If word begins to circulate that the stars are aligning over the Great Northwest, there’s a solid chance the meaning behind that statement has nothing to do with either astronomy or astrology. It might simply be a reference to the resurgent performance of Tim Wilkerson, in his Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang Funny Car.
The newest star in a triumvirate of astral signals would be Wilk’s runner-up performance this past weekend in Sonoma, where he and Ron Capps contested one of the closest, and best, Funny Car match-ups of the day in the final round. Capps took the stripe by a nose, to the win by 14-thousandths of a second, but Wilk had already used his successful day to pick up valuable points in defense of his newly-earned No. 10 spot in the Full Throttle standings. 10 days earlier, at the start of the Denver race, Wilk was on the outside of the Countdown field looking in. After Denver, he was in the 10th spot but with a precarious 19-point lead. After Sonoma, he was 52 points up, and only 25 points out of the No. 9 position.
The other two twinkling lights in the constellation Wilkerson represent recent history, since Wilk and his LRS team are not just the defending Seattle Funny Car champs, but come into this weekend’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Northwest Nationals as the winners of the Seattle event for the last two years. In 2009, it was Wilk over Tony Pedregon in the final. Last year, in a coincidentally reversed match-up of this past weekend in Sonoma, it was Wilk over Capps in an almost equally close race. Wilk’s margin of victory over Capps in 2010 was 25-thousandths of a second.
“For whatever reason, we’ve done well in Seattle the last few years, and I’m okay with that,” Wilkerson said. “And it hasn’t just been about running strong in Seattle, because both of those two wins were part of back-to-back deals that really solidified our seasons. In ‘09 we won Seattle and then went down the coast to Sonoma and won there. Last year, we won in Norwalk and then Seattle was the first race on the Western Swing, instead of the last, and we won again.
“This year, we made a lot of progress in Denver and Sonoma, there’s no doubt about that, but we haven’t accomplished anything until the math tells us we’re in the Countdown. Right now, with three regular-season races left, we’re not only not out of the woods, we’re still in a very tight spot and we have to keep pressing. We need to keep winning rounds, and Seattle is a place where we know how to do that.”
Although the famed Western Swing has gone through a variety of schedule permutations in recent years, this season’s Denver-Sonoma-Seattle set-up is a fairly common one, and it still presents tuners with a difficult trifecta of fantastically different conditions. Starting a mile high and in the heat in Denver, the tour then went west to Sonoma, where the air is thicker but the weather’s one consistent factor is that it’s always changing. Finally, the tour heads up the coast to Seattle, where the lush forests create an abundance of oxygen at a place where the track surface itself can sometimes be the biggest detriment to going fast.
“We all bring a lot of spare parts on the Swing, but sometimes you wish you could bring a spare brain, too,” said Wilkerson, who not only drives his Funny Car but tunes it as well. “It’s like the toughest entrance exam you could take, trying to tune these things in three places that almost couldn’t be any more different, all on consecutive weekends. If you pass this test, you’re onto something. Hopefully, we can do the work and have some of the right answers again this weekend. Can’t wait to get there.”
Getting there an enjoyable experience for many NHRA stars, who take to the backroads to explore the upper west coast as a means of traveling from the San Francisco Bay area to the Puget Sound region. Wilkerson and his wife Krista have been doing just that, winding their way up the coast from Northern California, through Oregon, and into Washington.
“We’re having a blast, and we always love this drive,” Wilk said. “It’s got to be one of the most beautiful parts of the country, and it’s a great way to decompress a little between these two tough races. The coastline is beautiful, the air is clear, the Redwoods are gigantic, and there are all sorts of little coastal towns to stop in and explore. On Monday, we stopped at a little airport and I went on a ride in an open-cockpit bi-plane. That was a treat, for sure. It’s been a great trip, and now we’re ready to get back on the track and do some good.”
The way these stars are aligned, the odds of doing some good might very well be stacked in Wilk’s favor, but the proof can only be found in one place. On the race track.
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