Wilkerson ready to go rounds at sea level
SEATTLE, Prerace: The time is here for the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing series tour to stop in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, for the 20th annual Schuck's Auto Supply NHRA Nationals. Set at sea level, Pacific Raceways presents the teams with a new set of challenges, completely different from the ones they wrestled with last week in the mile-high altitude of Denver. The talented tuner and driver of the Levi, Ray & Shoup Funny Car, Tim Wilkerson, is ready for what the majestic Mt. Rainer area has to offer. And he hopes that this weekend's outing will catapult him in the direction he's headed; forward in his strong performance and upward in his POWERade Championship point battle.
Wilkerson struggled in Denver and amassed a pile of broken parts, which resulted in the No. 17 berth. But just a weekend earlier in Bristol, Tenn., Wilkerson captured the prestigious No. 1 spot. So, he knows there is promise inside his beautiful hot rod. He just has to get it to shine through and make it in the show on Sunday.
"Denver and Seattle are so totally different, that we didn't learn anything last week that can help us in Seattle," said Wilkerson. "The only good thing we learned, if you can call it good, is that we got our fuel delivery system problems straightened out. So, this weekend we can concentrate on getting down the track. We need to get the No. 17 off our back and get ourselves into the middle of the pack where we belong.
"It's going to another tough weekend. Seattle is a lot like St. Louis. You make more power than you know. So, it's going to be easy to smoke the tires. We've been doing well not smoking them; so if we're lucky we may be able keep that up. If we can go a few rounds, we can accumulate the points we need. And that would make it a good weekend
