Taliaferro Hires Norm Grimes for 2014 Championship Run

Courtesy of Pro Race Communications
Photo courtesy of David Smith/PSA

 

ODESSA, Texas – After making the transition back to the blown alcohol combination last year, NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster driver Mark Taliaferro and his Markco Machine Works sponsored team have retained the services of seven-time national champion Crew Chief Norm Grimes for 2014. Grimes has most recently tuned Jim Whiteley to back-to-back national championships the past two years.

When Whiteley made the decision to step out of the seat of his Top Alcohol Dragster around the middle of last season, the wheels were set in motion to get Grimes hooked up with Taliaferro.

“I had a few talks with Jim, and he let me know that he planned to step out of the seat at the end of last season and that Norm would be available,” said Taliaferro (pronounced Tal-if-er). “It’s not every day that someone with Norm’s credentials becomes available. As a matter of fact, there are few with Norm’s credentials, period. We worked things out to where he would come to work with us for 2014. He helped us some towards the end of last year, but his main focus was winning the Championship for Jim.

“When we came back into the Top Alcohol Dragster class, it was with the intentions of being able to compete for a National Championship,” Taliaferro continued. “We made the switch back to the blown combination this past year because guys like Whiteley and Demke were having a lot of success with it. Now that we have Norm in our camp, we are looking forward to making a strong run for it this year.”

Despite having Grimes in his corner, Taliaferro is quick to point out a national title will be no easy task.

“Even with the best parts, people, everything, it is a tough job to try to win a championship,” commented Taliaferro. “There are some awful good racers out there gunning for the same title and it remains to be seen how the A/Fuel cars will run this year with 1% more nitro and colder fuel. I’m sure it will be a dog fight, but we’re going to do everything we can to be in the middle of it. We would really like to go make a good showing for our sponsors Markco Machine Works, W74 Oil Tools, Taurus Manufacturing and MCO Construction this year.”

Taliaferro and his Markco Machine Works team will kick the 2014 season off at the season-opening Circle K Winternationals at Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, Calif., Feb. 6-9.

Markco Machine Works is an API Licensee for manufacture of new Blow Out Preventers, as well as re-manufacture and repair of blowout preventers. Markco also manufactures wellhead equipment and is a supplier of BOP replacement parts. Find out more at www.markcomachineworks.com

W74 Oil Tools is your one-stop resource for downhole fishing tools and oilfield support services. Located in the Permian Basin of West Texas, one of the largest oilfields in North America, we have over 35 years of fishing tool experience. Through decades of servicing national and independent companies, we have established a name representing quality and reliability. Find out more at www.W74.com

MCO Construction, leaders in oilfield fabrication and maintenance, was established in 1975. Along with fabrication and maintenance, MCO offers services in pipe cleaning, reclamation systems and CNC plasma cutting and machining. Find out more at www.MCOConstruction.com

 

Whiteley Dominates Denver for 6th Straight Year

Courtesy of YNot Racing

With his sixth win in a row at the West Central divisional/regional at Denver's Bandimere Speedway, defending national champion Jim Whiteley reclaimed the Top Alcohol Dragster points lead. "What can I say?" he asked. "I love racing here."

Hands down, it's the J&A Service/YNot Racing team's most dominant performance to date at Bandimere: Whiteley had the entire field covered by the unheard of margin of a full quarter-second.

In qualifying, the Norm Grimes-tuned dragster ran between 5.44 and 5.46 in all three sessions while no one else in the field ran better than 5.70s. "I don't know if I've ever had that much of an advantage on the field before," Whiteley said. "It's almost more pressure than when a bunch of other people are running right with you."

After the opening round, it was more of the same in eliminations. Free to use his first-round run as another test run when opponent Kevin Wayman was unable to repair breakage suffered in qualifying, Whiteley smoked the tires and shut off. "It didn't go three inches," he said.

Against Dean Dubbin, who disqualified himself with a foul start in the semifinals, Whiteley advanced with an on-and-off-the-gas 5.69 that was still quicker than any other driver ran all weekend. "I had it at half-throttle at one point and it was still spinning the tires," he said. "We took some gear ratio out and some timing out for the final, and the car ran better than we expected it to."

A 5.47 in the money round knocked out No. 2 qualifier Greg Hunter, who was in a Lucas Oil Series final for the first time in his career, and put the J&A Service/YNot Racing driver back on top in the back-and-forth battle for the national championship. "We needed a weekend like this," Whiteley said. "Nobody is running away with it this year, and it might go right down to the finals at Pomona."

Whiteley Begins Title Defense With Victory

Courtesy of Todd Veney

With a final-round victory over arch-rival Chris Demke at the season-opening Winternationals in Pomona, Calif., Jim Whiteley opened his Top Alcohol Dragster championship defense by assuming the early 2013 lead. In a fitting final between the top two blown-alcohol racers of the past five years, Whiteley and Demke each made his best run of the long weekend when it mattered most.

Whiteley gained an imperceptible early lead with a .036 reaction time and drove the YNot Racing dragster to low e.t. of the meet, 5.24. Demke, who qualified No. 2 at Pomona and finished second to Whiteley in the 2012 standings, also had a good light and wasn't far behind with a 5.27 in a match decided by less than a car length.

"That was a great race," said Whiteley, whose head-to-head record against Demke now stands at 11-4. "For a while there, I wasn't sure if they were going to make it because they tore up some stuff in the semifinals, but they did and Chris really made a race of it. We ran each other in qualifying too, and a guy like him really brings out the racer in you."

The victory was Whiteley's 20th in national competition and came in just his 58th start, meaning that he's won more than a third of all the national events in his career, the highest percentage in Top Alcohol Dragster history for a driver with that many starts. "If you ask me, I'm still behind the motor a little bit right now," he said. "I'm not as quick on the lights as I was, and I'm still not shifting it right every time. If you short-shift, it kills the e.t., and if you hit the rev-limiter, that hurts the e.t., too. [Crew chief] Norm [Grimes] wants me to keep the rpm up there because if you don't, the clutch doesn't lock up, and that really hurts performance."

You'd never know it by looking at the numbers: Whiteley qualified No. 1 with a 5.25 and had low e.t. of all four rounds, with a 5.28 against 1993 Winternationals winner Brooks Brown, a 5.31 against last year's runner-up, Larry Miersch, another 5.28 opposite Joey Severance in the semi's, and the 5.24 against Demke in the final.

"This new combination really shows a lot of potential, and I just have to get used to driving this way," Whiteley said. "I've been on the chip on both the 1-2 and 2-3 shifts, and I'm still struggling a little at this point. The window is pretty narrow – 10,000 is too low, and 10,800 is too high – and there's not much difference between them. After about 9,000, the rpm comes up really fast."

Wife Annie, who won the 2012 West Region championship as a rookie, was upset in the first round of Top Alcohol Funny Car eliminations. She qualified a strong third, but, like seven of the top eight qualifiers, didn't make it out of round one. Tire-shake in low gear cost the YNot Mustang a tenth and a half, and Whiteley slowed from her 5.58 qualifying pace to a 5.73, which left her just short of two-time Winternationals runner-up Bret Williamson's 5.70.

"I had to short-shift," she said. "I didn't want to because that always costs you at least a tenth, but if I hadn't, the car never would have made it to the finish line. It's just one race, though. The important thing is that Jim won."

TAN