Tim Wilkerson, John Force, and Jack Beckman have many things in common, but the one item they displayed as a group on Friday was not one anyone in attendance was hoping to see. Wilk, Force, and Fast Jack were the only three Funny Car drivers to make competitive full passes on the day, with 18 FCs on the property and two complete qualifying sessions contested.
To make matters less desirable, all three made only one good pass apiece, with Force and Wilk making it A-to-B in the first session, while Beckman completed his run in near anonymity, posting his number on the same lap that featured Robert Hight’s attention-grabbing tire explosion.
The good news, for Wilk, is that he finished the day in the No. 3 spot and he earned two bonus points with his solid 4.205 pass in Q1.
“Like I said over the P.A., we sure thank the fans for coming out and watching us and cheering us on, but as a group I think the rest of the Funny Car class will join me by saying we’re sorry we put on such a bad show today,” Wilk said. “There’s obviously less track than we all think there is, because car after car after car was smoking the tires, and very few of us could find a way to make it more than 330 feet.
“We eased her on down there on the first one, and boy we felt pretty good about it when we saw how that stacked up against everyone else, but I guess it must’ve somehow gotten even worse out there for Q2 because Jack was the only one to make it out of our whole bunch. Hopefully, things will get better out there tomorrow and maybe we’ll all get a little smarter overnight too. One way or another, we have to be able to get down this track so we all need to find the combination to do that.”
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