Tim Wilkerson shook the tires hard during the first session in Charlotte, running under some of the coolest conditions of the year, and he was not part of the top 12 after that run. In the late session, which was pushed back by pesky sprinkles that never developed into real rain, he made a full lap in his Levi, Ray & Shoup Ford and eventually claimed the No. 9 spot at the end of the first day.
The real history, though, was made during the final pair of Funny Cars on Friday, as Matt Hagan powered to a 3.995 to forever etch his name into the record books as the first Funny Car driver to dip into the 3-second range.
“Tonight was the night it was probably going to happen, so as huge as that was I can’t say we were stunned or anything when we heard it over the radio in the transporter lounge,” Wilkerson said.
“I would’ve loved to have been the first, but in all my years driving and tuning this car we’ve really never been a team that runs at the front on these special nights when it’s this stout, because we kind of do our best work when the track is a little hot. We have the finesse for that, but when it comes to hauling out the big lumber to see how far you can hit one, we’re just generally not one of the teams that can do that. That’s a very fast car, and Matt does a real good job in it, so I’m not surprised and I’ll congratulate him when I see him. And you might’ve noticed that tonight was the night it could happen, but only one car did it. It’s not like it was easy out there.”
“We didn’t even have the luxury of stepping all over it, because we messed up on the first run and needed to just get from one end to the other tonight. A 4.10 isn’t bad, and with it I know we’ll be racing on Sunday, but it would’ve been nice to have run 4.0-something on the first one so that we could jump on it and see what it would do. We’re just going to have to focus on making the best lap we can each time we go out there, and hopefully we’ll have a chance to go some rounds here and move up from the 10th spot. As I’ve been telling everyone all day, I’m the only guy in the Countdown with absolutely nothing to lose. I can’t finish this season any lower than the spot I’m in now, so we might as well go for it.”
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