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ATLANTA, Saturday: Springfield, Ill. Funny Car favorite, Tim Wilkerson held on to the No. 1 qualifying position for the Summit Racing Equipment Southern Nationals with the stunning 4.774 he ran last night at Atlanta Dragway. This is the third time this year that Wilkerson has earned the top spot in his beautiful Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevrolet Impala and the 13th in his outstanding career.
“It’s a great feeling to be No. 1 again,” expressed Wilkerson. “To know you have the ‘baddest’ hot rod out there is pretty awesome. I was feeling pretty good coming into this race. I knew our car had more in it than we saw last week in Las Vegas and we certainly found it last night.”
After capturing the top spot last night, Wilkerson used today’s two qualifying attempts to do a little testing, and wasn’t able to improve on the hot Atlanta race track. He ran a 5.047 at 265.90, as the car dropped cylinders and followed it with a tire smoking 6.409 at 140.90 mph.
“We tested today a little bit and tried some things,” explained Wilkerson, “and it showed some promise. We ran a different clutch on both runs and a different blower on the last run. It was on a nice run on that last one, and then it got out there and blew the tire off. It was only three-hundredths slower than my .77 to the 330, so I believe that we could have gone .82 or .83 but we got a little greedy.”
Wilkerson will face-off against 16th qualifier, Gary Scelzi in the first-round tomorrow morning.
“We have to be smart and careful tomorrow,” said Wilkerson. “We can’t get overconfident and think we’ve got this in the bag. We can’t rule Gary out because they can pull a rabbit out of the hat and we could do something stupid. So, like I said coming into this race, we’re need to take it one step at a time. We need to get past the first-round and then keep marching on.”
Wilkerson stays in the No. 1 qualifying position
ATLANTA, Saturday: Springfield, Ill. Funny Car favorite, Tim Wilkerson held on to the No. 1 qualifying position for the Summit Racing Equipment Southern Nationals with the stunning 4.774 he ran last night at Atlanta Dragway. This is the third time this year that Wilkerson has earned the top spot in his beautiful Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevrolet Impala and the 13th in his outstanding career.
“It’s a great feeling to be No. 1 again,” expressed Wilkerson. “To know you have the ‘baddest’ hot rod out there is pretty awesome. I was feeling pretty good coming into this race. I knew our car had more in it than we saw last week in Las Vegas and we certainly found it last night.”
After capturing the top spot last night, Wilkerson used today’s two qualifying attempts to do a little testing, and wasn’t able to improve on the hot Atlanta race track. He ran a 5.047 at 265.90, as the car dropped cylinders and followed it with a tire smoking 6.409 at 140.90 mph.
“We tested today a little bit and tried some things,” explained Wilkerson, “and it showed some promise. We ran a different clutch on both runs and a different blower on the last run. It was on a nice run on that last one, and then it got out there and blew the tire off. It was only three-hundredths slower than my .77 to the 330, so I believe that we could have gone .82 or .83 but we got a little greedy.”
Wilkerson will face-off against 16th qualifier, Gary Scelzi in the first-round tomorrow morning.
“We have to be smart and careful tomorrow,” said Wilkerson. “We can’t get overconfident and think we’ve got this in the bag. We can’t rule Gary out because they can pull a rabbit out of the hat and we could do something stupid. So, like I said coming into this race, we’re need to take it one step at a time. We need to get past the first-round and then keep marching on.”
