SONOMA: Coming into Infineon Raceway for the 21st running of the Fram Autolite Nationals, Wilkerson may have been concerned about his slowed Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevrolet Impala SS Funny Car but that concern is gone as Wilkerson heads out of the beautiful Napa Valley. Wilkerson had a strong, consistent car in qualifying and he carried that performance all the way to the semifinal round.
In the first-round Wilkerson posted the second quickest run of the round and the fastest of the event. His impressive 4.100 at 303.37 mph easily stopped Gary Scelzi and his 4.227 at 295.98 mph. In the second round Wilkerson went up against the No. 1 qualifier, Ashley Force. Force was the quickest of the first-round and had lane choice. As the two cars rolled up to the starting line her crew chief exercised his lane choice right and switched lanes. This didn’t faze Wilkerson because he knew he made equally good runs yesterday in both lanes. The lane switch didn’t help Force as Wilkerson’s bracket car continued its march sending her home with his 4.113 against her 4.153. For the semifinal round Wilkerson faced Gary Densham, another independent, single car team that is also having an outstanding season. Today, Densham continued his charge and denied Wilkerson of his fifth win of the season by beating Wilk on a holeshot. Densham had a three hundreds of a second starting line advantage and beat Wilkerson’s 4.23 with his slower 4.24.
“I’d say our car is back,” said Wilkerson. “It’s showing signs of coming around and acting like it used to. It’s good in middle of the track which is what we’ve been trying to get back. We’re proud of our first two runs today. We couldn’t have asked for a better car. Of course, I’m beating myself up over our run against Gary. The whole thing was a bad deal. We got up there late, the light was long and when I hit the gas the car didn’t react the way it usually does. It broke a valve at about one second and by the end of the run, it beat itself to junk. That run should have been ours, but the car let me down and I let me down.”
Wilkerson still has a strong hold on the points lead as he puts a close on the Western Swing and looks forward to expanding his lead at the three remaining races before the Countdown to the Championship points are reset after the running of the Mac Tools U. S. Nationals.
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