Whiteleys Complete Consecutive Tulsa Sweeps

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
Photos courtesy of Robert Grice

For the second year in a row, the husband-and-wife team of Jim and Annie Whiteley swept Top Alcohol honors at the Tulsa Lucas Oil Series event. Jim led the Top Alcohol Dragster contingent from wire to wire, and wife Annie overcame severe shake in the final round to outlast a tough Alcohol Funny Car class.

Jim's victory was his second in two weeks, including an equally dominant score in Denver. This time, he emerged victorious from a comprised almost entirely of A/Fuelers; of 10 cars in attendance, the only one other than Whiteley's with a blown-alcohol setup belonged to Mark Taliaferro, who only recently made the switch back from injected-nitro.

Whiteley, who set low e.t. here last year with a 5.32, ran .40s and high .30s under tougher conditions this time for a commanding lead in the national standings. "There probably was room to run better," he said, "but we had a lot of stuff backed down. Those were tough, tough conditions. When it's 100 degrees out, the track is only going to take so much."

Whiteley wheeled his J&A Service/YNot Racing dragster to the top spot in qualifying with a 5.38 and ran a best of 5.37 in eliminations, but a 5.44 in the final was more than enough to take out Brandon Pierce, who smoked the tires off the line in Gene Snow's dragster. Whiteley beat David Brounkowski in the opening round and established low e.t. of the meet with a 5.378 in the semifinals against Randy Meyer in a rematch of last year's Tulsa final.

One pair earlier, Pierce won an all-Brandon matchup with Brandon Lewis, 5.40 to 5.65, making his best run of the weekend and keeping himself within striking distance of Whiteley going into the final. Whiteley got the best of that one after a 45-minute delay caused by Scott McVey's blown engine in the Top Alcohol Funny Car final that cost him the title against Annie Whiteley, who was in trouble almost immediately.

 

Whiteley shook and smoked the tires off the line, lifted, and tromped back on the throttle for a 6.17 at 241 mph only after noticing that McVey wasn't driving away from her. "I was just starting to push the clutch in, and thought, 'Oh, wait – he's not there,' " she said. I was kind of caught off guard. We made three test runs before the race, then two qualifying runs, then the first two rounds of eliminations, and it went right down there every time until the final."

Whiteley qualified No. 1 with a 5.66, just a hundredth of a second ahead of early season points leader John Lombardo, who was upset by Lance Van Hauen in the first round, and ran a smooth 5.69 against Texan Bryan Brown in the first round and a soft 5.78 opposite defending Central Region champ Kirk Williams in the semi's. 

McVey was consistent through the first two rounds, with a 5.74 against Steve Burck and a 5.73 against Van Hauen, and appeared to have the final in hand until the engine let go. "I've never won a round like that," said Whiteley, who now has been to seven regional finals in the first year and a half of her career and has won all seven. "I've short-shifted my way out of shake before, but it was never like that. The car was in second gear for a long time – I didn't think that shift-light was ever going to come on – and it seemed to take forever for the finish line to get there, too."