Tag: TAFC (Page 14 of 15)

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.

TAFC – CHICAGO 2015

July 13, 2015 / Todd Veney

With the greatest run of her Top Alcohol Funny Car career, Annie Whiteley cracked the 5.5-second barrier with a 5.488 for the No. 1 spot in both the Route 66 Nationals and the invitation-only Jegs Allstars event that’s run in conjunction with it.

“I knew it was a good run, but I didn’t know it was that good,” said Whiteley, whose previous best had been a 5.50 in Sonoma in July 2012. “It didn’t feel that much different from a low .50-something, but [crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] and the guys told me if I made it to the finish line without shaking the tires it was going to be my first .40, and it was.”

The 5.48 was just one of four great runs in a row for Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro in Chicago – just like her five consecutive passes last week in Norwalk, where she rattled off two 5.57s, a 5.53, and two 5.55s. Here, it was a 5.53, the landmark 5.48, and back-to-back 5.50-flats in the first two rounds of the prestigious Allstars race.

A 5.508 at 264 mph in the first round of Allstars eliminations took down many-time national event winner Mickey Ferro’s 5.58. Under the lights in the semi’s, an identical run – right down to the thousandth of a second – erased former Indy winner Chris Foster’s 5.65.

In the final, run on Sunday afternoon due to inclement weather Saturday, John Lombardo Jr., running a cylinder head borrowed from the YNot team, unloaded his own 5.48 for the Allstars title when Whiteley lost traction in low gear. It was a frustrating end to what had been a great weekend and only compounded the aggravation from the first round of the Route 66 Nationals, run earlier that day, when she was upset by No. 16 qualifier Kirk Williams.

Next up is a Western Regional event in Woodburn, Ore., which has already attracted a 17 entrants for just eight qualifying spots. Whiteley heads there ranked second in the West standings, with a victory and back-to-back final-round appearances in her last two regional starts.

TAFC – NORWALK 2015

July 6, 2015 / Todd Veney

Until the car inexplicably went up in smoke in the semifinals, Annie Whiteley utterly dominated Top Alcohol Funny Car at the SummitRacing.com Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio. She ran not just low e.t. of the meet, but low e.t. of all three qualifying sessions and each of the first two rounds of eliminations. Her worst run of the entire event to that point, an off-the-trailer 5.57, was better than any other driver’s best run.

“I have no idea why it went up in smoke that time,” said Whiteley of her J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro. “The car was set up just about the same and everything had been going perfectly from the time we got there.”

Whiteley was the only driver in the 5.50s in Friday’s first qualifying session with a 5.579 at 264.96. She followed with a 5.570 later that afternoon, then lowered the boom in last-shot qualifying Saturday with a 5.531 at 265.06 mph, putting more than a half a tenth on the No. 2 qualifier, Sweden’s Ulf Leanders.

The bludgeoning continued in eliminations when Whiteley left on John Headley in the first round and unloaded a consistent 5.55 at the exact same speed at which she’d already established top speed of the meet to that point: 265.06 mph. The car ran even better in the quarterfinals against 2013 Norwalk winner Kris Hool, but that one could have ended in disaster.

For the first time in memory, and for no known reason, the Tree took about twice as long to come down as it normally does, affecting both drivers’ concentration – it was so long that NHRA Official Starter Mark Lyle threw his hands up in the air. Hool was unable to hold his car on the starting line and rolled through the beams for an instant disqualification, but Whiteley hung on, left at exactly the right rpm, and laid down low e.t. of eliminations, 5.553, and a track-record speed of 266.16 mph.

“I didn’t think that Tree was ever going to come on,” she said. “It gets you completely out of your normal groove, but I waited for it.” In the semi’s, Whiteley smoked the tires like a fuel car right off the starting line and could only watch as D.J. Cox scooped up the win with a 5.74 – about two-tenths slower than she’d been running all weekend.

Norwalk was just the first of back-to-back-to-back races for the YNot Racing/J&A Service team. This weekend is the Route 66 Nationals in Chicago, where in 2013 Whiteley picked up the first national event victory of her career, and the following weekend the team will be all the way across the country in Woodburn, Ore., for the fourth race of the seven-race Western Region schedule.

TAFC – DENVER 2015

June 25, 2015 / Todd Veney

With a third final-round appearance in her last four races, Annie Whiteley, who had swept the Las Vegas regional and national events on back-to-back weekends, kept her bid for a Top Alcohol Funny Car national championship very much alive.

Back on the mountainside at her home track, picturesque Bandimere Speedway, Whiteley outran everybody in qualifying, which was saying a lot at this race – two-thirds of the drivers in the field were former national event winners. She qualified No. 1 with an off-the-trailer 5.80, and it’s a good thing she did – there were just two qualifying sessions, and her YNot Racing/J&A Service Camaro had to be pushed off the starting line after the burnout on her second attempt.

In the first round of eliminations, opposite Nick Januik in a matchup of the last two spring Vegas winners, Whiteley charged to low e.t. of the meet to that point, won handily, 5.76 to 5.92, and earned the semifinal bye. A consistent 5.81 on that run seemed to set her up well for the final against Lombardo, who was right there with a 5.77, but when the light turned green in the final, all hell broke loose in both lanes.

Whiteley went right up in smoke, but so did Lombardo, and the race was on. Any other up-on-smoke pass in her entire career would have meant an easy win for Lombardo, but she made him work for this one.

“I learned something that time,” she said. “I’ve always been told that if the car shakes, just stay out of it. And I always have. But that time…I don’t know. I guess that little competitive edge that you have inside you kicks in and you feel like you’ve got to keep trying because you’re in the final. So I got back on it.”

Whiteley got the car calmed down, tromped back down on the throttle and legged it to the finish line for an 8.04 at 211 mph, but Lombardo got there first with a 7.48 at just 160 mph. “That’s OK,” she said. “I learned something. I did something I didn’t know I could do. And this year’s already been a lot better than last year.”

TAFC – HOUSTON 2015

April 27, 2015 / Todd Veney

She may not have won, as she did on back-to-back weekends earlier this month at the national and regional events in Las Vegas, but Annie Whiteley didn’t leave Houston’s Royal Purple Raceway empty-handed. Driving the J&A Service/YNot Racing Top Alcohol Funny Car, she set low e.t. of the meet in eliminations with a 5.53 and top speed of the meet during qualifying with a 266.85-mph blast, the fastest run of her four-year career.

Currently fourth in NHRA national points, just a round out of second place despite running fewer races than the drivers ahead of her in the standings, Whiteley grew increasingly quicker throughout qualifying with an opening 5.614 at 264.29 mph followed by a 5.595/264.03 and a 5.581/266.85. “Up until the second round, the car was running great,” said Whiteley, who ran at least 2 mph faster on all three qualifying passes than she’d ever gone before this race.

After dispatching former U.S. Nationals winner Chris Foster in the quickest side-by-side race of the opening round, 5.53 to 5.59, Whiteley dropped a weird second-round match with Sweden’s Ulf Leanders, the eventual runner-up. “The car shook the tires about 200 feet off the starting line and at first we couldn’t figure out why,” said Whiteley, who was runner-up at Houston last year. “The computer graph was odd. It shouldn’t have done anything different on that run because the way the car was running, we hadn’t really made any changes.”

A post-race analysis of video from that run revealed the culprit: liquid spraying up from one of the rear tires. “It looked like I was pushing puddles, like there was water on the track or something,” Whiteley said. “We refired the car in the pits, and it was making a puddle underÂ one of the headers because the inner tube was cracked.”

The Spring Nationals, Whiteley’s third race in three weeks, will be her last for nearly two months, and she heads for the sidelines having won 80 percent of her rounds so far this year, tops in Top Alcohol Funny Car. Next up: the Central Regional at Bandimere Speedway just outside Denver, the YNot team’s home track, June 19-21.

TAFC – POMONA 2014

November 17, 2014 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley closed out a frustrating season with a frustrating DNQ at the Automobile Club of Southern California NHRA Finals in Pomona, Calif. Experimenting with a completely different style of clutch – the Leanders model that’s sweeping the class – the Grand Junction, Colo., driver had to shut off early on all three qualifying attempts and missed the cut for just the third time in her career. The only other times were at this event in 2012 and last week at the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

“It was just a bad year,” said Whiteley, who endured a winless season for the first time in her Top Alcohol Funny Car career. “It happens to everybody, and this year, it happened to us.”

Though the forgettable second half of the season was plagued with freak parts failures and occasional traction problems, the first half was a typical J&A/YNot Racing season. Whiteley was the No. 1 qualifier at four races in a row (Houston, Topeka, Denver, and Tulsa) and advanced to the final round at three of them – Houston, Denver, and Tulsa.

She set low e.t. of the meet four times – at Houston, Topeka, Denver, and Brainerd, where she also qualified in the top spot – and set top speed in Denver (249.58 mph). Whiteley, who had yet to finish outside the Top 5 in her alcohol career until 2014, wound up this season 14th in the national standings and fifth in the Central region with a decent 9-13 win-loss record and three final-round appearances.

TAFC – LAS VEGAS REGIONAL 2014

November 10, 2014 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley still hasn’t been beaten at the final regional event of the 24-race Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series, but instead of going 3-0 for another win at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, she went 0-0 this time – she didn’t qualify.

Whiteley, who won the event in both 2012 and 2013 (and swept the spring regionals there both years, too) missed the cut for just the second time in her entire career and the first time anywhere in nearly two years. Whiteley, whose only previous DNQ had come at the 2012 NHRA Finals at Pomona, was one of 20 drivers – including two from Sweden and one from Australia – who attempted to qualify at what annually is the toughest regional event in the country.

With a respectable 5.700, she was in the field with one qualifying session to go, but an up-in-smoke leave in that third session left her on the outside looking in when four other drivers bumped into the field. “It was just too much for the track,” said Whiteley, who smoked the tires and coasted to a 14.33. “We have an all-new clutch [designed by the Leanders Brothers, who eventually won the race], and when you change something as big as that, it takes a little time to get everything sorted out like the old setup was. Eventually, this new clutch is going to be better, and this is just something we have to go through to get where we want to be.”

TAFC – LAS VEGAS NATIONAL 2014

November 2, 2014 / Todd Veney

Perennial Top 10 driver Annie Whiteley suffered a frustrating first-round loss at the Toyota Nationals at the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, by far her best track on the entire NHRA circuit. The third-year veteran won the first race of her Top Alcohol Funny Car at the desert supertrack in April 2012, runner-upped at the national event there that fall, and scored again the late-season regional there, annually the toughest race of the season. It was the same thing last year: a clean sweep of both Vegas regionals.

This year? Not so much. Whiteley qualified No. 3 in the tough field but was eliminated in the first round of the Toyota Nationals by Top 5 driver Doug Gordon in a rematch of their Topeka first-round race, where she also was upset after qualifying No. 1. Gordon fought for traction in an on-and-off-the-throttle 5.73 win while Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing Mustang, which had charged to a 5.55 in qualifying, slipped to a 6.18.

“We just didn’t have enough for a track that good,” Whiteley said. “Doug didn’t make a great run either, but he got it down there quicker than we did. He had to pedal it to get rid of the shake. So did I, but I tried short-shifting first. It didn’t make the shake go away, so I pedaled it, and he just drove away from me.” Whiteley stayed on the throttle until there was no catching Gordon and finally clicked it off for a 6.18 at 234 mph.

TAFC – CHARLOTTE 2014

September 15, 2014 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley’s maddening 2014 season grew even more aggravating at the Carolina Nationals at state-of-the-art zMax Dragway in Charlotte when she slipped over the centerline in a very winnable first-round matchup against Tony Bogolo and was disqualified. “I had the wheel cocked all the way to the right, and the car just kept going and going and going to the left,” she said. “I had my arms completely crossed at the end, but it wouldn’t come back, and boom – right over the centerline. The whole year’s been like that. It’s just been a bad season.”

Whiteley wheeled her J&A Service/YNot Racing Funny Car to five wins and the West Region championship in her rookie season, 2012, and piled up four more victories – including a first national title, in Chicago – in five final-round appearances last year on the way to another Top 5 finish in the prestigious NHRA national standings.

“Hey, maybe we can still make the top 10 this year,” said Whiteley, who currently is tied with Kris Hool and John Lombardo Jr. for sixth place, just two points out of the Top 5. “The best part about this weekend is how well we ran in qualifying with a new crew chief [Mike Strasburg]. It was his first race tuning a Funny Car, and with all the rain we had and considering that we lost a qualifying run, I’d say he did pretty well.”

Strasburg, who drove the YNot Racing dragster to his first career national event title earlier this season at Norwalk, tuned Whiteley’s Funny Car to a 5.63 in last-shot qualifying in Charlotte, good for the No. 6 qualifying position. “I’m just getting started, but the Funny Car doesn’t seem to be that different from a dragster so far,” Strasburg said. “5.63 isn’t too bad for our first time out, and I’m pretty encouraged about the rest of the year.”

The YNot season picks back up next month with the first of back-to-back-to-back races, the West Regional closer in Las Vegas, where Whiteley has scored three times already in her young Top Alcohol Funny Car career.

TAFC – INDY 2014

September 3, 2014 / Todd Veney

After tearing up the Top Alcohol Funny Car ranks from the time she broke through to win in just the fourth start of her rookie season, J&A Service/YNot Racing driver Annie Whiteley finally hit the first slump of her career.

An upset first-round loss at the biggest race of the season, the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis, where last year she made it to the final and barely lost, was Whiteley’s fourth first-round defeat in five races. It happened just four times in her entire rookie campaign, when she amassed a 26-11 win-loss record and tied for fourth in the national standings, and just five times all last year, when she put up a 23-12 mark and finished fourth in the nation.

2014 hasn’t been a washout – Whiteley currently is locked in a three-way tie for eighth place in the national standings and has three final-round appearances in the bank – but it’s been no 2012. “This stinks,” said Whiteley, who qualified No. 5 at Indy with an off-the-trailer 5.61 that covered the other 23 drivers by the almost unheard-of margin of half a tenth. She ended up No. 5, solidly in the fast half of the field as she has been at every race but one this year, but shook violently against Jay Payne, who qualified just 12th but went on to win the event.

“It was a weak shake,” she said. “It wasn’t that we overpowered the track – that track was way better than anyone thought it was going to be. Usually when you short-shift, the shake goes away, but that time, short-shifting just made the car shake harder.”