Tim Wilkerson rarely steps up to the plate with the big home-run bat in his hands, even on stout cool nights like this one at Maple Grove, but this time he gave it a shot. With plenty of traction, cloud cover, and temperatures in the mid-60s, the Levi, Ray & Shoup driver was convinced some mighty numbers would be posted, and on this day he wanted to be a part of the big-time action.
His 4.085 was a good run, and it landed him in the No. 6 spot in a very competitive field, but he still felt he left a little on the table, and that’s a rare thing for the popular Illinois driver to admit.
“We just aren’t typically one of these teams that struts up on there on a cool night like this and tries to shoot fireworks out of the scoreboards,” he said.
“Believe me, there’s a lot of times I wish we were, like tonight for one, but the way we tune our car makes it easier for us to outrun people on a hot track and it isn’t that easy for us to load it up and lean all over it. It’s like it’s a bit too big of a jump for us, to try to go all the way to that end of the spectrum. Tonight, we got a little brave. At least for us.
“We were trying to run something like a 4.05, which really is something we’re capable of doing and we’ve done before, but I guess we didn’t quite lean all over it enough. The 4.08 was good, and we’re headed in the right direction though, so I’m okay with that. Put it this way, we’re in the sixth spot and we’re surrounded by some pretty good company, so we didn’t mess up. For once I guess I just felt a little greedy, but we didn’t get all of it. We’re good though, and we’ll take it.”
Wilkerson posted a solid 4.126 on his first Friday lap, giving him some much needed consistency heading into the rest of the weekend.
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