This being Houston, Tim Wilkerson and his Levi, Ray & Shoup team were all too familiar with the warm and muggy conditions they were faced with during the first qualifying session on Friday. They were also all too familiar with what followed, as a line of thunderstorms, which was both anticipated and watched on-line via a slew of laptops scattered throughout the pro pits, arrived right on schedule before Q2 could be held. As the storms passed, the temperature began to drop and the dew point began to rise, leaving the track surface unsafe for further racing.
Wilkerson pedaled his car brilliantly on his lone pass, catching the tire spin before the Goodyear slicks fully broke loose, and when the LRS Shelby Mustang hooked back up again, and posted a 4.512, he ended the day in the lofty 6th spot, despite the pedestrian number he posted. As may be obvious from that result, most of the Funny Car class encountered problems on their lone Friday laps.
“I went ahead and slapped the pedal one time, just for practice really,” Wilkerson said.“I could feel it getting ready to smoke the tires, and I haven’t really taken a good stab at saving one of these kinds of runs all year yet, so I figured it would be good practice. Hey, I’m also the owner and the crew chief, so I let the driver do that if he thinks it’s a good idea. It’s good to have that sort of lap in my pocket, really, because throughout the year you just know you’re going to need to do that on Sunday a few times, and you’d hate to lose a round because you hadn’t done it yet and were all out of practice.”
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