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PHOENIX (February 14, 2012) — Tim Wilkerson started the 2012 season this past weekend in Pomona, with a new car, three new crew members, and a recent history of early-season frustration that confounded him. He then squeaked into the field in the 14th spot while worrying if his team could handle the quick turn-arounds needed on race day. In the end, he pounded out a win in round one with a huge 4.06, then watched as his crew swapped motors and got him back to the lanes in time for round two. In four short days, he felt his team had grown, his performance was on track, and that things were generally all moving in the right direction for his Levi, Ray & Shoup organization.

With little time to rest, Wilk now brings his LRS Shelby Mustang to Firebird Raceway in Phoenix, for the running of this weekend’s NHRA Arizona Nationals, and he’s pumped up to maintain the progress and momentum.

“You normally kind of look for things like a team coming together or the car coming around in terms of months or even a year, so it’s kind of funny that we could see both of those things happening over the course of four days in Pomona,” Wilkerson said. “We got better as a team every day we were there, and the car ran better as we went along. We’re not where we want to be yet, with the crew or the car, but we made a ton of progress and that’s all you can ask. The guys are working hard, giving it every ounce of energy and focus they have, and if they keep doing that they’re going to become a really great unit, and the car will reflect how well they work together.

“The hard part is just getting the repetition for the guys, because we don’t have the wherewithal to go run the wheels off the car in testing. We entered Pomona with about six laps of experience as a group, and then in qualifying there we only made one lap a day, for three days, so they never had to thrash and get it turned around under pressure. Well, we blew it up in round one and had to swap motors, so they found out early what that’s like. We weren’t as efficient as we want to be, but they learned with that deal. Now, we go right to Phoenix without a break and the guys will be right back at it. All I want to see is that they keep making progress. That’s our goal.”

This trip to Firebird Raceway is a unique one, coming just a few months after the tour last visited Phoenix. Traditionally an early-season winter race, coming right on the heels of Pomona, last year’s Phoenix event was shifted to the fall and held in mid-October. Now back in its familiar February slot, the Phoenix race should provide better action on a cooler track.

“I think we raced on about a 135-degree track last fall, if I remember correctly,” Wilkerson said. “A track that hot might make for a lot of excitement, in terms of pedal-fests, but I think the fans and the racers will always prefer a cool track and low elapsed times. At this time of year, it’s probably going to be in the 70s while were there, so the track ought to be tight and the racing should be great.

“I think we have a reputation for being a hot-weather team, but I also think that reputation is outdated. We can still give people fits on a hot track, but I went after that 4.06 in the first round at Pomona for a reason. I wanted to see if we could really get after it on a cool track, and we did, so I don’t think we need a hot track to even things up for us at all. We can run with the best, and we plan to do that this weekend. I’m pretty excited about what we can accomplish this year, and we’re all ready to see what we can do in Phoenix. As long as we just keep making progress, I’ll be happy.”

If Tim Wilkerson and his LRS team continue to make progress and maintain their momentum, the legions of Wilk Warrior fans around the world could have plenty of reasons to be happy, and those smiles could come as early as this weekend.

POMONA, Calif. (February 6, 2012) — Tim Wilkerson and his Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang Funny Car team are, like other NHRA racers and fans, primed and ready for the 2012 season to kick off this weekend, at the 52nd Annual O’Reilly Winternationals in Pomona. This time around, though, Wilk would like to jump-start his season with big opening effort; something he has not been able to do over the course of many years. Stunningly, Wilkerson has not won a round at the Winternationals since 2004.

Starting the season with a new three-rail chassis, Wilkerson and his LRS squad took part in the annual January preseason testing session in south Florida, aiming to work out the kinks and expose any gremlins before things get started for real this Thursday. Although the team kept to a plan of running only 600 to 800 feet on all their test runs, Wilk is confident they accomplished their mission.

“For whatever reason, we’ve had a heck of a time getting out of the gate okay at Pomona, and we want to change that this year,” the popular driver said. “We took our testing very seriously, we had some good days at the track to help the team gel and fit in together, and the car ran really nice the whole time, so we feel like we’re miles ahead of last year. Hopefully, it pays off and we get some win lights this time around.

“If I could explain why we seem to have trouble at the Winternationals, I wouldn’t waste time talking about, I’d just fix it. We’ve qualified at the top, at the bottom, in the middle, and we’ve DNQd too, but the bottom line is that when Sunday comes around we’ve been pretty much whitewashed for a lot of years. It doesn’t seem possible that it’s been since 2004 that we won a round at the Winternationals, but I guess that’s right. In 2008, the year we lost the championship on the final day, we qualified number one and then still managed to lose in the first round. Since then, another DNQ in ’09 and then we just plain got whooped in 2010 and 2011. Maybe we’ll smarten up a little and turn things around this year.”

Although Wilk is well known for his ability to squeeze more horsepower and performance out of every dollar bill than many of his big-budget opponents, the significant expense of the trip to Florida was not only justifiable, he deemed the trip absolutely necessary. With a new car and three new crew members, the test runs were needed for many reasons.

“We saved some money and didn’t go to that testing session last year, and we started out the year looking like we were searching around and trying to figure it out,” Wilkerson said. “This year, we’ll be watching our budget as closely as we ever do, but to me it was pretty important for us to go down there and get ourselves ready to go. With three new crew guys, we’re still going to need some time to really come together, but at least we’re not going into the season completely cold.

“Now, here we are and our short little off-season is over. I don’t think most people realize just how short it is, when you factor in getting back to the shop from the Finals, then servicing everything and getting it all ready to go. You give the guys some time off over the holidays, and there just aren’t that many days before you’re packing it up and heading back out to start all over again. We’re ready, though, and all of us are excited to get out there and get a new season underway. The way I see it, we just need to stop giving the rest of the class a head start, so maybe this year we’ll come out strong and never look back. It would be neat to get back to Pomona in November, for the Finals, and be fighting for a championship. Then maybe we could look back to this race in February and see that a successful season started there.”

Effort made, kinks worked out, testing laps in the book. Now it counts, and Tim Wilkerson is intently focused on getting out of the gate strong. Let the games begin.

 Tim Wilkerson had one pesky contrary thought in his head as he embarked on a Sunday quest to get his special-edition LRS Big Website Makeover Ford to run a full lap on all eight cylinders, and that nagging worry was based on how the car would handle 12.5 percent more power down-track. As it turned out, he got the tune-up right and overshot the mark in round one, spinning the tires at nearly the spot he’d been dropping holes all weekend. Paul Lee’s .002 light didn’t help matters, and it was a disappointed but undaunted Wilk who came back to his pit to analyze the data.

“I was a little worried about that, to tell you the truth, because you just don’t know how the car is going to react to the track if it keeps all eight lit, especially right down there at half-track where all of a sudden you’re dealing with more power if all eight are firing,” Wilkerson said. “This track is tough enough, if you’re worried about spinning the tires, and a 130-degree surface just makes it really hard to stay stuck and keep all the cylinders lit. We got the combination right on that run, but sure enough I think it was that little extra power that drove us right into spin. 

“To be honest, I thought he red-lit over there, because I heard him leave early, but with a .002 light we weren’t going to win anyway. We would’ve needed something like a 4.27 to beat him, and we weren’t set up to do that. We were trying to run about a 4.30 to a 4.32, and I cut my normal light, so it wasn’t in the cards.  My guys are bummed out, because we made four good laps in qualifying, and then we come out here and get bit.”

To be precise, with Lee’s .002 and Wilk’s standard “everyday” .088 at the tree, it would’ve taken a 4.274 to defeat Lee’s 4.360-second time.

Wilk did, however, have a good race going until Sunday morning came around. On a blistering weekend in Phoenix, where track temps soared to nearly unheard of levels and tire spin was the common denominator, Wilk managed to string four consecutive solid laps together.  He also earned two bonus points in the process, and landed in the top half of the field at a place where that seemed like a fortuitous accomplishment.  He did, however, make portions of all four of those solid qualifying laps with only seven cylinders. 

“It’s a shame, because our goal here was to get out of the 10th spot and we had the chance to do it right there,” Wilk said. “This just tells you how hard this deal can be. It’s never easy to tune a Funny Car, but it’s a ton harder when the conditions are like this, and all you had to do was watch what went on here to see that. I said yesterday that the secret here was that you had to tiptoe your way down this track, and I guess we got to jogging or running a little today and we slipped and fell. We’ll go on to Las Vegas and try to make up for it there, and my guys are in need of a good boost so I hope we can get one there.”

The Full Throttle tour will now take a week off before reconvening in Las Vegas during the final weekend in October.  

On a sad note, it was later in the day when the Wilkerson team learned of the death of Indy Car driver Dan Wheldon, who was involved in a terrible crash during their race today. Everyone involved with Team Wilkerson sends heartfelt condolences to the Wheldon family and the Indy Car community.

 PHOENIX (October 12, 2011) — For Tim Wilkerson, it may seem like the time for counting points, adding up rounds, and imagining theoretical advancements up the points sheet should be over.  Entering this weekend’s NHRA Arizona Nationals at Firebird Raceway near Phoenix, the Levi, Ray & Shoup driver is in the same 10th spot in which he entered the Countdown, but his focus now is on changing that number. It’s as simple as that, and it gives him great incentive heading into what looks to be a sweltering weekend in the Valley Of The Sun.

Wilk has run the entire 2011 campaign with the number 10 on the side of his car, indicative of his 10th-place finish in the standings last year. In that case, it was a matter of slipping four spots after having started the Countdown in the No. 6 spot in the standings but this year, with three races left on the docket, it’s all about maximizing his performance while minimizing the digit that will adorn his LRS Ford in 2012.

“We didn’t have a good Countdown last year, and it cost us some spots in the Top 10,” Wilkerson said. “It’s not just the number on the car, it’s also the number on the bonus check, and even though we may not be counting points for the championship right now, I can guarantee you that we count dollars, every day all year long. Unless you’re going to be up in the top couple of spots, the bonus check is more of a nice way to end the season rather than any sort of life changer, but dollars are dollars and that 10 on the side of the car sort of reminded us of that all year.

“Right now, we have three races left to change the number, and that’s our mission. Realistically, we’re probably going to have to win a race or two to do any better than seventh, but you know how that goes. If we get hot and get on a roll, we could do that and end up in the middle of the pack and that would be an accomplishment. It’s a one-at-a-time deal right now though, and this weekend the goal is to leave Phoenix with someone else in 10th place.”

After a disappointing and surprising first-round loss in Reading, Wilk remains only 14 points behind John Force in ninth but the gap to the higher positions widened a bit in Pennsylvania. Jeff Arend now holds a 46-point lead over Wilk, while Bob Tasca sits in the No. 7 spot, 47 points up.  With three races to go, that puts Arend and Tasca three rounds ahead, without counting bonus or qualifying points. Ron Capps is next on the list, sitting in sixth with a 91-point edge.  A couple of multi-round races, possibly with a win thrown in, could jumble the order considerably.

“That’s what I mean, and if we can avoid looking like knuckleheads and just do what we’re capable of doing, we can move up the list pretty fast and pretty far,” Wilk said. “We’re going to Phoenix now, and even though it’s October it’s still really hot there and they’re calling for highs right around 100 for all three days, so it will be a finesse game. We’re good at finesse games.”

When Wilk and his fellow Funny Car competitors are trying to find a way to negotiate a 1,000-foot track in 100-degree temperatures, the LRS driver will be doing so with a special-edition body atop his chassis, in support of a program called the Big Website Makeover, managed by the LRS Web Solutions division of Levi, Ray & Shoup.  The flashy car will fit right in under the scorching Arizona sun, and its goal is to not only raise awareness for a great charitable cause, but to also get NHRA fans involved in the voting process to select a worthy charity. NHRA fans will have access to an exclusive early-bird voting period during the Phoenix race, and they can vote either on-line or in-person at the Team Wilkerson pit area.

“It’s a neat deal, and we get to be involved and try to bring along all of the great fans we have in this sport,” Wilkerson said. “LRS is a great neighbor in our community, in Springfield, Illinois, and this program is great example of how they like to give back to the Central Illinois region. We hope thousands of people will see this car and then take part in the vote, to pick a charity that needs and deserves a professional website makeover.”

While he helps one charity get that complete makeover, Wilk will also being trying to redesign the order of the Top 10 in the Full Throttle points. That focus begins on Friday, in Phoenix.

BRAINERD, Minn. – It has been a slow and steady climb for veteran Funny Car driver Tim Wilkerson, who has clawed his way into position to make the Full Throttle Countdown to the Championship, NHRA’s six-race playoffs. At one point during the season, the Levi Ray & Shoup Ford Mustang driver was mired as low as 14th in the standings.

The Springfield, Ill. driver had a great Western Swing, posting a runner-up finish at Sonoma, Calif. and claiming his first victory and No. 1 qualifying position in more than a year at Seattle. The net result is that Wilkerson jumped to ninth in the standings and now appears solidly in the mix as the final two races of the regular season approach.

For insurance, Wilkerson will focus on moving up another points position or two by trying to keep his final round streak going at the 30th annual Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals, Aug. 18-21 at scenic Brainerd International Raceway. Larry Dixon (Top Fuel), Bob Bode (Funny Car), Jeg Coughlin (Pro Stock) and Andrew Hines (Pro Stock Motorcycle) are the defending winners of the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series event, which will be televised on ESPN2HD.

Wilkerson realized that if he was going to make a move to get into the playoffs it would need to be during the Western Swing, a part of the season where he’s had some recent success.

“There’s no doubt about it that we got hot at the right time, although this year I think we strung it out a little too far,” Wilkerson said. “We got to the point where it really was ‘now or never’ and that just happened to line up with the time when we were really getting a good handle on the car. It’s been a challenging year, and it was almost like you could throw away a bunch of our early races when we weren’t getting much done. Before Denver, the car was showing what we have now, but we didn’t have any racing luck and that can wear the team down faster than running bad. We had to stick together as a team while we kept the car running strong, and we managed to do that.”

Following a final round effort at the VisitMyrtleBeach.com NHRA Four-Wide Nationals, Wilkerson posted five first round losses over the next seven races. His fortunes started to turn in Denver, when he qualified 10th and advanced to the quarterfinals. He followed that with the runner-up at Infineon Raceway and then won for the third consecutive year at Pacific Raceways.

“We have as much confidence, right now, as we’ve had all year,” said Wilkerson, who enters the penultimate race in the regular season 46 points in front of 10th place driver Bob Tasca. “We’ve got a real good handle on the car, and on things like the clutch that were driving us nuts earlier in the season, so we feel pretty good about our chances every lap now. It wasn’t that way earlier, so that’s a big step forward for us.”

During his back-to-back final rounds in Sonoma and Seattle, Wilkerson knocked off some of the category’s top competitors in head-to-head meetings, including defending world champ John Force, second place points sitter Robert Hight and Jack Beckman, who is currently third in the standings. As an independent team owner, he knows he’ll have to continue to beat the top cars from the John Force Racing and Don Schumacher Racing stables to contend for victories and the championship as the season moves into its latter stages.

“I won’t kid you and say it doesn’t mean anything to us when we knock off the biggest hitters out here,” Wilkerson said. “It means a lot to me, to Dick Levi and LRS, and to our guys. There’s some good mojo in playing the David vs. Goliath thing and coming out on top, and you can see our guys strutting around with some pride right now. They earned it, and that sort of intensity and pride can keep building.”

Wilkerson trails eighth place driver Jeff Arend by less than one round and his goal is to move into that spot before the playoffs kick off. He knows that his LRS Mustang is sitting directly in the sightlines of both Tasca and 11th place Johnny Gray. Tony Pedregon, who won at BIR in 2008 and 2009, will need to create some more “Minnesota Magic” if he’s going to make the Countdown, as he’s in 12th, 119 points behind Tasca.

“Momentum is a funny thing in this sport, because the car doesn’t care,” Wilkerson said. “It’s good for the crew guys, because I don’t think there’s any getting around the fact that they work a little bit better, harder, and with more focus when they’re feeling good about the results. So that’s good, and hopefully we’ll continue to have some success on the track. The thing now is that we have a real chance to move up to eighth if we can keep doing any good, so that’s what we’re after, and after that we just want to feel good about ourselves as we enter the playoffs.”

What a Western Swing it has been for Tim Wilkerson. He entered the Denver race looking for improvement and any sort of improvement, stuck outside the Full Throttle Top 10 and hoping to find a way in. There on the mountain, he earned a fortuitous chance to race the No. 10 driver, Johnny Gray, in round one and when he crossed the finish line first he had sneaked ahead of Gray, into the Top 10, but only by a hair (19 points).

In Sonoma, he powered his way to the final round by winning three races the hard way, always running just well enough to take the stripe, and his points total began to build. In the final round, he made a stellar lap that came up just short, but the way his Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang was running, and the way his LRS team was finding ways to win rounds, gave him and his crew some much needed confidence and a serious morale boost. He also strengthened his grip on 10th place, leaving Wine Country 52 points up on Gray.

Finally, at the third stop on the Swing, in Seattle, he put it all together and simply did it the right way. He qualified No. 1, he won four straight rounds, and after just getting by a very game Brian Thiel in the opening round, he trailered three superstars by simply blowing away the competition. In round two it was Tony Pedregon, in the semifinal it was Robert Hight, and in the final round it was Jack Beckman. All big wins, all big points, and all won by the driver who was clearly the class of the field on this day in the Great Northwest.

And now, Wilk finds himself no longer on the outside looking in, and no longer clinging to a precarious spot in 10th place. Instead, Wilk leaves here solidly in 9th, with a 46 point lead on Bob Tasca, and his gap over Gray in 11th has ballooned to 141. In addition, he can now look up the list and clearly see 8th, as he leaves Seattle only 18 points behind Jeff Arend. What a difference a Western Swing makes.

“That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it,” Wilkerson said. “Two races ago we were hoping to somehow get by Johnny Gray and get a toe-hold on 10th place, but when that was over we still had such a tiny little lead you could sneeze hard and lose it. We go on to Sonoma and Seattle, and the whole world has changed. It’s hard to believe. We can’t let up now, though. We have to keep charging and keep going after every point out there, to clinch our spot and give ourselves the best possible chance in the playoffs.”

Wilkerson’s day began with a nerve-wracking race against Thiel, who qualified 16th but has been turning heads as a newcomer to the tour. Knowing there are no walk-overs in the Funny Car class, Wilk tried to coax a solid but unspectacular tune-up out of his LRS Ford, figuring Thiel was sure to go A-to-B and likely to run a mid 4.20. Thiel did just that, running a solid 4.25, and Wilk edged him out by running a 4.213. It was the last truly close race of the day for the popular driver from Illinois.

In round two, without lane choice, Wilk lagged a bit behind Tony Pedregon at the hit, but made it up almost immediately before tearing away to a big 4.166, which tied Matt Hagan for low of the round.

In the semifinal, Wilk and Hight were neck and neck off the line, but Wilk powered to a stunning 4.145 in the heat of the afternoon, powering away to take the win with air to spare and again posting low e.t. for the round.

In the final, the LRS Ford stunned them again, putting a flawless 4.146 on the board as Beckman smoked the tires. From the No. 1 position, Wilkerson had simply dispatched some of the best Funny Cars in the world by making flawless runs in very tough conditions, and for the third consecutive year he made his way to the Winner’s Circle in Seattle.

“Three years in a row here just tells you we have a pretty good idea how to run on this track, and in this air,” Wilkerson said. “We got on a little bit of a roll, and it just seemed to come to us, really. I just got to the point where I felt we could keep putting that sort of tune-up in it, and it would make it, even on a track that was giving a lot of people fits. If they could outrun us, they could have it, but we kept outrunning them instead.”

Wilkerson was emotional after the win, which comes a full year after his last trophy. The victory was much needed, the performance very welcome, and the points practically priceless, but the boost to his team and the support of the Seattle fans were what meant the most to him.

“These fans went absolutely nuts for us, and I about got choked up going up on that stage with the trophy,” he said. “Seriously, that meant so much to me, and this track has been so good to us. But this also meant the world to my guys, and that’s a very important thing. We had such a miserable start to the season, and then when we started running better we still couldn’t find a way to win. We just kept running the wrong guys. You do that for a few months, and the guys start to put there heads down and get very frustrated.

“In Sonoma, they really got a boost and it was visible. Here, they were all so energized and so focused, the car was put together right every time, in every way. To see the looks on their faces was just great. The energy in our pit was on max all day. I’m just so happy for these guys, and they earned every bit of it. I’m thrilled for Dick Levi, everyone at LRS, my wife Krista, my kids, and all the people who mean so much to us. John Fink couldn’t be here, and we missed having him in the Winner’s Circle, too. But let me tell you, this means the world to my guys. This was a huge win, and they got a lot of frustration completely erased here. They’re the best.”

On this day, on this track, it was actually Tim Wilkerson who was the best.

SEATTLE (August 3, 2011) — If word begins to circulate that the stars are aligning over the Great Northwest, there’s a solid chance the meaning behind that statement has nothing to do with either astronomy or astrology. It might simply be a reference to the resurgent performance of Tim Wilkerson, in his Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang Funny Car.

The newest star in a triumvirate of astral signals would be Wilk’s runner-up performance this past weekend in Sonoma, where he and Ron Capps contested one of the closest, and best, Funny Car match-ups of the day in the final round. Capps took the stripe by a nose, to the win by 14-thousandths of a second, but Wilk had already used his successful day to pick up valuable points in defense of his newly-earned No. 10 spot in the Full Throttle standings. 10 days earlier, at the start of the Denver race, Wilk was on the outside of the Countdown field looking in. After Denver, he was in the 10th spot but with a precarious 19-point lead. After Sonoma, he was 52 points up, and only 25 points out of the No. 9 position.

The other two twinkling lights in the constellation Wilkerson represent recent history, since Wilk and his LRS team are not just the defending Seattle Funny Car champs, but come into this weekend’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Northwest Nationals as the winners of the Seattle event for the last two years. In 2009, it was Wilk over Tony Pedregon in the final. Last year, in a coincidentally reversed match-up of this past weekend in Sonoma, it was Wilk over Capps in an almost equally close race. Wilk’s margin of victory over Capps in 2010 was 25-thousandths of a second.

“For whatever reason, we’ve done well in Seattle the last few years, and I’m okay with that,” Wilkerson said. “And it hasn’t just been about running strong in Seattle, because both of those two wins were part of back-to-back deals that really solidified our seasons. In ’09 we won Seattle and then went down the coast to Sonoma and won there. Last year, we won in Norwalk and then Seattle was the first race on the Western Swing, instead of the last, and we won again.

“This year, we made a lot of progress in Denver and Sonoma, there’s no doubt about that, but we haven’t accomplished anything until the math tells us we’re in the Countdown. Right now, with three regular-season races left, we’re not only not out of the woods, we’re still in a very tight spot and we have to keep pressing. We need to keep winning rounds, and Seattle is a place where we know how to do that.”

Although the famed Western Swing has gone through a variety of schedule permutations in recent years, this season’s Denver-Sonoma-Seattle set-up is a fairly common one, and it still presents tuners with a difficult trifecta of fantastically different conditions. Starting a mile high and in the heat in Denver, the tour then went west to Sonoma, where the air is thicker but the weather’s one consistent factor is that it’s always changing. Finally, the tour heads up the coast to Seattle, where the lush forests create an abundance of oxygen at a place where the track surface itself can sometimes be the biggest detriment to going fast.

“We all bring a lot of spare parts on the Swing, but sometimes you wish you could bring a spare brain, too,” said Wilkerson, who not only drives his Funny Car but tunes it as well. “It’s like the toughest entrance exam you could take, trying to tune these things in three places that almost couldn’t be any more different, all on consecutive weekends. If you pass this test, you’re onto something. Hopefully, we can do the work and have some of the right answers again this weekend. Can’t wait to get there.”

Getting there an enjoyable experience for many NHRA stars, who take to the backroads to explore the upper west coast as a means of traveling from the San Francisco Bay area to the Puget Sound region. Wilkerson and his wife Krista have been doing just that, winding their way up the coast from Northern California, through Oregon, and into Washington.

“We’re having a blast, and we always love this drive,” Wilk said. “It’s got to be one of the most beautiful parts of the country, and it’s a great way to decompress a little between these two tough races. The coastline is beautiful, the air is clear, the Redwoods are gigantic, and there are all sorts of little coastal towns to stop in and explore. On Monday, we stopped at a little airport and I went on a ride in an open-cockpit bi-plane. That was a treat, for sure. It’s been a great trip, and now we’re ready to get back on the track and do some good.”

The way these stars are aligned, the odds of doing some good might very well be stacked in Wilk’s favor, but the proof can only be found in one place. On the race track.

SONOMA, Calif. (July 26, 2011) — The word “mission” has multiple meanings, with two of the most common being “a specific task or duty” and “a church or chapel”. Tim Wilkerson, tuner/driver of the Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang Funny Car, will coincidentally be continuing his mission of solidifying a spot in the Full Throttle Top 10 this weekend, at a race track located near the historic and northernmost Spanish mission built during the early 1800s. The picturesque Sonoma Mission is but a few miles north of Infineon Raceway, site of this weekend’s Fram Autolite Nationals.

The “glass half full” version of Wilk’s ongoing mission for a spot in the Countdown contains the good news that he is now in the Top 10, having defeated Johnny Gray in round one at Denver to move up from 11th. The “glass half empty” rendition notes that Gray is only 19 points behind, within easy striking distance with four races left to settle things before the playoffs begin. To make the challenge even greater, Tony Pedregon lurks in 12th, only 42 points behind Wilk, and Bob Tasca, who is currently in the 9th spot, is 79 points ahead of the LRS driver.

“We took a big step in Denver, getting by Johnny in round one, but that’s just one step and there are some big moments left ahead of us,” Wilkerson said. “Those guys behind us aren’t going to let up, I can guarantee that, so we can’t either. The guys ahead of us are all very good racers, with fast-running cars, and they have a pretty good cushion on us.

“We’re going to have to scratch and claw to be in this thing, but at least we got ourselves into a position where we’re in the spot now, and it’s up to us to hold onto it. You can do it by yourself if you just win rounds. When you’re behind, you usually need some help from some other people. I don’t expect it to be easy, but a good weekend in Sonoma would sure help.”

Wilk knows all about good weekends in Sonoma, and those memories have nothing to do with vineyards or Spanish missions. He has won at Infineon Raceway twice, beating John Force in the final in 2004 and Tony Pedregon in 2009. The ’09 win was the second in a pair of back-to-back victories, with the first coming in Seattle a week earlier. With the Sonoma and Seattle dates now swapped on the schedule, Wilk has the chance to repeat that feat in reverse, but he’s keeping his focus not just on the next race, but solely on the next lap.

“Being this close in the points, every lap is now extremely important,” he said. “There are no throw-aways left because those individual bonus points during qualifying might end up being the points that get you in the Countdown. We hadn’t been picking up many of those all year, but we got two of them in Denver and we’ll see if we can’t keep picking up a few here or there. We start with the first lap in Sonoma, on Friday afternoon.

“We think more in terms of rounds ahead or behind, rather than the strict number of points, and qualifying points and bonus points can really change that in a hurry. The difference between being 19 points ahead and 21 points ahead is actually a full round of racing. When a point or two can alter things that much, every run can help or hurt, and every spot on the ladder can change things too. Those little bonus points and qualifying points seem too small to matter, but right now they matter as much as anything. We have to stay focused and make the most out of every lap down the race track.”

That’s the mission, in Sonoma.

 It was an “up and down” theme for Tim Wilkerson, during all three days of racing in Denver, but in the end the popular Illinois driver left Thunder Mountain with the first step in his overall plan accomplished. For the first time this year, Wilk is in the Full Throttle Top 10 on the points sheet, with four races to go before the Countdown playoffs begin.

As stated above,  each day of racing on Thunder Mountain featured one very good lap and one not very good one, for Wilk and his Levi, Ray & Shoup team. On Friday, he was 3rd-best in the heat during Q1, but smoked the tires during the night run. On Saturday, he was again 3rd-best on the first run, before smoking the tires in Q4.  The sum of that accomplishment was a No. 10 spot on the ladder and two precious bonus points.

On Sunday, Wilk was matched up with Johnny Gray, who held the 10th spot in the standings coming into this race. For once, the chance to move up in the standings was in Wilk’s hands, and in this case he knew he controlled his own destiny.

“We’ve all done those mental gyrations with the points over the years, where you look at the ladder and think ‘Well, if we win, and this guy loses, and this guy red lights, and this guy doesn’t show up, we can move up a spot.’,” Wilk said. “This time, the guy we were chasing was the guy we were racing, and we were one point out of 10th when the round started. We didn’t need help from other teams, red lights, or the weather. We had to do it ourselves.”

Wilk did just that, running as the seventh pair in round one after an eternity of a Top Fuel session allowed the tension to build. His LRS Shelby Mustang left hard, stayed running hard, and pulled away during the back half of the run to click the beams with a 4.390 to take the win. Gray posted a 4.625 in the right lane.

It didn’t get any easier from that point forward, as Robert Hight as the opponent in round two. It was, however, Wilk’s first trip beyond the first round since Englishtown during the first week of June. Hight had disposed of Todd Simpson in the opening round, with low e.t. of the stanza at 4.286.

Hight was away with a slight jump at the tree, and never trailed in this drag race. Wilk’s LRS Ford made a valiant charge, but a dropped cylinder at about the 2-second mark made it impossible to track down Hight, who tripped the beams with a strong 4.289, nearly as stout as his opening round run.  Wilk improved slightly, recording a 4.356 in defeat.

“That’s a pretty darned good team over there, and we knew what we had to run if we were going to beat them straight up,” Wilk said. “A 4.28 was the target, but we didn’t have much of a chance running on seven. It’s easy to drop cylinders up here, and it’s easy to spin the tires when you get out there close to half-track. We did pretty good, but they didn’t stumble and we came up short.

“Still, though, you have to take it one step at a time and at least we got that one big step done today. That run felt a little different than they have recently, in a good way. There was a lot riding on it, and it felt good to line up for the race and come away with one. Now we have to build on this and keep winning some rounds or it will all turn around on us in a hurry.”

In addition to the racing, Wilk and his team also had a huge weekend in terms of LRS involvement. Dick Levi attended the event on Saturday, and he brought along about 250 of his best friends, family members, and colleagues for a fun-filled day at the race track. It was the single-biggest crowd ever to fill the team’s hospitality area.

“That was great, to have Dick and all those people with us on Saturday,” Wilkerson said. “They all had smiles from ear to ear, and that means so much to us. I can’t even imagine where I’d be in terms of racing if it weren’t for Dick and all the people at LRS. They’re great folks, they support us through thick and thin, and we all benefit from the relationship.”

With Denver being the first leg of the 2011 Western Swing, there’s no time for rest in the coming days. The team will head directly to Sonoma for next weekend’s race, and then will head up the west coast to Seattle the following week. Where Wilk stands in the points at that time will be the key, but a big step was taken on Thunder Mountain.

DENVER (July 18, 2011) — Entering this weekend’s Mile-High Nationals in Denver, Tim Wilkerson remains just outside the Full Throttle Top 10, but with the gap between his 11th spot and Johnny Gray’s 10th-place position now whittled to only two points, he’s not yet ready to press the button marked “Now Or Never”. Still, a good showing on Thunder Mountain would go a long way toward earning a coveted spot in the Countdown playoffs.

In order to mount such a charge, Wilk realistically knows he probably only needs to continue the performance he has been showing of late, with his Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Mustang, but a little more of that elusive good fortune would certainly help. Although he’s exited in the first round at the last three races, he’s been qualifying well for much of the year and has too often earned the dubious distinction of being the guy who would’ve been beaten any other driver in the round, except the one he faced.

“If we were scuffling along and not winning rounds because we were lost with the tune-up, then it might be time to start thinking about panic mode,” Wilkerson said. “But the truth is, just about the only thing I’d change in the way we’ve been running would be to find a way to race somebody else in the first round. We’ve really had an unlucky streak going here, where we just consistently end up racing the one car that can beat us.

“I’m not really a believer in luck, because I think you make your own, but after a while you begin to wonder. We know better than that, though, so we’ll follow our brains and rely on the numbers, just like we always do. If you add them all up right, you have to start winning some rounds. It’s just math and probabilities, really. So, I guess now would be a really good time for the numbers to start adding up in our favor.”

Qualifying well and winning rounds at Bandimere Speedway, located just to the west of Denver, can be a difficult exercise based in the “one time only” area of the tuning curve. Racing at one mile of altitude is one thing, and a difficult thing at that, but adding in the typical July weather in the Rocky Mountain foothills can make the cars think they’re racing as high as 9,000 feet. The mountain does, indeed, present a mountain of challenges.

“That’s the thing about Denver; you don’t use this data anywhere else so you have to figure it out on the spot,” Wilkerson said. “You have to spin the blower as fast as you can, to create some kind of air to burn with the fuel, and then if you do get the car to go you have to deal with far less downforce than we have anywhere else. It’s a double-whammy for sure.

“And, if it gets as hot as it usually does, the track gets slick under that bright sun and the corrected altitude goes through the roof. It’s like a combination of all the things they could throw at you to make it impossible to race, but we all do our best to figure it out and get to the other end at some decent speed. There’s only one track like this, and it makes you earn everything you get.”

With five races left in the NHRA Full Throttle regular season, the mission for Wilk is to move into the Top 10 on the points sheet so that he can be a part of the Countdown playoffs in the fall. If he’s able to do that on Thunder Mountain, he will have earned it the hard way.