Tag: Tulsa (Page 1 of 2)

TAFC – TULSA

May 13, 2024 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley’s first victory of 2024 was just her latest triumph at Tulsa Raceway Park, where she’s been winning since she started racing Funny Cars back in 2012. Her final-round victim this time: husband Jim Whiteley, who just missed a perfect light with a -.002 foul that handed the Mid-West Drag Racing Series’ Throwdown in T-Town title to his all-time favorite opponent.

“I was late going down on the pedal, which usually means I’m going to be late, and I had my worst light all weekend,” Annie said. It was, but even it was pretty good, a .060. “I was excited to win, but it sucked because I don’t like to see Jim lose – especially like that.”

Annie, who’d qualified second, fourth, and third in her previous 2024 starts – all on the quarter-mile in NHRA competition – reigned supreme at Tulsa, where she locked down her first No. 1 of the season with an outstanding 3.62 at nearly 212 mph, top speed by more than three and a half miles per hour. Driving a matching J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaro dressed in white, Jim tied friend Steve Macklyn right down to the thousandth of a second for No. 2 spot with an identical 3.632 E.T. but qualified higher on the basis of his faster speed, 208.30 mph to Macklyn’s 207.59.

In the first round, Annie ripped off a 3.63/211, nearly matching her Low E.T./top speed marks from qualifying, to erase veteran Lance Van Hauen, then breezed through the semifinals to meet Jim in the final. He had a much tougher road, topping Bryan Brown in the opening round, 3.64/206 to 3.87/200, and surviving a memorable matchup with Macklyn in the semifinals. Both cut near-perfect .00 lights and both ran 3.66s, but Jim was a tick better on both ends of the track – .003 to .006 and 3.664 to 3.669.

“You get down to the final at these Mid-West races and you’d better bring everything you have,” Annie said. “The track can be kind of iffy for testing on Thursday, then gets pretty good on Friday, and by Saturday it’s a lot better. I don’t know what they do or how they do it, but they just keep working on it all weekend and by the finals, the track is perfect.”

Annie ran a 3.63 and Jim a 3.65, but their E.T.s meant nothing when he went red by 1/500th of a second. “I don’t know why, but I always seem to do my best against him,” said Annie, who’d had a perfect .000 light in qualifying. To cap an already memorable weekend, grandson Breccan won the Jr. Dragster title and shared a toast with dad Steven – a Dr. Pepper for him and a beer for Dad.

PRO MOD – TULSA 2 2023

October 9, 2023 / Todd Veney

Steven Whiteley pulled off one of the biggest wins of his Pro Mod career at the Throwdown at T-Town, resurrecting his once-dwindling championship hopes with a narrow semifinal win over yearlong points leader Keith Haney and a crucial final-round decision over Blake Housley. “That,” said Whiteley, whose last race, at Martin, Mich., ended in a crash, “was big.”

Just when it seemed he was out of contention for the Mid-West Drag Series title, Whiteley thrust himself back into it, scoring in the unfamiliar confines of father Jim’s ’63 split-window Corvette. “It’s just messed up, trying to drive a different car like this,” he said. “They’re both Tommy Mauney cars, yeah, but everything’s in a different position in this car. You’re laid back more in the seat, it’s narrower, the trans-brake button is in wrong spot, the pedals are longer … nothing is where it should be.”

As big an obstacle as that clearly was – and as tough as it was to push aside the anxiety from crashing the last time he went down the track – it didn’t keep Whiteley from victory. He and crew chief/co-driver Brandon Snider overcame early qualifying struggles to qualify No. 1 with a 3.63, breezed through the first round, and trounced Tony “Sandman” Williams in the second, 3.64 to 5.88, to set up what he termed “the round of the year,” his semifinal showdown with Haney.

“That was just an awesome race,” Whiteley said. “Three-thousandths of a second in the lights.” He was quicker than Haney off the line and quicker and faster downtrack (barely), moving first by a thousandth of a second, .064 to .065, and outrunning Haney by two-thousandths, 3.617 to 3.619, with a massive top-end charge, 209 mph to 205. Haney was first to the 330-foot mark, 2.41 to 2.43, so it was only in the last few hundred feet that the J&A Service/YNot Racing team’s aging Corvette prevailed.

“This thing was running 209 mph all weekend,” Whiteley said. “209 is pretty mean for a door car. I mean, ’63 Corvettes aren’t the most aerodynamic cars out there, you know? The track was really cooling off for the final and groove was getting tight, so we made sure the track was prepped the same as it was for the semi’s and stayed aggressive with the tune-up. We didn’t back it off at all – just sent it – and hoped the car would run the same as it did.”

It ran exactly as it had a round earlier, another 3.61 at 209 mph, to stop Housley and give Whiteley new life in the championship chase. “I’m still not used to this car,” he said, “but I don’t have the luxury of having everything just the way I want it anymore. We’re trying to win a championship. At some point, you’ve got to just get in and go.”

TAFC – TULSA 2023

October 9, 2023 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley’s latest Tulsa triumph only added to her legacy of success at the venerable old track in a town she once called home. “I’ve always liked racing here,” said Whiteley, who’s been winning races at Osage Tulsa Raceway Park since NHRA held Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series divisional and regional events here early in her Top Alcohol Funny Car career.

Today, Tulsa is the hub of the Mid-West Drag Racing Series, home to two major MWDRS events every year, including the latest Throwdown in T-Town. After dominating the first Throwdown and scoring at the U.S. 131 Nationals in Martin, Mich., last month, she claimed her third MWDRS victory of 2023 with a final-round decision over veteran Mark Billington, the retired Pepsi/Frito-Lay executive who’s been competitive since the day he bought a used Bob Newberry car more than 20 years ago and became an NHRA Division 2 champion.

“Tulsa is the first place Jim and I and I ever won the same race [in 2012, her rookie season in Top Alcohol Funny Car], and it was just a great weekend for the whole team because we had a lot of family here,” Whiteley said. “We had seven cars here altogether – Jim’s, mine, [son] Steven [Whiteley’s] Pro Mod, the Jrs., and [sister], Anita’s Top Dragster.”

Whiteley qualified No. 2 with an outstanding 3.56 at the ridiculous speed of 215.79 mph, one of her best eighth-mile speeds ever, and trailed only Jim’s 3.54 in the final qualifying order. After taking out Canadian Ryan Stack, driver of veteran Larry Dobbs’ bucks-down machine, in the opening round, Whiteley took on Billington, who was in the midst of a spirited comeback from a nasty crash earlier this year, in the final.

“That had to be one of the smoothest runs this car made all year,” Whiteley said. “It was a clean run, a great side-by-side race. This was Mark’s first race back after the crash and he really ran good. It was great to have him back out here for the first time in a long time and great to win, especially since our whole team was here.”

PRO MOD – TULSA 1 2023

October 7, 2023 / Todd Veney

At the Throwdown in T-Town, the team’s first race back since lead driver Steven Whiteley crashed at Martin, Brandon Snider wheeled Jim Whiteley’s old Pro Mod Corvette to a semifinal finish while Steven looked on from the line.

“If I’m not going to be in there, I wouldn’t want anybody else driving my car,” Whiteley said. “You know exactly what it feels like in there, so you want it to be somebody you know. Somebody good – like Brandon.”

It may not have been the event win the team was after (arch-rival Keith Haney took that home) but a final-four finish at the first of two events over the weekend (the makeup of the rained-out Tulsa race originally scheduled for May 12-13) was just enough to keep the Whiteley/Snider crew in contention for the 2023 Mid-West Drag Racing Series title. Without it, Whiteley’s comeback win later in the weekend would have been almost moot, at least as far as the points standings are concerned.

Back in May, strapped into the same ’69 Camaro they began the season with, Snider qualified smack in the middle of the pack, 9th, with a 3.73 at 202.15 mph. In the first round, he easily handled Texas Pro Mod legend Frankie “Mad Man” Taylor in a lopsided affair, 3.69 to Taylor’s aborted 5.62.

Then the rain set in, the event was postponed for five months, and when Snider rolled into the beams for the second round, it was aboard the Tommy Mauney-built ’63 split-window Corvette driven for years by J&A Service/YNot Racing team leader Jim Whiteley. A semifinal win over Haney truly would have made for a storybook weekend, especially considering Whiteley’s clutch win over him later in the weekend, but it wasn’t to be this time as Haney edged Snider in a close one, 3.61 to 3.64.

“It’s all-out every time we run that guy,” Whiteley said. “But for some reason it never happens in the final. I’ve run Haney in a final once, but whenever we race each other head to head, it seems like it’s always in the semi’s. It just keeps going back and forth every time.”

TAFC – TULSA 2023

May 15, 2023 / Todd Veney

Throughout Annie Whiteley’s career and especially lately, two things have always been true: she’s at her best in her old hometown, Tulsa, and she dominates rescheduled events. So when the Mid-West Drag Racing Series’ 2023 opener at Xtreme Raceway Park in Ferris, Texas, was postponed and rescheduled for Tulsa Raceway Park, victory was virtually assured.

With metronomic consistency and an overpowering performance, Whiteley prevailed once again, wheeling her Mike Strasburg-tuned J&A Service/YNot Racing “Shattered Glass” Camaro to a lopsided victory over MWDRS newcomer Mike Doushgounian in the final for her third career series win and an early lead in the 2023 Mid-West Top Alcohol Funny Car championship.

From the No. 2 qualifying position, Whiteley faced veteran Steve Macklyn in the first of two rounds of eliminations, advancing easily with a strong 3.72 at 208.88 when he faded with a shutoff 4.59 at just 146. Doushgounian won the other first-round matchup with a slightly quicker 3.70/209, defeating Jonathan Johnson, who was didn’t make it to the line in his first appearance back after a nasty top-end crash a couple years ago at Xtreme Raceway Park.

What shaped up to be a classic final did not disappoint. The blue Camaros of Whiteley and Doushgounian rocketed off the starting line almost simultaneously and were locked together side by side for the entire eighth-mile, with Whiteley emerging victorious by the almost invisible margin of 17-thousandths of a second. Even a .023 reaction time wouldn’t have been enough for her to win.

With a low-.020 or anything slower, she would have lost on a holeshot because Doushgounian was more than on time with a killer .013 reaction time, but Whiteley had this one all the way with a telepathic .005 reaction time, the best of her career. In one of the best races of this or any other season, she won, 3.70/209 to Doushgounian’s right-there 3.71/203, and the handwriting already is on the wall for later this season: The Throwdown in T-Town, set for the day after this race, was rained out and rescheduled for – you guessed it – Tulsa.

PRO MOD – TULSA 2023

May 15, 2023 / Todd Veney

At the rescheduled Mid-West Drag Racing Series season opener, held at Tulsa Raceway Park in conjunction with the Throwdown in T-Town, talented driver/crew chief Brandon Snider, subbing for team owner and driver Steven Whiteley, did all a replacement driver could possibly do: he won.

Snider, a former NHRA championship runner-up who expertly calls the mechanical shots for Whiteley’s J&A Service ’69 Camaro, ascended from the 16th and last spot in the field to win it all, single-handedly topping some of the biggest names in MWDRS Pro Mod racing in the process. The weekend, which ended with both Snider and Top Alcohol Funny Car teammate Annie Whiteley in the winner’s circle, got off to a harrowing start when Snider barely squeaked into the program, 16th of 17 entrants on the grid.

The YNot Racing team came to life in the first round of eliminations when Snider stormed to a 3.71 at 204.29 mph, a time good enough to have qualified in the top three, to easily dispatch No. 1 qualifier Ron Muenks (3.66), who slowed to a troubled 4.99 at just over 100 mph. Veteran Ed Thornton was the next to go, falling in the second round to the Atmore, Ala., driver’s torrid 3.71 with a not-bad 3.78. Snider left first by more than a tenth with a fine .039 reaction time that actually was his slowest of the event, and followed by taking out both track co-owners in the late rounds – Todd Martin in the semifinals and Keith Haney in the final.

Snider’s best reaction time of the event kept him in front from start to finish against Martin, who came closer to beating him than anyone did all weekend. Martin was right on time with a .026 reaction time, but Snider had him covered with a clutch .012. The final was over quickly when Snider, who never trailed at any point in any round and got quicker and faster every time, trounced Haney’s aborted 4.91/104 with a smooth 3.68/205.

TAFC – TULSA 2022

October 9, 2022 / Todd Veney

Any doubt that Jim and Annie Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing Camaros are identically prepared (if there ever was any) was put permanently to rest on a single qualifying run at the Mid-West Drag Racing Series’ Throwdown at T-Town.

Husband and wife blasted off the Tulsa Raceway Park starting line within 1/200th of a second of each other and charged down the strip side by side with nearly identical performances right to the end: .954 to .955 in 60 feet, 2.46 to 2.46 to the 330-foot mark, and matching 3.628s at the finish line, with Jim crossing the stripe going half a mile-per-hour faster, 213.47 to Annie’s 212.96.

A day after the rescheduled Great Bend Nationals were completed, the biggest weekend of the eight-race MWDRS season continued with the Throwdown, which, as was the case a day earlier, went better for Annie than it did for Jim. By a single position (on the speed tiebreaker), he had the edge in qualifying in what turned out to be the quickest field in MWDRS Funny Car history. The entire field was in the 3.60s, from pole sitter Chris Marshall’s 3.61 to No. 6 Bill Bernard’s more than respectable 3.69.

Those 3.60s came to a screeching halt in the first round of eliminations, when only Marshall and Annie maintained their consistency. Annie had low E.T. of the entire round in a 3.64/212 win over Colorado’s Steve Macklyn, who gave it his best shot with telepathic .009 reaction time in a losing 3.71/204 effort.

Texan Bryan Brown, who eliminated Jim in the opening round, 3.71/206 to 3.79/198, did Bernard one better in the semi’s with an ever quicker .00 light against Annie – a near-perfect .001. Annie was on time with a solid .059, but Brown put together his best run of the weekend for a tight 3.63/210 win over her fast-closing 3.64/213, then lost to Marshall in the final.

PRO MOD – TULSA 2022

May 9, 2022 / Todd Veney

Everything was falling into place for second-generation Pro Mod driver Steven Whiteley at the Throwdown in T-Town – all the potential displayed in the first two races was on full display.

“The car was really running here,” he said. “Both lanes. That’s the thing about Tulsa. There’s that famous bump in left lane, but it doesn’t matter now because it’s after eighth mile. I’ve never seen a track where both lanes were truly as equal as they were this weekend. You don’t need a plan for the bad lane because now there is no bad lane.”

Thrown on top of the postponed Memphis Nationals – a whole other MWDRS national event in itself – the regularly scheduled Tulsa event was enough to put anyone on overload. Driving a powerful Pro Mod, plotting strategy round after round of Memphis Top Dragster eliminations with wife Delaina, and keeping an eye on their son’s Jr. Dragster was enough to frazzle anyone, but Whiteley gamely kept it all straight.

“One race was over and you’d turn around and be right into the next one,” he said. “It kind of got to be a blur; the rounds all started running together. All I remember was that the last round I won was on Friday night.” The first round for the originally scheduled Throwdown in T-Town was on Saturday, and Whiteley lost traction and had to lift against the ’68 Camaro of Brian Lewis, who’d barely qualified, 16th with a 3.81.

In the other lane, Lewis skied to a 4.07 but still squeaked into the quarterfinals against eventual runner-up Daniel Pharris. To compound Whiteley’s frustration, Lewis never made it to the line to make a race of it and Pharris advanced on a 3.72 single. Whiteley, who probably should have qualified No. 1 for the Memphis race, did qualify No. 1 for this one with an outstanding 3.638/207.08, pacing an enormous field of 25 cars from all over the middle of the country.

“I think I’ve only aborted three runs all year – one went toward the wall, it took the tire off on a qualifier in Memphis, and now here in the first round,” Whiteley said. “The car made it out there quite a way, started chattering, and then took the tire off, but for the most part it goes right down there every time. And it’s fast. [Crew chief] Brandon Snider is top notch. It’s nice to have a crew chief who understands exactly what it’s like from a driver’s point of view because he’s a really good driver himself.”

TAFC – TULSA 2022

May 9, 2022 / Todd Veney

In the afterglow of the rescheduled Memphis race finished at Tulsa Raceway Park, one of the best overall events in team history, the Throwdown in T-Town turned out to be a major disappointment for YNot Racing, especially in Top Alcohol Funny Car, where both Annie and Jim Whiteley were upended in the first round.

Annie, who has a lifetime win-loss record of 14-4 (.778) in Tulsa, blew the tires off at the hit and fell to former nitro Funny Car racer Steve Macklyn, and Jim did likewise two pair later opposite second-generation driver Brian Brown. Macklyn’s and Brown’s winning times (3.77 and 3.95, respectively) only made the losses even more grating – neither was close to the Whiteleys’ qualifying performances, and both were gone one round later.

“We finished Memphis here, and the first and second round counted as the second and third qualifying runs for Tulsa,” Annie said. “We got an extra run because we were in the final [of the rescheduled Memphis event], and after that, I think it all got a little confusing for everybody.”

Annie qualified No. 3 for the Throwdown in T-Town with a 3.66 at 211.56 mph – quicker and faster than she’d just run to win the rescheduled Memphis event. Jim, racing his beautiful white Camaro for just the second time, wasn’t far behind, but neither cracked the six-second mark on the eighth-mile course in their brief stay in eliminations.

“You just won the Memphis race, and now you’re nothing?” asked Annie, who won back-to-back NHRA regionals here in in 2012 and 2013 and reached the final a third straight time in 2014. “Sometimes, I guess that’s just how it goes: in a few hours you really can go from a hero to a zero, just like they say. I don’t know what the hell happened up there – the car just didn’t make it that time. It took the tire off. Jim’s car did the exact same thing, and we didn’t change a thing on either one.”

PRO MOD – MEMPHIS 2022

May 8, 2022 / Todd Veney

For Steven Whiteley, the Memphis makeup race at Tulsa Raceway Park will always be more about his teammates than it was about how he himself fared. Wife Delaina enjoyed the finest outing of her burgeoning Top Dragster career with a runner-up finish to his aunt, reigning MWDRS champion Anita Pulliam-Strasburg, and mom Annie Whiteley won Funny Car.

Not that Whiteley didn’t do just fine himself. He breezed into the top half of the field with a 3.73, lifting a little early because the quick, still-unfamiliar rack-and-pinion steering ratio made the car want to dart around on him. “That first run was just my seventh hit back in the car, and you definitely don’t want to oversteer, especially because it’s my dad’s – not mine,” he said. “But if it had been a full pull, that would’ve been straight to the top.”

The numbers bear it out. Every driver who qualified ahead of Whiteley made a hammer-down 200-mph blast through the traps, 20 mph faster than his coasting 183-mph run, yet those drivers were only incrementally quicker, with 3.71s, 3.72s, and 3.73s. Water seeped through the track to such an extent that eliminations had to be canceled in Memphis, and when they finally began, it was two weeks later and more than 400 miles away at Tulsa Raceway Park.

“That first weekend in Memphis was kinda rough,” said Whiteley, who ended up No. 6 with the early-shutoff 3.73/183. “It was just a never-ending battle with the track. We’d walk up there and check it out, there wouldn’t be enough runoff, and the water would collect so they could never get the track in shape for us to run.”

Under vastly different conditions in Tulsa, Whiteley definitively showed what that 3.73 in Memphis could have been by laying down a 3.66 in the first round (half a tenth quicker than No. 1 qualifier Dustin Nesloney’s 3.71 in that round) to wipe out track co-owner Todd Martin’s 3.76.

“This is all fresh, we’re coming off a break, and it’s like everything’s all new again,” he said. “I’m just loving this eighth-mile deal. I’m over the quarter-mile. After the eighth, it almost feels like the car is floating to the finish line. You’re just waiting for something to happen, and you’d better be ready to do something fast if it does. In the eighth-mile, the car’s carrying the front end the whole time, all the weight is on the ass end, and you’re charging all the way to the end. The whole race is more exciting, more intense.”