51, then unloaded the 5.40 on Lombardo, the No. 1 qualifier, and beating him by one-thousandth of a second, stealing low e.t. from him (5.404 to his 5.409) to win a photo-finish decision. Both of them hit 273 mph in the fastest-side-by-side race of all time.

In the final, with the track to herself, she eclipsed her one-run-old career-best speed of 273.05 with a 273.22-mph blast. “It’s weird being on a single in the final,” she said. “You think of the ignition quitting or some dumb little thing breaking. What happens then? Does nobody win? I left, and it was just a perfect run. The front end came up, settled back down, came back up again when I hit second gear and just ran perfectly straight to the finish line. I wish every run could be like that.”

TAFC – POMONA 2016

November 15, 2016 / Todd Veney

It wasn’t epic like 2015, when she led the national standings for months and remained in championship contention right down to the last day of the season, but 2016 ended up another solid season for Annie Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing team.

At the NHRA Finals in Pomona, Calif., Whiteley wrapped up a half-decade of Alcohol Funny Car competition with a winning record for the fourth time in five years and a fourth Top 10 finish in the national standings.

Whiteley qualified ninth in the fastest field in history with an outstanding 5.52 at more than 270 mph – a time that would have been good for the fast half of the field at any other race, ever – but got a tough first-round draw, nemesis Shane Westerfield, who was even quicker with a 5.50. Both passes came in the opening qualifying session, putting them 1-2 on the provisional grid before both were knocked down seven spots to the exact middle of the field in subsequent qualifying sessions.

Racing in the first pair of the first round as Nos. 8 and 9 qualifiers often do, Westerfield won by matching his qualifying time with another 5.50-flat. Whiteley left hard but slowed on the top end, coasting across the finish line with a smoky 5.88 at just 190 mph.

Whiteley and the J&A Service/YNot team head into the offseason with yet another Top 10 finish (8th), another winning record, 16-15 (.516), and three final-round appearances – one at a divisional event (Woodburn) and the other two at back-to-back national events, Brainerd and Indy.

TAFC – LAS VEGAS REGIONAL 2 2016

November 6, 2016 / Todd Veney

Racing for the third time in a week at the same facility – her best track on the circuit, The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway – Annie Whiteley qualified high in a field so tough that six of the eight non-qualifiers were former national event champs.

After opening with a 5.56 at 266.79 mph, Whiteley went up in smoke immediately on her second of three qualifying attempts and improved slightly to a 5.561/267.00 mph in last-shot qualifying to lock down the No. 2 spot for good. She trailed only DJ Cox, runner-up a week earlier at the Las Vegas national event, who ran slightly quicker than her (5.541 and 5.539) on side-by-side runs for the No. 1 spot.

Paired against Nick Januik, also a former winner of the Vegas national event, in round one, Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot team advanced with a consistent 5.57/267.00 while Januik’s Las Vegas-based car struggled for traction in a 5.85/242 loss. It got no easier from there: all four semifinalists are currently in the Top 10 in the NHRA national standings – Whiteley (8th), Doug Gordon (3rd), Shane Westerfield (7th), and Terry Ruckman (4th). Second-ranked John Lombardo was knocked out in the first round of eliminations and 2015-16 national champ Jonnie Lindberg didn’t even qualify.

The semifinals turned out to be just as brutal as expected: the E.T.s were 5.55, 5.56, 5.57, and 5.58, at speeds from 262 to 267 mph. Whiteley was the quickest (5.555) and the fastest (267.27 mph – top speed of the meet), but came out on the wrong end of a tight 5.55-5.57 match with Gordon despite a better-than-average .078 reaction time. Gordon was off the mark first with a .051, held on to win, and defeated Westerfield in the final to sweep the last two regional events of the season and secure his first Vegas wins ever.

Whiteley finishes fourth in the toughest region in the country and currently stands eighth in the national standings with one race left on the schedule. With a victory at the season-ending Finals next weekend in Pomona, Calif., she can still make the national Top 5.

TAFC – LAS VEGAS REGIONAL 1 2016

November 4, 2016 / Todd Veney

The West Regional at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway – a track and an event Annie Whiteley has dominated since her rookie season in 2012 – ended in disappointment for Whiteley’s Colorado-based J&A Service/YNot team. Originally slated for Apr. 8-10 but completely washed out, the rain date was contested in the middle of the week between the Toyota Nationals at Las Vegas and the originally scheduled season-ending regional the following weekend.

Whiteley had been one of just three drivers to qualify with a run in the 5.50s back in April, a 5.59 at 263.05 mph that left her behind only No. 1 qualifier John Lombardo (5.54) and former world champ Tony Barone (5.58). The bump was a 5.67, making this one of the quickest fields in Top Alcohol Funny Car history, and three drivers – Jay Payne, Greg Hunter, and Bill Bernard – DNQed despite running in the 5.60s.

Eliminations figured to be tough – all eight qualifiers are multiple national event winners, as were two of the alternates – and they absolutely were. Whiteley was paired against her recent nemesis, many-time division champ Steve Gasparrelli, who benefited greatly from the rain delay and ran a 5.56 in pre-race testing.

On race day, Gasparrelli’s engine went away around half-track, and he faded to a 6.10 at just 158 mph. After a solid .062 reaction time, Whiteley marched to a straight-as-a-string 5.55 at 267.64 mph – top speed of the round – to win easily. She was on an even stronger run in the semifinals until her engine let go a few hundred feet short of the finish line, slowing her to a 5.60-flat at just 232 mph and letting Terry Ruckman, who swept both national events in Las Vegas this year, to slip around her for a close win.

Whiteley and the YNot team won’t have to wait long for a shot at redemption, however – the regularly scheduled season-ending regional event at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway begins in two days.

TAFC – INDY 2016

September 6, 2016 / Todd Veney

With another final-round performance – her third in four starts – Annie Whiteley is back in the Top 5 in the national Top Alcohol Funny Car standings. It wasn’t just her third runner-up in her past four appearances this season – it was also her third runner-up in four career appearances at the prestigious U.S. Nationals. “I’m getting a little tired of this,” she joked. “I guess it just means we’ll have to come back and try it again next year.”

In her entire NHRA career, Whitely has only not been in the final round at the “Big Go” once, in 2014, which, not coincidentally, was also the only time she ever didn’t make the final Top 10. She has one of the better win-loss records in U.S. Nationals history – an enviable 9-4 (.692) – but no hardware to show for it.

Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot team charged into the early qualifying lead with an off-the-trailer 5.52 at 267 mph and a 5.47 at nearly 268 for both low e.t. and top speed of the meet at the time. She was more than ready for eliminations with a consistent 5.52 in the third qualifying session and an up-in-smoke 28-second pass in last-shot qualifying when she was already second on the qualifying grid and there was no point in shooting for anything but No. 1.

With a steady 5.51/268 and a .043 light, Whiteley trounced newcomer Chris King, who got in as an alternate for the second time in his three-race career and went down with a fine 5.63/255, the best run of his career. Houston winner Steve Gasparrelli was the next to go. Whiteley had an even better .042 reaction time and advanced easily with a 5.55/267. She took out upstart Bryan Brown in the semifinals, 5.60 to 5.99, but lost traction immediately in the final against Jonnie Lindberg, who won the biggest prize in drag racing with just a 5.67.

“He had to pedal it, too,” said Whiteley, who coasted across the finish line with a 10.21 at 92 mph. “It probably looks like we went for it and got after it too much because it was the final or something, but the guys didn’t hop the car up at all. They actually backed it down a little knowing that we were going to be in the right lane.”

Overdue, Whiteley and the YNot team head into Woodburn, Ore., where she always performs well, including a win and three final-round appearances in her last three trips there.