Championship Drag Racing

NHRA Northwest Nationals
Seattle, WA
(July 22-24)

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Driver Profile

Tim Wilkerson Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang Funny Car

Seattle, Saturday: Funny Car pilot, Tim Wilkerson didn't improve on his qualifying runs today at the 18^th annual CARQUEST Auto Parts NHRA Nationals at Pacific Raceways and yet, he still held onto the No. 10 qualifying spot.

Wilkerson made two qualifying runs today in his Levi, Ray & Shoup Funny Car.  On the first one, he smoked the tires and coasted across the finish line at 8.169 seconds at 103.17 mph. On the second pass, Wilkerson mastered the quarter-mile, laying down a 4.855 at 293.92 mph.

"After we saw the Miller Light dragster go 4.49 out there, we thought we'd see what we could get away with," explained Wilkerson.  "So, we stoked it up pretty good and it did about what you would think it would do.  For the second run then, we backed it down a little bit and it was a better run.  We hit the bumps down at the end and threw the blower belt off it.  That's why we had such a low mph.  I'm a little bit confident that we should be okay tomorrow.  It's very aggressive here.  It has a lot of motor because of the Seattle air."

Wilkerson made two solid mid 4.8-second runs during qualifying.  His 4.84 was in the right lane and the 4.85 was in the left lane.  So, not having lane choice over his first round opponent, Tony Pedregon tomorrow won't affect Wilkerson.

"I don't think lane choice will make any difference tomorrow," said Wilkerson.  "If I can keep it in the middle of the groove in the right lane, we should be fine.  And the left lane is just a little bumpy.  We just need to go down the track.  If those guys can beat us, they can beat us.  Hopefully, we can get by them, because it's for tenth place and it will put us in the top ten.  If we don't, we'll go to the next race and try again."

At the moment, Wilkerson is in 11^th place, just six points behind Pedregon in the POWERade championship point's battle.  So, a lot rests on the outcome of their first round match-up tomorrow morning.

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