(Photo by Brandon W. Mudd)
Tim Wilkerson and his Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang Funny Car team are, like other NHRA racers and fans, primed and ready for the 2012 season to kick off this weekend, at the 52nd Annual O'Reilly Winternationals in Pomona. This time around, though, Wilk would like to jump-start his season with big opening effort; something he has not been able to do over the course of many years. Stunningly, Wilkerson has not won a round at the Winternationals since 2004.
Starting the season with a new three-rail chassis, Wilkerson and his LRS squad took part in the annual January preseason testing session in south Florida, aiming to work out the kinks and expose any gremlins before things get started for real this Thursday. Although the team kept to a plan of running only 600 to 800 feet on all their test runs, Wilk is confident they accomplished their mission.
"For whatever reason, we've had a heck of a time getting out of the gate okay at Pomona, and we want to change that this year," the popular driver said. "We took our testing very seriously, we had some good days at the track to help the team gel and fit in together, and the car ran really nice the whole time, so we feel like we're miles ahead of last year. Hopefully, it pays off and we get some win lights this time around.
"If I could explain why we seem to have trouble at the Winternationals, I wouldn't waste time talking about, I'd just fix it. We've qualified at the top, at the bottom, in the middle, and we've DNQd too, but the bottom line is that when Sunday comes around we've been pretty much whitewashed for a lot of years. It doesn't seem possible that it's been since 2004 that we won a round at the Winternationals, but I guess that's right. In 2008, the year we lost the championship on the final day, we qualified number one and then still managed to lose in the first round. Since then, another DNQ in '09 and then we just plain got whooped in 2010 and 2011. Maybe we'll smarten up a little and turn things around this year."
Although Wilk is well known for his ability to squeeze more horsepower and performance out of every dollar bill than many of his big-budget opponents, the significant expense of the trip to Florida was not only justifiable, he deemed the trip absolutely necessary. With a new car and three new crew members, the test runs were needed for many reasons.
"We saved some money and didn't go to that testing session last year, and we started out the year looking like we were searching around and trying to figure it out," Wilkerson said. "This year, we'll be watching our budget as closely as we ever do, but to me it was pretty important for us to go down there and get ourselves ready to go. With three new crew guys, we're still going to need some time to really come together, but at least we're not going into the season completely cold.
"Now, here we are and our short little off-season is over. I don't think most people realize just how short it is, when you factor in getting back to the shop from the Finals, then servicing everything and getting it all ready to go. You give the guys some time off over the holidays, and there just aren't that many days before you're packing it up and heading back out to start all over again. We're ready, though, and all of us are excited to get out there and get a new season underway. The way I see it, we just need to stop giving the rest of the class a head start, so maybe this year we'll come out strong and never look back. It would be neat to get back to Pomona in November, for the Finals, and be fighting for a championship. Then maybe we could look back to this race in February and see that a successful season started there."
Effort made, kinks worked out, testing laps in the book. Now it counts, and Tim Wilkerson is intently focused on getting out of the gate strong. Let the games begin.
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