MEMPHIS, Friday: Funny Car points leader, Tim Wilkerson started and ended the first day of qualifying at the O’Reilly Mid-South Nationals qualified tenth. He made two good laps in the Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevrolet Impala SS, today but they weren’t fast enough for Wilkerson.
In today’s first qualifying session, Wilkerson ran 4.206 at 292.52 mph. This put him in the No. 10 qualifying position. And then as the sun set in the western sky and the temperatures started to drop, many of the cars improved, including Wilkerson. But some of the cars, including a couple in the lane in front of Wilk, smoked the tires. This concerned the talented tuner/driver, so he made a quick, last second change in his set-up. He then went out and ran 4.154 at 300.40 mph. This improvement didn’t help Wilkerson enough and he ended the day still in the No. 10 slot.
“We just didn’t do much on our runs today,” said Wilkerson. “We weren’t doing anything impressive and not doing anything wrong, I guess you could say. We were a little slower than I wanted to be on both runs, to tell you the truth. I wanted to start with about a. 17 and end up with about a. 12. So, I’m a couple hundreds slower than I wanted to be. The air has got me a little fooled. It’s kind of a pooch. You know, I watched all them guys smoke the tires in front of me and it really scared me, so I backed it up. And I probably shouldn’t have because mine did just what I thought it would do. And I think if I would have left it alone, it probably would have been a little faster. But you know how we are; we’ll keep going and try tomorrow. Hopefully the thing will run a little better. If it don’t, it don’t, but I think it will.”
The weather forecast for tomorrow is for the conditions to be very similar to today, warm and sunny.
“I think it’s got more in it for tomorrow,” said Wilkerson. “I think we can probably go faster than that during the day. We’ll see what happens.”
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