Wilkerson stays in the No. 13 slot
Indianapolis, Sunday: The 52nd annual Mac Tools U.S. Nationals is in the record books as having the quickest Funny Car qualifying field in NHRA POWERade Drag Racing history. And Springfield, Ill. favorite, Tim Wilkerson is pleased to have his Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevrolet Monte Carlo noted as a strong player in the game.
In today's qualifying Wilkerson smoked the tires on the first pass, coasting across the finish line at 8.837 seconds. On his last qualifying attempt, Wilkerson would have like to do better, but had some parts problems and only ran 4.867 at 311.49 mph. Wilkerson started the day in the No. 13 qualifying position and held onto lucky 13 as the day ended.
In 2003 when Wilkerson became the 49th Funny Car winner of the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals, he did so out of the 15th qualifying spot. So, being 13th doesn't bother the talented tuner/driver.
"What's important is that the car is really coming around, it really is," said Wilkerson. "It doesn't make one bit of difference to us where we ended up. We won here from the No. 15 spot. We've seen over and over again that you can lose from the No. 1 spot as easily as you can from the No. 15 spot. So, where we sit going into tomorrow makes no difference to us. What's important is that we are going to race and get a chance to try to make it through the ranks.
"We had some problems today. We got some new clutch parts and were having some issues with them. It's happening further down the track so it's hurting the block. But we got to the bottom of it and I think we've got it fixed, so we should be good to go tomorrow."
The first opponent Wilkerson will face tomorrow is Whit Bazemore.
"We're not going to put any extra pressure on ourselves to do well tomorrow, just because it's the biggest race of the year and we've won here before," said Wilkerson. "If we go out there and run a 4.80 and Baze runs a 4.75, we're going to get beat, it's that simple. But we are going to try our best to go up there and not make a mistake. And hopefully we can get that done so tomorrow we go down the track and win some rounds."
