Tim Wilkerson was part of a large slice of the Funny Car community during Saturday’s first qualifying session, smoking the tires before half-track, but when the chips were on the table and Sunday’s ladder was being set in Q4, he drove the Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang to its best lap of the weekend, and set top speed for the class in the meantime. Wilkerson powered to a 4.163 at at a class-best 302.08 mph, jumping up from the bottom of the field to the middle part, and when the dust had settled on Gainesville qualifying he was sitting 8th. The LRS driver will take on Jack Beckman in the first round on Sunday.
“I’ve been saying that this new car is coming around, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some people thought I was just trying to convince myself of that,” Wilkerson said. “But, it has been throwing us little nibbles as we go, and even when you smoke the tires like we did earlier today, you’re learning what the car will take and what it doesn’t like. Going into that last run, we weren’t going up there to run another 4.20-something, I can tell you that, and the plan was to run a 4.17. So, we all feel pretty good with the 4.16 we ran.
“Hey, look at it this way. We’re a hundredth of a second behind Del Worsham (who ran 4.152), so if all this hard work means we’re a hundredth of a second behind a high-dollar operation like that, with a guy like Del driving it, I can’t feel too bad about that. Our teammate Bob Tasca is number one, and we’re right there with everyone else. We’re only a hundredth out of the third spot, so we’re getting a handle on it. Of course, when you’re in the 8th spot you race the guy who is closest to you in E.T., so we’ll be going up there against Jack knowing that it’s going to be a really even battle and a tough one to win.”
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