Wilkerson looking to Indy and beyond

INDIANAPOLIS, Prerace: Labor Day weekend is drawing near and that means it is time for the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals at O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis. And having won this prestigious race once in his career puts Funny Car veteran, Tim Wilkerson in a very special group. But winning the "granddaddy" of them all a second time would put the Springfield, Ill. favorite in a very elite segment of racing professionals. There isn't anything that the Levi, Ray & Shoup (LRS) Funny Car driver and tuner would like to do more than make the move up to the higher echelon of pros.

"I feel good going into Indy," said Wilkerson. "We have a good car, even in the middle of the day. We just want to get to Indy and keep winning rounds for LRS. And with the way the car has been performing the last two races we hope we can keep our momentum up."

A win at the prestigious U.S. Nationals is what dreams are made of, and every team likes to dream.

"I know the guys are pumped up," said Wilkerson. "They get down when we don't do well, but the two semi-final rounds we were in and our No. 1 qualifier in Bristol, added to the way the car is responding, makes all of us secretly harbor thoughts of a win this weekend.

"But we're also looking beyond this race. I guess you can say we're planning for next year already. Since we know we didn't make it in the Countdown, we can now look to the future. I feel confident that we're on the right track and maybe next year we won't get ourselves in the hole we got into this year. We have another blower coming that we need to test and so if I can get it ironed out like I have our other one, we'll be pretty happy with that. And our clutch program is coming along. We have a new disc coming and hopefully we can get our clutch pack set-up. If this new disc works out, we'll have a clutch pack for next year. We'll have enough clutch discs to run all of next year. That will be good because it really mucks things up when you take a clutch pack in and out. It takes me at least six to 10 runs to get the thing figured out. So, along with doing our best this weekend in Indy, we're working on doing our best in the future."