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LAS VEGAS, Saturday: Funny Car pro, Tim Wilkerson went to Las Vegas in search of a little luck, but the fickle diva known as Lady Luck eluded him. And so Wilk and his Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevrolet Monte Carlo won't be part of race day action at the NHRA SummitRacing.com Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
In the first qualifying session today, Wilkerson had trouble with the track, as many of his competitors did, and smoked the tires. And as has happened too many times in the past, Wilkerson was in the show as the last qualifying session began, but by the time he rolled up to the line for his chance, he was on the outside looking in. Unfortunately, supercharger problems made his nice looking pass slower than it appeared. Wilkerson ran 4.889 at 323.43 mph, which wasn't enough to meet the 4.837 bump.
"It's tough not qualifying again," said a disappointed Wilkerson, "but I think we found the problem. The blower went away on it and it blew some strips out of it. It's part of it, unfortunately. It didn't have any boost when it got down through there. What are you going to do? We had blower issues last year, so this year we've run the same blower, except for today. We put our other blower on it and it seemed fine the first run, but it wasn't worth a 'you know what', the second run. The problem is we've got several like the one we ran today, and then we have the good one we were running. I guess we better learn to run the not so good ones, because if anything ever happens to our good one, we're just done.
"We don't like not getting into the program, but we're not going away. We'll stick around and fight with all our might. But for now, we'll go home, lick our wounds, and get ready for the next race."
Wilkerson never meets up with Lady Luck
LAS VEGAS, Saturday: Funny Car pro, Tim Wilkerson went to Las Vegas in search of a little luck, but the fickle diva known as Lady Luck eluded him. And so Wilk and his Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevrolet Monte Carlo won't be part of race day action at the NHRA SummitRacing.com Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
In the first qualifying session today, Wilkerson had trouble with the track, as many of his competitors did, and smoked the tires. And as has happened too many times in the past, Wilkerson was in the show as the last qualifying session began, but by the time he rolled up to the line for his chance, he was on the outside looking in. Unfortunately, supercharger problems made his nice looking pass slower than it appeared. Wilkerson ran 4.889 at 323.43 mph, which wasn't enough to meet the 4.837 bump.
"It's tough not qualifying again," said a disappointed Wilkerson, "but I think we found the problem. The blower went away on it and it blew some strips out of it. It's part of it, unfortunately. It didn't have any boost when it got down through there. What are you going to do? We had blower issues last year, so this year we've run the same blower, except for today. We put our other blower on it and it seemed fine the first run, but it wasn't worth a 'you know what', the second run. The problem is we've got several like the one we ran today, and then we have the good one we were running. I guess we better learn to run the not so good ones, because if anything ever happens to our good one, we're just done.
"We don't like not getting into the program, but we're not going away. We'll stick around and fight with all our might. But for now, we'll go home, lick our wounds, and get ready for the next race."
