Tim Wilkerson made the most of one lap on Saturday, grabbing three precious bonus points for low e.t. of the round, but that pass was made during a very challenging Q3, run on a track registering over 125 degrees.
As gorgeous (and welcome) as that run was, it didn’t improve over Friday’s 4.182 so Wilk went into the final session looking to step it up on a much cooler track. Instead, he lost traction before half-track and slid down to the No. 9 spot on the grid. He will face Ford team partner Bob Tasca in round one.
“Let me tell ya, that Q3 run was about as good as you could do right there, and we were very pleased with it,” Wilkerson said.
“We not only were low for the session, but low by 2-hundredths so that’s a good lap. We planned to get out there for the night session and step it up, but it was just a little too fast and a little too snappy. We weren’t being greedy; we really thought the track would hold something like a 4.09 and maybe it just wasn’t as good as we’d hoped it would be.
“Now we have to run Bob and his guys in the first round, and you never like to see that. But, both of us will go up there with blinders on anyway, so you don’t even concentrate on who you’re running. Winning a few rounds here would do us a world of good in the points, so we have to take them one at a time and hope we can get the first one.”
With Johnny Gray suffering a DNQ here, and the addition of Wilk’s three bonus points, he enters round one just two points behind Gray for the 10th spot in the standings.
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