POMONA, CA - Tim Wilkerson's new-look Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang Funny Car was cruising right down the track during Thursday's qualifying session, but after dropping a cylinder just past the 660 marker, it then spewed forth copious amounts of smoke as it crossed the stripe, putting a 4.221 at 283.25 mph on the board. In this case, where there's smoke there's oil. A fluke gasket leak allowed showers of oil to escape the engine, literally messing up what would've been a nice start to Wilk's season.
Wilk's imperfect and messy run was still good enough for the No. 9 spot overnight.
"It was running okay, just kind of plowing down there, then all of a sudden it dropped a hole or two on the right side and then oil was spraying everywhere," Wilkerson said. "A little piece of the foam gasket between the manifold and the block got dislodged and eventually it let the oil that's inside the engine become a lot of oil outside the engine. It was a mess, and we apologize for that happening.
"We've got three more sessions to go, and the conditions here are fantastic, so I suspect we're going to have a real dogfight on our hands settling the starting field here. You better bring something that looks like an A game if you want to play seriously here. We'll just put our best tune-up in it tomorrow, and see what we can do, hopefully keeping all the oil inside from now on."
From: Bob Wilber
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Wilk's imperfect and messy run was still good enough for the No. 9 spot overnight.
"It was running okay, just kind of plowing down there, then all of a sudden it dropped a hole or two on the right side and then oil was spraying everywhere," Wilkerson said. "A little piece of the foam gasket between the manifold and the block got dislodged and eventually it let the oil that's inside the engine become a lot of oil outside the engine. It was a mess, and we apologize for that happening.
"We've got three more sessions to go, and the conditions here are fantastic, so I suspect we're going to have a real dogfight on our hands settling the starting field here. You better bring something that looks like an A game if you want to play seriously here. We'll just put our best tune-up in it tomorrow, and see what we can do, hopefully keeping all the oil inside from now on."
From: Bob Wilber
More...
