Tim Wilkerson wasn’t overly pleased with his Saturday results, during qualifying at the SummitRacing.com Nationals in Las Vegas, but his final position was still a cause for a smile.
Though he slid four spots on the ladder throughout the day, after dropping a cylinder on his first lap and then smoking the tires on his final pass, he landed in the No. 7 position for race day. It is his first top-half qualifying spot in the three races contested to this point, on the 2011 Full Throttle tour.
Wilk will face Ron Capps in round one.
“It was running pretty good on the first one, but then it put a hole out about two and a half seconds into the run and that was that,” Wilkerson said. “We came back out for the last one trying to be pretty aggressive, and maybe take a shot at a really high slot, but we were just way too fast out there in the first 300 feet. It didn’t really have much of a chance to make it, and it didn’t. You learn as much from laps like that as you do the good ones, so that’s okay in the long run.
“Now, the goal is to figure out how to run this thing on Sunday. The weather forecasts all say it’s going to be about 15 or 20 degrees cooler, and that will change everything, believe me. The teams that adapt the best will have the best shot at advancing, obviously, so we have to be smart about it and be ready for anything.”
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