Tim Wilkerson posted a 3rd-best 4.248 on a sunny afternoon in Sonoma, at the Fram Autolite Nationals, then came back in the evening session running as part of the second-to-last pair. Throughout the session, team after team was tossing big numbers on the board as the sun began to set, and by the time Wilk came to the line he had been pushed below the 12th-place cut line for Friday times. He was also in the right lane, and he also couldn’t see a thing.
On this day, the sun set directly behind the Christmas tree for the driver on the right side, and with the large surrounding hills bringing the horizon up quite a bit, it just happened to be setting in a direct line with the top bulbs, making them impossible for the driver to see. Stonehenge couldn’t line up the sun any better on any given day.
NHRA allowed Wilk to lower the body on his LRS Ford and push it forward to the line, to take a look at what he was up against, and the popular Illinois driver radioed back that he was blinded by the light. At that point, NHRA decided to wait a few minutes until the sun went down. For Wilk, it was a few minutes well spent.
Able to see again, he took the light cleanly and tore down the track to a fine 4.114, which temporarily put him in the No. 3 spot. The final pair, however, made up of Ron Capps and John Force, posted a 4.107 and a 4.060 respectively, to take the top two spots. Wilk will spend the night in the No. 5 position.
“I thought it would be okay, and that they were probably making more of it than they needed to, but when they rolled me forward it was unbelievable how the sun was directly behind the staging bulbs,” Wilkerson said. “It was just a bright orange light, and you couldn’t see the staging lights at all. It only took a couple of minutes for the sun to set, and we were good to go.
“Tell you what, though, I’m as excited about the 4.24 on the first run as I am about the 4.11 on the second one. For the whole first part of the year, it was taking us two or three runs just to find the baseline on each track, and we’re getting way better at putting a good lap on the board right out of the box now. When you’re able to do that, it changes everything for the rest of qualifying. You have your baseline, you have a handle on the track, and you can try things with a good idea of what will happen. It took us a while, but we’re getting there.”
| 
|