[coverattach=1]POMONA, Calif. (February 2, 2009) -- In the major "stick and ball" sports, it all begins with the first play of the fresh new season. Whether it's the first pitch, the opening kickoff, a tip-off between two seven-footers, the drop of the puck, or a solid "whack" on the first tee, play begins in earnest and all of the off-season practice and prognostication becomes history. This week, on Thursday at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona, the first pair of nitro cars will pull to the line for qualifying session No. 1 at the Kragen O'Reilly Winternationals, and the call will be made to "Start 'em up!" As any drag racing fans knows, no pitch, kick, tip, face-off, or tee shot could be any more dramatic.
For Tim Wilkerson, driver of the Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang Funny Car, the call will come none too soon, and it will be heard in exactly the same spot where a potential championship dangled ever so close to reality, just three short months ago. Running this season with the number 2 affixed firmly to his new LRS Ford Funny Car, denoting his second-place finish in 2008, Wilkerson is eager to start the regular season and begin the long marathon toward the Countdown to the Championship and the awarding of the '09 crown.
"It's been a very long off-season in a few ways, but way too short in almost all the others," Wilkerson said. "It's always a short off-season in this sport, when you finish up in November and are back out there testing in January. But now, Pomona is finally here and we get to go play for real, and that's the sort of thing that gets your adrenalin pumping no matter who you are. You pull into that track in Pomona, and even though we haven't earned a point or raced for real in three months, it's like it all happened yesterday. Starting and ending the season in the same place is like bookends during the year, but it's a quick turn-around from one season to the next, and it's easy to feel like we were just there. Basically, we were.
"Last season was still pretty fresh in our minds right through New Year's, but once we got out there with our new Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang, doing some testing, it was in the past and now if you check the standings you'll see that we all have zero points. Looking back on everything that happened last year it's hard to look ahead and imagine that a whole new season is ahead of us, waiting to happen again, and I don't know if we can win like we did, or be right in the mix for the championship again, but I know we'll be out there giving it our best shot, with the benefit of having been through it before."
That benefit should give Wilkerson a leg up on how he began the '08 season, when his opening drive looked so promising but eventually ended up in the rough, leading to some frustration. Wilkerson drove his LRS car to the No. 1 qualifying spot at the '08 season opener, only to fall in the first round. He then went to the season's second race, and surprisingly duplicated the first-round departure after earning another lofty No. 1 spot. At that point, it was hard for anyone to imagine how his season would unfold, especially considering his 15th-place points finish in '07, when he failed to win a race while suffering seven DNQs. The pole positions looked very promising, but he left both Pomona and Phoenix without a single round win.
"Drag racing's kind of cruel that way," Wilkerson said. "You work for a couple of days to figure out the track and make a great run that puts you in the top spot, then it's all over in about four seconds on Sunday. It was disappointing, but the qualifying runs told us we were still improving after a pretty solid end to what was a lousy '07 season. People forget we finished pretty strong in '07, because we were so buried in the points it was hard to notice. So, not winning a round in Pomona was tough, but we had a pretty good idea that we'd eventually be okay."
If six race wins, four total No. 1 spots, a 42-18 round record, and a shot at the championship on the season's final day is your definition of "okay" then Tim Wilkerson nailed it. Now, he's back in Pomona to start from scratch again, with a new car, a new season, and the same healthy attitude.
"We made the switch over to the Ford Shelby Mustang, which I think most fans know about, and we'll be pitted with Bob Tasca III and his team, so we can share information and hopefully both gain some advantages," he said. "We have a new chassis from (Murf) McKinney, and a lot of fresh parts to start the season with, so we're kind of itching to get going. The off-season might be pretty short, in days and weeks, but when you're waiting to get back out there and get in the fight again, it seems to drag on too long.
"Now, we're allowed to get back to what we do. We're racers, and anything other than that is just the work we do to get ready to race. Nobody has any idea how this season is going to turn out, and I'm sure there will be some twists and turns, but we're ready to try to give everybody fits again. We seem to be pretty good at that."
You can toe the pitching rubber, set the ball on the tee, toss the roundball into the air, or drop the puck, but this week the 2009 Full Throttle season is upon us, and it's time to "Start 'em up!"
For Tim Wilkerson, driver of the Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang Funny Car, the call will come none too soon, and it will be heard in exactly the same spot where a potential championship dangled ever so close to reality, just three short months ago. Running this season with the number 2 affixed firmly to his new LRS Ford Funny Car, denoting his second-place finish in 2008, Wilkerson is eager to start the regular season and begin the long marathon toward the Countdown to the Championship and the awarding of the '09 crown.
"It's been a very long off-season in a few ways, but way too short in almost all the others," Wilkerson said. "It's always a short off-season in this sport, when you finish up in November and are back out there testing in January. But now, Pomona is finally here and we get to go play for real, and that's the sort of thing that gets your adrenalin pumping no matter who you are. You pull into that track in Pomona, and even though we haven't earned a point or raced for real in three months, it's like it all happened yesterday. Starting and ending the season in the same place is like bookends during the year, but it's a quick turn-around from one season to the next, and it's easy to feel like we were just there. Basically, we were.
"Last season was still pretty fresh in our minds right through New Year's, but once we got out there with our new Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang, doing some testing, it was in the past and now if you check the standings you'll see that we all have zero points. Looking back on everything that happened last year it's hard to look ahead and imagine that a whole new season is ahead of us, waiting to happen again, and I don't know if we can win like we did, or be right in the mix for the championship again, but I know we'll be out there giving it our best shot, with the benefit of having been through it before."
That benefit should give Wilkerson a leg up on how he began the '08 season, when his opening drive looked so promising but eventually ended up in the rough, leading to some frustration. Wilkerson drove his LRS car to the No. 1 qualifying spot at the '08 season opener, only to fall in the first round. He then went to the season's second race, and surprisingly duplicated the first-round departure after earning another lofty No. 1 spot. At that point, it was hard for anyone to imagine how his season would unfold, especially considering his 15th-place points finish in '07, when he failed to win a race while suffering seven DNQs. The pole positions looked very promising, but he left both Pomona and Phoenix without a single round win.
"Drag racing's kind of cruel that way," Wilkerson said. "You work for a couple of days to figure out the track and make a great run that puts you in the top spot, then it's all over in about four seconds on Sunday. It was disappointing, but the qualifying runs told us we were still improving after a pretty solid end to what was a lousy '07 season. People forget we finished pretty strong in '07, because we were so buried in the points it was hard to notice. So, not winning a round in Pomona was tough, but we had a pretty good idea that we'd eventually be okay."
If six race wins, four total No. 1 spots, a 42-18 round record, and a shot at the championship on the season's final day is your definition of "okay" then Tim Wilkerson nailed it. Now, he's back in Pomona to start from scratch again, with a new car, a new season, and the same healthy attitude.
"We made the switch over to the Ford Shelby Mustang, which I think most fans know about, and we'll be pitted with Bob Tasca III and his team, so we can share information and hopefully both gain some advantages," he said. "We have a new chassis from (Murf) McKinney, and a lot of fresh parts to start the season with, so we're kind of itching to get going. The off-season might be pretty short, in days and weeks, but when you're waiting to get back out there and get in the fight again, it seems to drag on too long.
"Now, we're allowed to get back to what we do. We're racers, and anything other than that is just the work we do to get ready to race. Nobody has any idea how this season is going to turn out, and I'm sure there will be some twists and turns, but we're ready to try to give everybody fits again. We seem to be pretty good at that."
You can toe the pitching rubber, set the ball on the tee, toss the roundball into the air, or drop the puck, but this week the 2009 Full Throttle season is upon us, and it's time to "Start 'em up!"
