Sometimes the amber never seems ready to flash. Sometimes the foot says go. Sometimes the red light comes on, like the evil eye of a demon aiming to ruin your day. And sometimes, but not very often, all of those negative issues may have saved the day. Tim Wilkerson waited as long as he could before hitting the throttle, as the starting line tree simply seemed to be stuck in a warp of time and space, and when his foot finally decided to hit the pedal his brain immediately knew he'd left too early, causing him to naturally "double step" the throttle. It seemed like the worst possible luck, at the time.
When Wilk and the Levi, Ray & Shoup team began to service their Shelby Mustang after the disappointing first-round loss to Matt Hagan, they discovered a rack of blackened bearings, all of which exposed the fact that Wilk's mount would most certainly not have lived to the finish line , had he not fouled and aborted the run. The unluckiest moment, in this instance, may have instead been the luckiest.
"I'm pretty upset about the red light, because that shouldn't happen, but the light was so long I guess I ran out of wait," Wilkerson said. "We all try to hit the throttle as soon as we see the amber bulbs flash, because that's the amount of time it takes your brain to tell your foot to go and then make the car move, which lines up the movement of your front tires with the green, and you're safe. Looking at the video, I hit the throttle at exactly the moment the ambers flashed, and my brain obviously knew it was too soon so I automatically double-stepped it. You don't have time to think that out, you just do it, and as soon as you do it you know you messed up.
"We got back here and started taking it apart, and one of my guys came up into the lounge with the main bearings, which were completely blackened. I seriously doubt the motor would've lived to anywhere near the finish line without blowing up, if we blackened the mains in 100 feet. We're still not sure what caused it, so we're tearing it all apart to try to figure it out. Either way, maybe we got luckier than we think. Blowing it up, slinging the crankshaft out of it, and catching it on fire wouldn't have been any good."
Wilk's season opener featured a 50/50 split in terms of his qualifying results, but the trend was clearly positive. After having an oil leak problem in Q1, he then smoked the tires at the hit during Q2. On Saturday, things immediately turned for the better as Wilk powered to a nice 4.099 in Q3, assuring him of a solid spot in the field, and he then followed that up with an even better 4.095. Those four little thousandths of a second were just enough to swap ladder spots with Hagan, whose best run was a 4.097. The match-up stayed the same, as the No. 8 and 9 qualifiers, but Wilk took over lane choice and earned the extra qualifying point.
Saturday's accomplishments were handled by Wilk's partially new crew, made up of two fresh rookies to the fuel ranks and one crew member working a new, and critical, position as clutch specialist. The group was eased into the battle by Pomona's unique format, which features a single qualifying lap on both Thursday and Friday afternoons. On Saturday, it's a standard deal with two laps about two hours apart, but the new guys handled it well, and the whole group was focused on Sunday.
"I don't care how much you practice or train for this, you just can't imitate or fabricate what it's like to work on one of these cars when the pressure is on, people are staring at you, and the clock is ticking," Wilk said. "It's easy to panic a little, and when you do that it takes even longer because you're not being a natural mechanic. My guys can all do these jobs, but the first few qualifying laps and eliminations rounds are the times when they'll earn their stripes and become a team. They earned a little bit of a stripe there on Saturday, servicing the car and bolting it together perfectly, so we could go out there and put back-to-back 4.09s on the board. They're getting there, and they'll continue to get better.
"We were kind of simultaneously looking forward to winning that round and worried about it, because even qualifying isn't quite like race day. Nothing is quite like race day. They were going to have to step up to another level if we got the win light, but we got the red light instead. We're going to be okay, and now we'll work on all of our stuff and head over to Phoenix for next weekend. That's a good thing, to get right back at it. The lessons they learned here will still be fresh when we fire it up in Phoenix in just a few days."
Next Friday, when qualifying begins at Firebird International Raceway, the goal is to run fast, run quick, and turn on win lights. The demon red bulb will be vanquished.
From: Bob Wilber
More...
When Wilk and the Levi, Ray & Shoup team began to service their Shelby Mustang after the disappointing first-round loss to Matt Hagan, they discovered a rack of blackened bearings, all of which exposed the fact that Wilk's mount would most certainly not have lived to the finish line , had he not fouled and aborted the run. The unluckiest moment, in this instance, may have instead been the luckiest.
"I'm pretty upset about the red light, because that shouldn't happen, but the light was so long I guess I ran out of wait," Wilkerson said. "We all try to hit the throttle as soon as we see the amber bulbs flash, because that's the amount of time it takes your brain to tell your foot to go and then make the car move, which lines up the movement of your front tires with the green, and you're safe. Looking at the video, I hit the throttle at exactly the moment the ambers flashed, and my brain obviously knew it was too soon so I automatically double-stepped it. You don't have time to think that out, you just do it, and as soon as you do it you know you messed up.
"We got back here and started taking it apart, and one of my guys came up into the lounge with the main bearings, which were completely blackened. I seriously doubt the motor would've lived to anywhere near the finish line without blowing up, if we blackened the mains in 100 feet. We're still not sure what caused it, so we're tearing it all apart to try to figure it out. Either way, maybe we got luckier than we think. Blowing it up, slinging the crankshaft out of it, and catching it on fire wouldn't have been any good."
Wilk's season opener featured a 50/50 split in terms of his qualifying results, but the trend was clearly positive. After having an oil leak problem in Q1, he then smoked the tires at the hit during Q2. On Saturday, things immediately turned for the better as Wilk powered to a nice 4.099 in Q3, assuring him of a solid spot in the field, and he then followed that up with an even better 4.095. Those four little thousandths of a second were just enough to swap ladder spots with Hagan, whose best run was a 4.097. The match-up stayed the same, as the No. 8 and 9 qualifiers, but Wilk took over lane choice and earned the extra qualifying point.
Saturday's accomplishments were handled by Wilk's partially new crew, made up of two fresh rookies to the fuel ranks and one crew member working a new, and critical, position as clutch specialist. The group was eased into the battle by Pomona's unique format, which features a single qualifying lap on both Thursday and Friday afternoons. On Saturday, it's a standard deal with two laps about two hours apart, but the new guys handled it well, and the whole group was focused on Sunday.
"I don't care how much you practice or train for this, you just can't imitate or fabricate what it's like to work on one of these cars when the pressure is on, people are staring at you, and the clock is ticking," Wilk said. "It's easy to panic a little, and when you do that it takes even longer because you're not being a natural mechanic. My guys can all do these jobs, but the first few qualifying laps and eliminations rounds are the times when they'll earn their stripes and become a team. They earned a little bit of a stripe there on Saturday, servicing the car and bolting it together perfectly, so we could go out there and put back-to-back 4.09s on the board. They're getting there, and they'll continue to get better.
"We were kind of simultaneously looking forward to winning that round and worried about it, because even qualifying isn't quite like race day. Nothing is quite like race day. They were going to have to step up to another level if we got the win light, but we got the red light instead. We're going to be okay, and now we'll work on all of our stuff and head over to Phoenix for next weekend. That's a good thing, to get right back at it. The lessons they learned here will still be fresh when we fire it up in Phoenix in just a few days."
Next Friday, when qualifying begins at Firebird International Raceway, the goal is to run fast, run quick, and turn on win lights. The demon red bulb will be vanquished.
From: Bob Wilber
More...
