Wilkerson qualified No. 5

TOPEKA, Friday: It was late into the night when the weather finally got the better of the NHRA and the days activity at the O'Reilly Summer Nationals had to be ended before it was completed. The Funny Cars were in the staging lanes ready to make their second run, but never got the chance. Tim Wilkerson would have liked to make another run in his beautiful Levi, Ray & Shoup Impala SS, but is pleased to end the day in the No. 5 qualifying position.

Wilkerson made a nice clean run of 4.832 at 325.85 mph. And naturally, he was looking to improve on it in the cooler night conditions. But the rain wouldn't let that happen.

"The car ran okay today," said Wilkerson, "but we put our old faithful blower on it. The new one we wanted to run didn't act the way we would have liked in testing. But we'll try it out tomorrow if the track is hot and nasty. If it's still good out we won't; we'll still run our good one. The one we ran in testing isn't as good as this one. But we'll work on it; we just have to run it a little different.

"I would have like to get a crack at a run tonight. I think we could have run a mid-70. But we'll see how it goes tomorrow, and we're happy to be in the show."