<img src="http://www.nitromater.com/gallery/files/5/t_wilkerson07.jpg" alt="t_wilkerson07" align="right"borders="0"/>
ENGLISHTOWN, Prerace: The upcoming 38th annual ProCare Rx NHRA SuperNationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park marks the official start of summer on the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series tour. Starting this weekend, Springfield, Ill. Funny Car favorite, Tim Wilkerson, will be participating in 11 races in a row, traveling from one end of the country to the other and back again, wrapping up at the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis over Labor Day weekend.
Wilkerson's action packed schedule consists of the next nine NHRA events, to which Wilkerson has added two match races. It takes organization and planning for Wilkerson to have everything in place for his Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevrolet Impala SS and his team to begin their long summer trek.
"This summer is going to be tough," explained Wilkerson. " We're going to use our old car for the match races, and it's all together and sitting up in the trailer. We're going to use it just to match race with and hopefully that will help us out. It should break up our 11 weeks. We'll have six national events, a match race, two national events, a match race and then Indy. We're getting everything we own, like cylinder heads and blocks fixed. We're ordering enough parts for 11 races in a row. We're not sure how that's going to end up working out, but we'll find out. We'll try to make as many stops at the shop as we can even though it will only be for one or two days at a time. We may have to have one of our retired crew guys come back to the shop and build stuff while we're out.
"We're really going to have to be careful not to tear stuff up because the manufactures have already told us that they're having trouble keeping up with making stuff. We're probably the easiest on parts of anybody, so if it gets bad for us it's going to be tough out there. We may end up in Sonoma with one motor. But everything we've got is fresh and everything is clean. We've got plenty of parts at home and plenty of parts with us."
Wilkerson's beautiful Levi, Ray & Shoup hot rod may not be winning races this season, but it has been showing great promise and Wilkerson sees good things in it's future.
"I think you're going to see us do well because we're prepared," said Wilkerson, "and our car runs better than it did and hopefully in the heat we can go some rounds and get in the top eight before Indy. I still consider us a good car, we just have to get everything to hit for us. You're going to see us doing better during the next races. We ran our new blowers on a dyno and that worked out well. It gave us some ideas on how to change our fuel curve based on what those blowers showed us. I'm excited about the next eight or nine races. Especially with the way our car has been going. I added it up the other day and we've made twenty-some runs with the car going to at least half-track without doing something wrong. That's pretty promising. We just need to keep that trend up. And I think the more we keep that trend up the harder we're going to be to race against, and the better we're going to be. I'm optimistic about how things are working and with Dick's (Levi) continued support, it's going to work good."
E-Town marks the beginning of a long hot summer for Wilkerson
ENGLISHTOWN, Prerace: The upcoming 38th annual ProCare Rx NHRA SuperNationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park marks the official start of summer on the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series tour. Starting this weekend, Springfield, Ill. Funny Car favorite, Tim Wilkerson, will be participating in 11 races in a row, traveling from one end of the country to the other and back again, wrapping up at the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis over Labor Day weekend.
Wilkerson's action packed schedule consists of the next nine NHRA events, to which Wilkerson has added two match races. It takes organization and planning for Wilkerson to have everything in place for his Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevrolet Impala SS and his team to begin their long summer trek.
"This summer is going to be tough," explained Wilkerson. " We're going to use our old car for the match races, and it's all together and sitting up in the trailer. We're going to use it just to match race with and hopefully that will help us out. It should break up our 11 weeks. We'll have six national events, a match race, two national events, a match race and then Indy. We're getting everything we own, like cylinder heads and blocks fixed. We're ordering enough parts for 11 races in a row. We're not sure how that's going to end up working out, but we'll find out. We'll try to make as many stops at the shop as we can even though it will only be for one or two days at a time. We may have to have one of our retired crew guys come back to the shop and build stuff while we're out.
"We're really going to have to be careful not to tear stuff up because the manufactures have already told us that they're having trouble keeping up with making stuff. We're probably the easiest on parts of anybody, so if it gets bad for us it's going to be tough out there. We may end up in Sonoma with one motor. But everything we've got is fresh and everything is clean. We've got plenty of parts at home and plenty of parts with us."
Wilkerson's beautiful Levi, Ray & Shoup hot rod may not be winning races this season, but it has been showing great promise and Wilkerson sees good things in it's future.
"I think you're going to see us do well because we're prepared," said Wilkerson, "and our car runs better than it did and hopefully in the heat we can go some rounds and get in the top eight before Indy. I still consider us a good car, we just have to get everything to hit for us. You're going to see us doing better during the next races. We ran our new blowers on a dyno and that worked out well. It gave us some ideas on how to change our fuel curve based on what those blowers showed us. I'm excited about the next eight or nine races. Especially with the way our car has been going. I added it up the other day and we've made twenty-some runs with the car going to at least half-track without doing something wrong. That's pretty promising. We just need to keep that trend up. And I think the more we keep that trend up the harder we're going to be to race against, and the better we're going to be. I'm optimistic about how things are working and with Dick's (Levi) continued support, it's going to work good."
