Fuller Comes Up Short In Quest For Three Straight At Firebird

SEATTLE — Ultimately, the Checker Schuck’s Kragen Nationals at Firebird Int’l Raceway near Chandler, Ariz., was no kinder to Tim Wilkerson than the National Hot Rod Ass’n’s season-opening Winternationals at Pomona, Calif.
Wilkerson lost in the first round both times, but both times he was the Funny Car class’s top qualifier. That marked the first time in the Springfield, Ill., veteran’s career that he scored back-to-back No. 1 positions.
He and his Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevy Impala had been a hand-in-glove operation. But that’s exactly what caused his trouble Sunday.
On his launch against Bob Bode, Wilkerson’s glove caught on the brake handle, which left him tugging on the brake as he was standing on the throttle. That caused his engine to drop a cylinder. For most of the 4.940-second quarter-mile trip — at 283.61 mph — Wilkerson drove one-handed.
“I got it loose before the finish line,” he said, “but I was thinking that I didn’t know what I was going to do, because I wouldn’t be able to throw the ‘chutes out. And it just mucked up the whole run.
“The brake pressure was up and down because I was jerking on the thing. It dang near just pulled by hand right out of my glove — which would have been OK, but I couldn’t be sure. With all these new bars we’ve got in the car (safety mandates), the brake lever is kind of bent over. And it got stuck on the corner of my glove. When we get back to the shop, we’ll look it over carefully and see if we need to change anything so it doesn’t happen again.”
Meanwhile, fellow Illinoisan Bode had a quicker-from-the-start run at 4.892/296.05 in his Chevy Monte Carlo. “Bob made a nice run,” Wilkerson said, “and got ahead of me on the starting line, big time.”

• Jack Beckman defeated Robert Hight in Sunday’s final despite a fresh start for his team this season.
“In the off season, Jerry Toliver came on board as another (Don) Schumacher car and basically the Valvoline/MTS car started from scratch. We had an empty trailer, bare chassis and a crew that had never worked together as a group of nine. And they assembled everything, ordered new tools for it, re-stocked the trailer, put new motors together, so they hadn’t torn a car apart as a team until we came here for the test session (in late January), and I think it was nice to get 12 runs here in the test session. My God, are they gelling now,” he said. “Two races into it we’ve already gotten to the winner’s circle.”

• John Force Racing/Team Castrol driver Robert Hight and the Auto Club Ford Mustang reached their third consecutive final round, dating back to last year’s victory at the Auto Club Finals at Pomona. He retained his point lead, despite losing to Jack Beckman.
Like everyone else, rain prevented him from making two Friday qualifying sessions. He said he desperately needed those to get a handle on his new, safety-overhauled Mustang. “I have a good feeling about the way this year has started, especially with as few runs as we have made. We didn’t get full qualifying here. The amount of runs we have had versus what we should have had is we are probably down 20 runs.”
However, in the first round of Sunday’s eliminations, he beat Gary Densham with a 4.766 elapsed time that was the quickest run in Funny Car so far this season.
“During the qualifying sessions, we were hurting our Ford engine pretty bad. But that 4.76 first round showed that we are making this Mustang run a little happier,” Hight said. “It is really pulling (accelerating) in the middle of the track. That is all good.”

• Pro Stock’s Jason Line said he felt something break in his engine when he started his Summit Racing Pontiac GTO for the final time. But the 2006 series champion’s four-round performance meant that his team, which includes boss Greg Anderson, the Winternationals winner, has reached both final rounds this year.  
“I tried to do the burnout,” Line said, “but it didn’t even have enough power to get to the starting line, and it wouldn’t stay idling. I had to hold my foot on the gas the whole time. It was just one of those deals. But (V Gaines) drove great all day long, and he deserved to win. Other than your teammate, he is the one I’d choose to lose to. He’s a great guy, not that I didn’t want to beat him, because I did. It’s not the way we wanted to send this GTO out, but all in all we had a pretty good day. I’ve certainly had worse days.”
 
• Top Fuel driver “Hot Rod” Fuller ran his streak of round-wins at Firebird Int’l Raceway to 18 before losing in the semifinals to eventual runner-up Dave Grubnic.
The driver of the David Powers-owned Caterpillar Dragster had beaten Melanie Troxel in the final round of Top Fuel competition the past two years and had won the Checker Schuck’s Kragen Nationals Super Gas title in 2004 as one of 13 career NHRA sportsmen victories in the Super Gas and Super Comp.

• Jerry Toliver is no newcomer to the Funny Car class, but he offered some insight about how the 7,000-horsepower hot rod keeps a driver off-guard.
“It’s funny when you drive one of these cars,” he said. “You never know what the hell you’ve done. Sometimes you feel like you’ve made a great pass and it’s a 4.99 (-second e.t.). And other times you think it was a slow pass and you run a 4.70. It’s hard to judge, because you’re so busy in there and you’re focused on getting the thing down the middle of the race track. I can never predict or guess my elapsed times when I get out of the car. I have to go ask somebody because it’s pretty hard to know that. When you have a great pass that’s right down the center it’s good, but usually I’ve got to get out and ask someone.”