NHRA - Countdown to the Championship - Funny Car midseason review: 'Wilk' holds lead and keeps building it

With three event wins, no DNQs, and only two first-round losses this season, Tim Wilkerson has built a comfortable points lead in Funny Car.
You have to go way back to 2000 to find a time when one of the John Force Racing cars or Ron Capps wasn’t leading the Funny Car points heading into the Western Swing. Back then, Jerry Toliver had the points lead and held it just two more races before Force took over en route to his eighth straight title, and you have to then go way back to Bruce Larson, who led the points wire to wire in 1989, to find another occasion when the Force cars weren’t in the driver’s seat.

Yet halfway through the 2008 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, a new hero has emerged from the Midwest in the person of Tim Wilkerson, who not only took over the points lead, the first of his career, with his victory in Madison but also has built on it since. In this second in a series of midseason reviews, we take a look at the Funny Car season to date.

Wilkerson, at the wheel of his Springfield, Ill.-based Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevrolet, has expanded on a slim 24-point edge in the five races since and now owns an impressive 151-point gap on his closest pursuer, former world champ Tony Pedregon, who in 2003 as Force’s second driver led the standings that season entering the Swing and became the champ at season’s end.

After stumbling out of the blocks with back-to-back first-round losses in Pomona and Phoenix, Wilkerson has made his way forward based on amazing consistency. He has lost in the first round just those two times and has since been the No. 1 qualifier four times, proving that he’s not only steady but quick. He has scored three times this season, adding Wallys in Las Vegas and Englishtown to his Madison trophy and was runner-up in Topeka to Force.

He’s just one of three drivers – Pedregon and Capps being the others – to qualify at every race this season and owns a 22-9 win-loss record.

“Our Levi, Ray & Shoup Impala is running well,” said Wilkerson. “We’re not hurting parts, I seem to be making pretty good tuning decisions, my driving has helped us a few times, and the crew is doing a super job. So I’d say everything is working in our favor right now.

“You know, when I moved up in points, I started worrying about staying up there, and I got conservative,” added Wilkerson, who qualified just 14th in Topeka, “but I realized that I started the season out by being aggressive, so I need to go back to being aggressive again.”

Former world champ Tony Pedregon also has a perfect qualifying record and three wins this season, including at the most recent event.
He’d better.

Pedregon is beginning to breathe down his neck after a big win in Norwalk, also his third of the season, and only a pair of monumental engine explosions and five first-round losses prevent him from being even closer with his Dickie Venables-tuned Q HorsePower Chevy.

Pedregon, who went wire to wire in Gainesville, qualifying No. 1 and winning the event just a few weeks after suffering burns in a fire at the season opener, is bad news for his competitors once he reaches the late rounds, having cashed in the last five times he advanced to the final. He has raced from sixth place after the Madison race to second, blowing past Ashley and John Force and their teammate Robert Hight as well as his brother and teammate, former world champ Cruz Pedregon.

Ashley Force, who earned her first points lead when she was runner-up in Las Vegas and held it for two races before Wilkerson took it, sits third, but just four points behind Pedregon. She has already made history as the first female points leader in the class and as its first event winner when she scored in Atlanta – beating her famous father in the final – and was runner-up in Houston. The lone blemish on her record is a surprising DNQ in Phoenix, but she’has qualified in the top half of the field at every race but one since, including a No. 2 berth in Englishtown.

Hight and her dad are right behind her, in fourth and fifth, though, despite each owning a race win – Hight in Pomona, Force in Topeka -- neither has had the kind of success that they’re used to, and both have a DNQ on their books.

Hight’s Auto Club Mustang is just beginning to come around now that crew chief Jimmy Prock has fixed some fuel-system woes, and Hight was the No. 1 qualifier and runner-up in Norwalk. After holding the points lead through the season’s first three races, he has slid down as far as sixth in Chicago before mounting a comeback.

Force, in his comeback season after a near-career-ending wreck last September, has been as high as third in points on three occasions and has been tutoring new driver Mike Neff, who sits an impressive ninth in what is shaping up to be a rookie-of-the-year season.

“I am excited that all the Mustangs are in the top 10,” said Force. “I got bumped down a little, but at the end of the day, making the Countdown is what is important. Our cars are starting to race.”

Del Worsham and tuner and father Chuck won in Houston but need more such magic to make it into the top 10 and hang on to a Countdown spot.
Between the senior Force and Neff rest Cruz Pedregon, Gary Densham, and Capps, and another rookie, Bob Tasca III, holds down the final spot in the Countdown field, but it’s not a comfortable spot. Veteran Del Worsham is just nine points behind him, and former world champ Gary Scelzi and teammate Jack Beckman are less than three rounds behind Tasca.

"Considering some of the troubles we've had this year, I'm just happy we still have a legitimate shot at getting in this thing,” said Worsham. “Every driver in the class can look back and see places where they let points get away, so I'm not going to look back at all. I'm just looking forward to these next six races, knowing we're less than a round out of the playoffs, and, if we just keep doing what we're capable of, we can be a part of it. We seem to be back on our feet a little better now, so maybe we're getting hot at the right time, and even though it's Bob Tasca we're trailing, I'm not thinking in terms of this being an 'us or them' thing at all. I think we can both get in this thing, and 10th isn't the only spot up for grabs right now. It's going to be nerve-wracking and very tough, but it's pretty exciting to see what's on the line over the course of the next six races."