Tim Wilkerson made two long passes in the Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang, but a dropped cylinder on the first run held the E.T. to a pedestrian 4.397, which was surprisingly good enough for the No. 7 spot after one session. In the nightcap, the LRS Shelby put two cylinders out, at two seconds into the run, and while “running on six” the E.T. improved only slightly, to a 4.332 at 272.23 mph. With track conditions improving for Q2, the solid passes began to add up throughout the Funny Car class and Wilkerson’s run was not good enough to stick in the top 12, meaning he and four other competitors are part of the “other” group with no officially recorded time, heading into Saturday.
“There’s obviously something wrong with it, putting holes out like that, and by the fact it dropped one on the first pass and two on the second, I’d almost go so far as to say it’s getting worse, because it sure wasn’t getting better,” Wilkerson said. “So, you start going through the list of the prime suspects for dropped cylinders and you fix those things. We’ll have new ignition on it tomorrow, and we’ll sort through this until we get it right.”
“Piece by piece, we’re getting a handle on what is basically a brand new car. With just the one run we made in Pomona, we basically didn’t learn much out there, so we need to keep making progress and getting better, and we will. We’ll get this sorted out and we’ll get it running good again. You want that to happen all at once, but you have to go through the steps. It’s a process.”
| 
|