{"id":6896,"date":"2014-07-18T09:30:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-18T16:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=6896"},"modified":"2014-07-18T13:12:54","modified_gmt":"2014-07-18T20:12:54","slug":"tim-wilkersons-nhra-western-swing-bringing-points-to-his-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/tim-wilkersons-nhra-western-swing-bringing-points-to-his-camp\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim Wilkerson\u2019s NHRA Western Swing Bringing Points to his Camp"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: Courtesy of the NHRA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the the annual NHRA Western Swing looms, veteran Funny Car racer Tim Wilkerson is finding his Levi, Ray & Shoup Ford Mustang team in a familiar but uncomfortable place in the points:\u00a0\u00a0No. 11 – 21-points out of the coveted Top 10.<\/p>\n

Wilkerson has made the NHRA Mello Yello Countdown to the Championship every year since its inception in 2007, but it seems that the Western Swing – Denver, Seattle, and Sonoma – is essential to putting him into that position. \u00a0Out of Wilkerson\u2019s 17 National Event wins, five have come out of this set of races.<\/p>\n

So, going into the 2014 events, can Wilkerson, once again, \u00a0get momentum back on his side and if so, how?<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, I need to stop getting my butt beat first round,\u201d jested Wilkerson.\u00a0 \u201cI haven\u2019t been doing a very good job the last couple of races in the first round.\u00a0 Unfortunately, some of it was due to qualifying, but we need to qualify a little better so we don\u2019t get such a tough car first round and in all, do a better job. \u201c<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the heart of the season and with only five races left before the Championship starts, \u00a0Wilkerson explains that it simply has to be done and it needs to begin, starting with these next three races, to cement their place in the Funny Car Top 10.\u00a0 This way, they can start preparing for the championship hunt.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I would like to tell you I thought that\u2019s what it was,\u201d laughed Wilkerson, who truly understands that trailing Jack Beckman by 21 points is his first obstacle to just entering that Top 10.\u00a0 \u201cWe make a big deal out of it in importance, because it really is.\u00a0 I think you get to that time where you think now \u2018Well, what the hell are we going to do?\u2019 \u00a0We gotta make this work.\u00a0 It comes down to everyone paying attention and doing a good job.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, it seems that we do okay on these string of races.\u00a0 I really need to do something special at Denver again.\u00a0 I used to run really well at Denver.\u00a0 The last couple of years, we haven\u2019t been able to get out of the second round.\u00a0 I really don\u2019t know why.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spread from fifth to 11th<\/sup> is 145 points and a total of 20 rounds of racing remaining with each round being worth 20 points.\u00a0 Wilkerson likes his odds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of rounds now,\u201d said Wilkerson. \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s pretty simple.\u00a0 We need to go at least two rounds each weekend until we get to Indy and hope the guys close to us are getting beat first round so that will give us enough cushion so we\u2019re not in trouble.\u00a0 We did that a couple of years ago where we went into Indy and we had to basically have all the right people lose and for us to almost win the race.\u00a0 We did it, but we don\u2019t like that kind of situation.\u00a0 That\u2019s a little too nerve racking.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Sonoma last year, Wilkerson ran a great time of 4.026 seconds to qualify No. 5.\u00a0 In his first round against Johnny Gray, Wilkerson smoked the tires giving valuable points away, but learned from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst round, I got a little greedy and smoked the tires, so after that when I got to Seattle, I pulled the power back a little bit and it ran okay again,\u201d said Wilkerson.\u00a0 \u201cFrom there we got to the semi-finals and beat ourselves.\u00a0 I\u2019m hoping I learned something from that mistake last year where you can\u2019t run as hard during the day as you can at night based on the sun being on the track.<\/p>\n

\u201cI red lit in the semis at Seattle and had Tasca covered,\u201d said Wilkerson.\u00a0 \u201cI would like to do well there again.\u00a0 We have a special car up there.\u00a0 We\u2019re actually going to be the Rottler Funny Car.\u00a0 Rottler Manufacturing builds machine shop equipment.\u00a0 Dick Levi allows me one race where I can sell that race and we\u2019re excited about that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just a correlation that there are a lot of good cars running right now.\u00a0 Not that really means anything to me because you should be able to beat any of them first round, if you\u2019re going to beat them second or third round, you ought to be able to beat them first round.\u00a0 We had a good chance to beat Capps first round in Epping and at Chicago.\u00a0 I screwed both of those up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilkerson\u2019s charge has to start this weekend at Bandimere Speedway.\u00a0 Even if things stay the status quo, he will be pretty satisfied with that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019m still in the same spot I\u2019m in; we\u2019re not in too bad of shape,\u201d grinned Wilkerson.\u00a0 \u201cTraditionally, at Brainerd and Indy, I do pretty well.\u00a0 If I can go two to three rounds in a couple of them, I think we can make up enough points unless the guys in eighth, ninth, and tenth win when I win.\u00a0 I think you\u2019re going to see some pretty close racing in these upcoming races.\u00a0 Even if they do, that\u2019s just going to tuck us in tighter to the fourth, fifth, and six places.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s going to be pretty exciting when we get to Brainerd.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to try and go for the bonus points.\u00a0 We\u2019ve already committed to skipping some runs in Sonoma just trying to save some money, logistically from some of the blowups we had earlier in the year.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if we\u2019ll be able to afford to skip them now.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to need every point we can get.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: Team Wilkerson Racing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the the annual NHRA Western Swing looms, veteran Funny Car racer Tim Wilkerson finds himself in a familiar but uncomfortable place in the points: No. 11 – 21-points out of the coveted Top 10.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3399],"tags":[554,1092,1093],"class_list":["post-6896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-nhra","tag-2014-nhra-mello-yello-drag-racing-series","tag-nhra-western-swing","tag-tim-wilkerson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/14TimWilkersonActionShotFeature.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-1Ne","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6896"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6920,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6896\/revisions\/6920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}