Tag: TAFC (Page 9 of 15)

TAFC – BRAINERD 2019

August 18, 2019 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley, the defending event champ who made the first national final of her illustrious career here in a memorable 2012 match with the greatest Top Alcohol Funny Car driver of all time, Frank Manzo, bowed out in the quarterfinals this time. “I’ve always liked this race – not because we won it last year but because my first ever final was right here,” she said. “I still remember the whole thing – it was like I was watching somebody else. Backing up from the burnout in the final, it hit me: That’s Frank Manzo over there.”

Whiteley was stopped two rounds short of a third career Lucas Oil Nationals final when eventual winner Shane Westerfield nipped her in a close quarterfinal match, 5.559 to 5.572. “I knew that that was going to be a tough one,” she said. “It’s Shane Westerfield – everybody knows how good he is on the lights. Before we ran, he told me, ‘Don’t make me look stupid up there,’ and I was like, ‘Don’t you make me look stupid. Try not to cut another .012 light, OK?’ I really thought saw the Tree well when we left and it felt like a good light, but I guess it wasn’t. I was really disappointed when I saw that it was a .111. It sure didn’t feel like a .111.”

By then, Whiteley had already pounded nemesis Scott McVey in the first round of eliminations, 5.55 to 5.64. She qualified the YNot/J&A Service Camaro solidly with a tamed-down 5.60-flat at 266.53 mph that just missed top speed of the meet and outran McVey, the surprise 2014 Brainerd winner, in the opening round before falling to fellow championship contender Westerfield in round two. “I’ve handed McVey the win a couple times so I was glad to get around him,” she said. “He only runs a few times a year but he’s beat me more than once, so I really wanted that one. We qualified OK but nowhere near where we should have. Anything that ever worked on the old car just doesn’t work on this car. They’ve been fighting this thing all year. I don’t know what it is – it’s just finicky.”

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 – BELLE ROSE 2019

June 25, 2019 / Todd Veney

For the third time in three career trips to No Problem Raceway, Annie Whiteley left remote Belle Rose, La., a champion. “I don’t know what it is about this place,” she said. “I say it every time: There’s just something about Belle Rose that our car likes. I wish it was like this everywhere we go.” Second in the national standings coming into the rescheduled race and fresh off a win at Dallas and a runner-up at Denver in her first two Central Region starts this season, Whiteley’s YNot team made it a clean sweep with low e.t., top speed, the No. 1 qualifying position, and a victory.

Whiteley, who beat second-generation racer Bryan Brown for the 2017 Belle Rose title and Kris Hool in last year’s final, topped Brown again in a traction-plagued match neither would have expected to win with the times they ran. Whiteley, who set the pace with a 5.67 in qualifying, fought her way to a 5.80, but it was enough to turn back the 5.90 of Brown’s Texas-based Camaro.

Originally scheduled for March but canceled before it ever even got started, the rain date attracted far fewer teams than would have lined up for the rained-out season opener. Just three braved the stifling heat and humidity of the Louisiana bayou in the summertime: Whiteley, Brown, and former Central Region champ Kirk Williams. Whiteley established the pace throughout, with an off-the-trailer 5.68 at 263 mph in Friday’s first qualifying session and a subsequent 5.67 at 264 for the No. 1 spot.

Following a 5.66 that reestablished low e.t. of the meet on the first-round bye she earned by qualifying No. 1, Whiteley staged opposite Brown in the final as an overwhelming favorite and manhandled the 3,000-horsepower beast to a good-enough 5.80 to win for the third year in a row. Off for the entire month of July while the Strasburg brothers prepare to break another record on the Bonneville Salt Flats, Whiteley’s YNot team will be back at the track the first week of August at the Northwest Nationals in Seattle.

TAFC – DENVER 2019

June 17, 2019 / Todd Veney

After breaking through for a long overdue first career victory at her home track in 2018 in the wake of numerous near-misses, championship contender Annie Whiteley just missed another Top Alcohol Funny Car title at Bandimere Speedway this year. At the third event of the six-race NHRA Central Regional season, Whiteley, who scored at the Central opener in Dallas, established low e.t. with a 5.70 in the semifinals but lost to Nick Januik in the final, 5.77 to 5.71.

It was Whiteley’s third final-round appearance in the past five races and her third runner-up since winning the rain-delayed Dallas race. As always, crew chief Mike Strasburg and the reigning Central Region champion YNot/J&A Service team brought a special tune-up to this event crafted just for the mile-high conditions they see nowhere else on tour. “They changed the transmission ratio, changed the compression ratio, even put on special [smaller] tires to deal with the altitude,” she said. “Mike and the guys always have a whole list of things to change for this race, and it all worked – the car ran great.”

Whiteley wound up second in the final qualifying order with a 5.72, just behind No. 1 Shane Westerfield’s 5.71 and just ahead of Januik’s 5.73. Entering eliminations second in the national standings with a commanding points lead in the Central Region, she pounded out a winning 5.82 at 257 mph on a single in opponent Doug Schneider’s absence. In the semifinals opposite Kris Hool’s competitive 5.77/248, she threw down low e.t. and top speed of the meet, a 5.70-flat at 260.26 mph, the only 260-mph run all weekend, to assume the favorite’s role going into the final against Januik, who also won the Las Vegas regional in April.

TAFC – TOPEKA 2019

June 10, 2019 / Todd Veney

Plagued by traction problems all weekend, Annie Whiteley turned in a respectable but ultimately unsatisfying quarterfinal finish at the NHRA Heartland Nationals in Kansas’ capital city of Topeka. The eight-year Top Alcohol Funny Car veteran, who just missed winning this race two years ago, qualified a season-low sixth, still in the fast half of the Top Alcohol Funny Car field, and fell in the second round to Nick Januik.

“We’re struggling right now to find a good tune-up for hot conditions,” said Whiteley, who, for once, barely dipped into the 5.50s all weekend. “It’s the first time all year we’ve run in the heat, and I guess we haven’t quite figured that out yet. We just haven’t made enough runs yet in these conditions with this much power.”

Things started out well enough with a 5.62 at just short of 265 mph in the first of Friday’s two qualifying sessions, but that was followed by aborted runs of 9.36 and 7.97 that left her 6th on the final grid, paired with known leaver Kirk Williams Saturday night in the opening round of eliminations. Williams managed to get off the starting line first, but not by much – just five-thousandths of a second – and it’s a good thing Whiteley was on time because Williams stepped up dramatically and was right on the YNot/J&A Service Camaro’s heels in performance.

Third in the national standings coming into the race, Whiteley laid down her best run of the weekend at just the right time, a 5.59 at 266 mph that snuffed out Williams’ right-there 5.66 at 257. “That was a good race,” she said. “I never saw him the whole way, and I guess he never saw me, either. For him, those runs are the worst – you never see the other car but when you get down there the win light doesn’t come on.”

Sunday was over early when Whiteley fell to Januik, the former Las Vegas winner who had beaten her just twice before, in the second round. Running at 9 in the morning in vastly different conditions than crew chief Mike Strasburg had faced all weekend, she had to lift in 2nd gear before the car got completely out of control. “I hit the bump in that left lane, and it just bounced me over by the centerline,” said Whiteley, who had no choice but to shut off and coast to a 6.30 at 168 mph while Januik disappeared into the distance with a 5.52/264, his best run of the event. “That bump is right where the shift light comes on. Every run in that lane, the shift light would flicker and never come all the way. We had to back it down too much this weekend – if we didn’t, it’d blow the tires off.”

TAFC – CHICAGO 2019

June 2, 2019 / Todd Veney

Coming off low e.t. and top speed of the meet in Route 66 Nationals qualifying (5.48/270.20-mph) and a semifinal showing in the prestigious Jegs All Stars race, six-time national event champion Annie Whiteley got a bad draw for first round: five-time national event winner Andy Bohl was No. 16. Bohl, making his first start in a Camaro purchased from 2018 championship team owner Tony Bartone, anchored easily the toughest Top Alcohol Funny Car of 2019 – all 17 cars have run at least in the 5.50s.

Racing under the lights Saturday night in the first pair of the first round, Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing Yenko Camaro and Bohl’s Howards Cams entry shot off the line as one. Whiteley sprinted to a two-car-length lead while Bohl, beset with traction problems in low gear as he had been all weekend, dropped back. Whiteley charged to a winning 5.51 at 269 mph while Bohl’s car made an abrupt left turn at the 2-3 shift, plowing into the wall at a disturbingly direct angle and, when the left rear tire went down, sliding upside down in a shower of sparks into the opposite-lane barrier before ramming head-on into the wall back in his own lane and erupting in flames. He leapt out the escape hatch and clambered over the wall to safety while Whiteley, oblivious to the fiery crash behind her, coasted uneventfully to a stop, wondering what was taking the NHRA Safety Safari so long.

“It seemed like I was sitting there for forever, and when they finally pushed me off the track, [crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] ripped the hatch open and asked if I was OK,” Whiteley said. “I didn’t know what he was talking about, and it was a good 10 minutes before he got around to telling me what we ran and it all started making sense. Watching the, the first thing I thought was, ‘That’s exactly what Jim’s crash at Pomona in 2007 looked like’ – sideways into the left wall, then into the right wall, then back into the left.’ ”

It started raining before NHRA officials could clear the wreckage, and the remainder of the round was postponed. When racing resumed Sunday morning, Whiteley was victimized by Kris Hool’s lethal .024 reaction time and dropped a tough second-round match to the Wyoming driver, 5.52/264 to 5.49 271 (top speed of the meet). “We’re really fighting something in the clutch right now,” she said. “It’s not responding like it normally does – the travel to get it to engage is way more than it should be. What could ever cause it to change that much I have no idea, but instead of moving the pedal an inch to get the car to roll, it was like three inches.”

TAFC – CHARLOTTE 2019

April 28, 2019 / Todd Veney

Former Four-Wide Nationals champion Annie Whiteley just missed a second career victory at Charlotte when her car went ballistic right off the line in the final against Tyler Scott, who’d never been close a national event victory until now. Whiteley, who won the Four-Wides in 2017, went down to an opponent’s all-over-the track 5.70-flat in the final for the second time in a row, again after running flawlessly through the preliminary rounds of eliminations.

Whiteley’s car actually had run great not just all day but all weekend. “It was going perfectly straight, but I probably didn’t make it 60 feet,” said the nine-year veteran, who was in the 21st final of her Top Alcohol Funny Car career. “It’s not like it went into tire shake in the middle of low gear or anything – it just blew the tires off. I came off the throttle as soon as it started to go paint-shaker on me, but there’s no way the car should have done anything like that. I mean, we barely changed anything, and what we did change should have made it less aggressive, not more aggressive. [Crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] richened up the barrel valve three flats. I never expected anything like that to happen, and Mike and the guys damn sure didn’t.”

“The track cooled down a little between the semi’s and the final,” Strasburg said. “It should’ve been fine. The only thing that changed before the final round was the track getting eight degrees cooler, which should’ve only made things better. It should’ve gone right down through there with another 5.40-something.”

By then, Whiteley had every reason to believe she was in line for her seventh career national event title. She’d already made it through what should’ve been the hard part, having slayed the dragon himself – reigning world champ Sean Bellemeur, who won the Gatornationals with a national-record 5.35 – in the semifinals. In the other semi, Scott just had to take the Tree to advance on a single.

“Beating Sean was like winning the whole race, but we still had to win one more round,” said Whiteley, who moved from fifth to third in the national standings with her latest final-round appearance. She and Bellemeur had already blown everybody away with a side-by-side 5.44-to-5.45 classic in qualifying, and she was knocking off her best reaction times of the season round after round. “I decided to just do what I know how to do and not go doing anything crazy. I think sometimes you just try too hard, and I’m not doing that anymore. Getting yourself all psyched up so you cut a light – it just doesn’t work.”

TAFC – HOUSTON 2019

April 15, 2019 / Todd Veney

Picking up right where she left off in a dominant victory four days earlier at the rain-soaked Dallas regional, Annie Whiteley stormed to a 5.52 under overcast skies in the opening session of SpringNationals qualifying to claim the provisional pole by a mile. An even better 5.50-flat Friday afternoon set her up in the No. 2 position on the final grid behind eventual final-round opponent Brian Hough, who took the top spot with a 5.48 and held it for good when last-shot qualifying Saturday afternoon was washed out.

Whiteley’s J&A Service YNot team, led by crew chief Mike Strasburg, stepped up even more in the first round of eliminations to a 5.45 at 272.17 mph (top speed of the meet) to dispatch overmatched Aryan Rochon. A similar 5.48 at more than 271 mph in the semi’s was enough to wipe out many-time divisional and regional champ Kirk Williams, who trailed her across the finish line by about a car length with a competitive 5.55/259 after upsetting Jay Payne, one of the most prolific drivers of all time in both Top Alcohol Funny Car and Top Alcohol Dragster.

In the final against Hough, who had only beaten her once in four previous encounters, Whiteley blew the tires off right when anything close to either of her qualifying times or either of her winning eliminations runs would have been enough to win. “I was in trouble by 60 feet,” she said. “I tried to pedal, but it wasn’t having it. If he would’ve blown our doors off with another 5.40-something, that’d be one thing. But a 5.70 in the final? That’s a little tough to take. I mean, even a 5.60-anything would’ve been enough. We hopped it up a little because it looked like the track could hold more than a 5.48, and the way he’d been running, we thought we were going to need it. Maybe we just got a little greedy.”

TAFC – DALLAS 2019

April 10, 2019 / Todd Veney

After sitting around staring at each other for days, Annie Whiteley and the J&A Service/YNot team sprang into action when the call to the lanes for the first qualifying session, finally, mercifully, went out and ended up winning the race with a dominant performance. Half of the quickest side-by-side race in Top Alcohol Funny Car history at this track a year and a half ago – 5.37-5.38 opposite Doug Gordon in the 2017 Fallnationals final – Whiteley qualified No. 1 with a 5.52 at 269.40 mph, top speed of the meet by more than 5 mph to that point.

“We all knew going in that the weather was going to be a problem this weekend,” said Whiteley, who had to jet back to Colorado in the interim to help keep J&A Service running smoothly. “They kept moving the schedule around because the weather kept changing. Originally, we were going to qualify on Friday and race on Saturday, but, naturally, everything changed, so our first qualifying run was Thursday night at 7:00, which meant that we had to be there on Wednesday to test. Then we sat and sat and sat and it would rain just enough to keep us from running. [Top Alcohol Dragster team owner] Randy [Meyer] was kind of running everything, and he’d stop at every pit when the weather let up run and ask, ‘You guys ready?’ and we’d wait till everybody was ready to run and then go up to the lanes. We all just wanted to get this done.”

When former Division 2 champion Mark Billington was unable to show for the first round of eliminations three days later for the rare Monday race day start, Whiteley singled to a 5.54/268 that almost certainly would have advanced whether the veteran Billington or anybody else had been lined up in the next lane. Qualifying No. 1 in a six-car field meant that when three cars were still around for the semifinals, she’d the one with the bye into the final. Again, she pounded out a run that nobody could’ve handled anyway, a 5.49/268 (low e.t. of the meet) that afforded the team lane choice for the final against one of the more prolific drivers in alcohol racing history – Jay Payne, who’s racked up nearly 100 national and divisional/regional wins in a career that dates back to the 1960s.

For the event title, Whiteley left on Payne and screamed down the track with the second-quickest and second-fastest run of the entire weekend, behind only her semifinal numbers. Payne, after reeling off back-to-back-to-back times of 5.54, 5.54, and 5.55, pushed too hard and smoked the hoops to a nine-second time and settled for runner-up. With a 5.497 at 269.13 mph that trailed only her own 5.495 from the semifinals and 269.40-mph qualifying charge for low E.T. and top speed of the meet, Whiteley picked up her first win of the season and the 14th divisional/regional victory of her eight-year career.

TAFC – GAINESVILLE REGIONAL 2019

March 10, 2019 / Todd Veney

Rained out before a wheel ever turned at what she thought was her season opener – the Central Regional in Belle Rose, La., where it rained so much there was never any reason to bother unloading the car – Annie Whiteley instead began her 2019 campaign with a thud at the Gainesville Regional, where, for just the second time in her entire career, she didn’t qualify.

At the wheel of a brand-new Yenko blue Camaro, the last Top Alcohol Funny Car legendary fabricator Brad Hadman will ever build, Whiteley never made it to 2nd gear in three qualifying attempts. “I’ll be honest,” she said. “We were all a little worried about this new car. After the second qualifying session, I started thinking, ‘This thing is going to give us fits…’ ”

With an aggregate best of 7.71 at 162 mph, Whiteley wound up dead last in the final lineup, 11th of 11 potential qualifiers. “It would make it just far enough that you’d think you were good,” she said, “and then it would take the tire off right before the gear change. We switched transmissions, but obviously it didn’t like that ratio, either.” When qualifying was over and she found herself in the unacceptable and completely unfamiliar role of non-qualifier instead of being No. 1, as she was five times in a row to open the 2018 season, Whiteley and crew made one last test run Sunday afternoon to prepare for next week’s Gatornationals. The result: a more-than-competitive 5.53 at 271 mph.

“We finished last season with [John] Lombardo’s old car after I went into the net at Dallas, but that was Lombardo’s car – not my car,” Whiteley said. “I never did feel right in there. This new car … I just liked the way I fit in it right away. The guys measured every little thing and had everything placed just the way I like it before I ever got in the car. I never even sat in it till just before the first test run, but everything was right, right away. If it runs anything like it did in testing, we should be fine this year.”