Dreher, Williams Earn First Season Wins

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association

At Tri-State Raceway in Earlville, Iowa, Top Alcohol Dragster veteran Jared Dreher, who opened last season with a regional victory at Indianapolis, and defending Central Region Top Alcohol Funny champ Kirk Williams both scored for the first time this season.

Dreher picked up the fifth regional/division event title of his career with a final-round decision over reigning Central Region and event winner Gord Gingles, who had won his last two races – the Lucas Oil Nationals in Brainerd and the Central Region race in Topeka. Gingles, who has established himself as one of the best on the Tree in just his second year in an A/Fueler, was second off the line this time and shook violently before shutting off to a 6.31 at 179 mph.

"We both shook hard, but he shook worse," said Dreher, who won with a 5.48. "His was so violent that it broke the puke tank and had body panels hanging off the car when we got down there. Mine shook pretty bad too, but not that bad."

Dreher’s win comes just days after he was knocked out of the U.S. Nationals field in last-shot qualifying and missed the cut by two-thousandths of a second. "This isn't Indy, but a win's a win," he said. "This was exactly what we needed right now. Indy was a pretty big disappointment, being so close to home. I don't think we've ever gotten out of a track as fast as we got out of there."

On the all-concrete Earlville surface, Dreher qualified in the middle of the field with a 5.48 and picked up dramatically in the first round with a 5.38 against Jackie Fricke, who slipped from her 5.47 qualifying pace to a 5.55. Gingles followed one pair later with a 5.34 (low e.t.) win over Dave Hirata's cylinder-dropping 5.70. North Central points leader Brandon Booher, who qualified No. 1 with a 5.41, also ran in the 5.30s in a win over Dean Dubbin, and Topeka winner Randy Meyer just missed with a 5.41 against Edwin Schmeeckle's close 5.45.

Gingles stayed consistent and emerged as the clear favorite for the final with a 5.35 semifinal win over Meyer in a race that had huge points implications. With one race to go, he holds a 32-point edge over Meyer for the regional championship. Dreher won the other semi with a 5.45 against Booher, who had to lift near half-track when his steering shaft broke, then negotiated the tricky conditions better than Gingles in the final for the 5.48 win.

In Top Alcohol Funny Car, Williams beat Van Hauen in the final in a battle of the first and last qualifiers, 5.73 to a shutoff 8.58. "I've been here probably 12 or 13 times, and you really have to know how to get down this track," said Williams, who won here for the second year in a row and appeared in the final for a third straight year. "The groove is narrow, but this place can be pretty fast if you have the right setup."

Van Hauen, appearing in his first final since last year's Noble event, was fifth of five cars in qualifying with a 5.95 but stepped up to a 5.79 in the first round, just a few thousandths of a second from low e.t. at the time, to beat No. 2 qualifier Billy Davis' 5.86, then singled in the semi's. The field was tight in qualifying – every driver but Van Hauen ran between 5.79 and 5.83.

Williams paced the field in qualifying with a 5.79, lowered low e.t. to a 5.77 in a semifinal win over Wayne Butler and reset low e.t. again in the final with a 5.73 while Van Hauen strayed toward the centerline and eventually had to lift.

"I really have to hand it to Lance," Williams said. "What a guy. NHRA was telling him to head for the lanes, and he could have had a single for the win, but he didn't take it. He stayed right by our trailer until we were ready to go. That's the kind of guy he is."

Williams Wins Central TAFC Title By One Point

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
Photo courtesy of David Smith

Running on a fraction of some teams' budgets, Kirk and Chris Williams won the Central Region Top Alcohol Funny Car championship over Kris Hool, 299 to 298. "You never think you're having a good year while you're going through it," Williams said. "Then you look up at the end, and you won the championship."

Williams got it by a single point, so a different outcome in any round anywhere all year, and Hool would have won the title. Both scored twice – Hool at Gainesville in February and late in the year at the rain-delayed Topeka event that was completed in Earlville. Williams won his first regional start of the season, in Denver, and at Earlville for what he considers the biggest win of his long career. Williams' season ended one race later with a semifinal loss in Noble, but Hool, who's been touring the country the past two years, had one race left, the Las Vegas event on the penultimate weekend of the season, where he needed to win one round to take the title.

Williams couldn't bear to watch streaming video of the first round – he thought. "It drives you crazy when your destiny is in someone else's hands," said Williams, who won Division 5 championships in 2010, when he swept all five events, and also in 2002. "I told myself I wasn't going to pay any attention to what was going on out in Vegas because watching it wasn't going to change anything. Then Justin [Jacobsen] texted me that they were about to run first round and I headed for the computer. I had to watch."

While Williams looked on helplessly, the championship was decided in his favor when John Lombardo beat Hool, 5.70 to 5.71. "What a relief," Williams said. "It was a trying year. There are times when you question what you're doing and why you even do this, but in the end it's a lot of fun and it's worth it. When you're out here competing against Bartone and Whiteley and people like that, you know you're not going to beat them a whole lot, but sometimes you can still be a pain. Every once in a while, you can still get 'em."

It may not have seemed that way to Williams, but he was a tough all year, reaching the semifinals five times, never falling in the first round, and winning both of his final-round appearances. The only bobble came at Topeka, where qualifying was slashed to one session. The abbreviated format cost Williams, who had to get off the throttle early on his only attempt and missed the cut at one of the toughest races of the year, with superstars Jay Payne and Tony Bartone, who were on their way to Indy for the U.S. Nationals, in attendance.

That race was postponed a week and completed in Earlville on the same weekend as the U.S. Nationals. Hool won, upsetting Bartone in the final, but Williams was right back in it a couple days later with a holeshot victory over Dale Brand in the final round of the regularly scheduled Earlville race.

"That was the highlight of the year," said Williams, who thanked Lucas Oil for their support all season. "We never could have won the race if not for so many people coming together to loan us parts. I'm talking about outsiders with no vested interest, and there was no, 'You'd better replace it if you hurt it.' It was just, 'Here you go. Take it.' They didn't have to, and they asked for nothing in return. One of the guys, we didn't even know. It was amazing. I mean, how many engines out there can you pull a main cap off of and have it fit right in yours?"

Crew chief Chris Williams and the team, including Terry Brees, Martin Brees, Dan Murphey, and Justin Jacobson, got the car to run low e.t. to that point, 5.75, in a first-round win, and Williams edged Brand on a holeshot in the final, 5.79 to 5.75. In the end, it was enough to take the Central crown by a single point.

Veteran Lance Van Hauen finished third with several late-round finishes, including a runner-up to Lombardo at Tulsa. Mike Bell finished fourth in Vern Moats' car, and Brand made the top five with two runner-ups and a semifinal finish in his only three starts all year.

"The car drove Chris and me nuts at times," Williams said. "It was one of those years, and the motor was never happy. One minute the car would haul ass, and the next it couldn't get out of its own way, and we never really did figure out why during the season. I guess we did just enough, but if everybody hadn't banded together to help us in Earlville, we never would have won this championship."

TAN

Whiteley Wins 5th in a Row, Williams Back on Top

Courtesy of the Pro Sportsman Association/Todd Veney

Jim Whiteley won Top Alcohol Dragster for the fifth year in a row at the Western Regional event at Bandimere Speedway, and former Division 5 champion Kirk Williams overcame quicker cars with unerring consistency to score in Top Alcohol Funny Car.

With his fourth win in his last five outings, Whiteley has tied early season points leader Chris Demke atop the national Top Alcohol Dragster standings – and he's done it in two fewer starts. The Grand Junction, Colo., driver dominated this one from start to finish, qualifying No. 1 with a 5.47 and running more than a tenth quicker on his slowest run all weekend than any other driver did on his best.

"I tried to make sure I saw a little more of the bulb than usual before I left," said Whiteley, whose only loss in the last five races came on a -.001 red-light in the Topeka semi's. "It's actually kind of hard to slow yourself down just a little bit on the Tree without slowing down a lot. We've had a decent advantage on the field a time or two over the years, especially here, but never this much."

Whiteley qualified No. 1 with a 5.47 – two-tenths ahead of eventual runner-up Edwin Schmeeckle's 5.67. He cruised through eliminations with a 5.52 on his first-round single, a 5.54 against Greg Hunter, who went off the end of the track in the semifinals, and a 5.56 in the final against Edwin Schmeeckle, who did his job with a .051 reaction time but fell back with a 5.77.

"I just tried to not let anything get to me and not do anything wrong," said Whiteley, who also beat Schmeeckle in the final round of this event in 2008 and 2009, the years he finished second in the national standings. "You're not going to have a tenth on the field like this very often, so when you do, you can't afford to let it get away from you."

Williams, who dominated Division 5 in 2010, winning five events for a perfect season, qualified No. 3 this time with a 5.89 – well behind Las Vegas regional winner Annie Whiteley's 5.74 and national points leader Tony Bartone's 5.76. "It really knocks the wind out of your sails when you see people running that much better than you are," Williams said, "but this just goes to show that consistency outweighs everything. You won't always win with consistency, but you can win a lot. The track just couldn't take those 5.70 runs, and eventually, it came to us."

Williams struggled with the conditions just like everyone else at the mile-high facility, where the corrected altitude was just short of 10,000 feet, but his team, led by brother Chris Williams and Justin Jacobsen, made three runs within a hundredth of a second of one another in eliminations, a 5.90, 5.91, and 5.91 – all at 242 mph. Williams took out veteran Lance Van Hauen in the opening round with a 5.90 and ran a 5.91 in the semifinals against Mike Bell, who was making his first start in 15-time Division 5 champion Vern Moats' car.

"It smoked the tires on that one, and I don't mean 'hazed' the tires; I mean smoke was pouring off them at about 60 feet," Williams said. "I don't know why, but it cleared up, and the car took off. I still can't believe it made it."

The final against Gainesville regional winner Kris Hool, who also was running steady 5.90s, ended early when Hool red-lighted with a -.042 reaction time. "I saw his car when the yellows came down and thought, 'Man, I just got Tree'd,' but then I saw my win-light on at the top end and knew he red-lighted," Williams said. "There was a pretty good crowd on hand, and I wanted to give them a good show, so I stayed in it."