Tim Wilkerson made the most of one good lap on Friday, but then made even more out of one very good lap on Saturday, posting a 4.109 in Q3 to nudge John Force out of the top spot. It was Wilk’s 16th career No. 1 position, and it comes at a time when his Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang is running well in a battle for a spot in the Countdown.
Wilk earned five bonus points over the course of two days, as well as the maximum eight qualifying points, to move 61 points ahead of Johnny Gray in the standings. Those bonus and qualifying points combined to put Wilk another full round ahead of Gray, who entered the race 52 points back (three rounds of racing) and is now four rounds behind.
“I’ll tell you the truth, that Q3 run was on edge the whole way and I was driving it the whole way, but somehow it made it and we’ll take it,” Wilkerson said. “It’s still a challenge out there, and in the later session we got just a little bit of sun on the track and teams were having trouble again. It would’ve been nice to put a full lap on the board on that last one, but we just had a little too much for the conditions.
“Right now, our focus is on the Countdown. Those little bonus points gave us a big boost this weekend, but rounds are 20 each so winning rounds is the way to go. We even closed the gap a little between us and 9th, so we’re hoping to be able to get some more rounds in the bank tomorrow and we’ll see where we are when we leave here. There are two more races after this one, to settle the whole Countdown field, and it looks to me like it’s going to be a dogfight to the end. If you can’t get excited and focused for this stuff, check your pulse.”
Wilk came into this race two rounds behind Bob Tasca, trailing by 25 points, but shaved that margin to 14 points through qualifying, making him now one round out of 9th place.
The four drivers fighting for the final two playoff spots line up as follows, on Sunday:
Tasca (9th) vs. Mike Neff
Wilkerson (10th) vs. Brian Thiel
Gray (11th) vs. Ron Capps
Tony Pedregon (12th) vs. Jeff Arend
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