Trying too hard puts Wilkerson in the No. 11 spot

BRAINERD, Friday: With two qualifying sessions completed at the Lucas Oil Nationals, Funny Car points leader, Tim Wilkerson sits in the No. 11 spot.

Wilkerson wasted today’s first attempt, as his Levi, Ray & Shoup Impala SS smoked the tires early and coasted across the finish line at 6.795. So, for the second session, Wilk had to be the first car down the track. And when you go out first you miss the chance to watch other cars and adjust your tune-up. So you have to go out there and just hope you’ve got things figured out. Apparently Wilkerson did figure some things out as he improved to run a 4.354 at 247.25 mph.

“The track’s different from what we’ve been used to,” explained Wilkerson. It’s a little treacherous. I guess it’s not if you know what you’re doing, but obviously for me it was. On our first pass it put a hole out right away and went to smoke the tires, so I shut it off. For the second run, it was going good but it pulled loose in the middle. I thought the track would be better in the middle than it was and I tried too hard. That’s easy to figure out in hindsight, but I wish I would have been smarter ahead of time.

“For tomorrow we’ll figure it out. We’ll have to see if we can ease through the middle, that’s all. We’ve had to do this before, so I think we can. We should step up tomorrow and maybe end up in the top half of the field.”