One on One with Tim Wilkerson

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Wed, 4 Jun 2008, 11:20 PM

Wilkerson Pads Funny Car Points Lead after Runner-up Finish at Topeka

Courtesy of Pontiac/Chevrolet Trackside Communications
Photo copyright 2008 Auto Imagery, Inc.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. --

Tim Wilkerson

With three final-round appearances in the last five races, including a runner-up finish to John Force in the just-completed NHRA Summer Nationals at Topeka, veteran Funny Car driver Tim Wilkerson is riding a wave of momentum into this weekend's Torco Racing Fuels Route 66 NHRA Nationals at Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Ill. In fact, the driver of the Levi, Ray, & Shoup Chevy Impala SS sits atop the Funny Car standings with an 81-point cushion over second-place Ashley Force going into the 10th race on the 24-race NHRA POWERade Series.

After a self-admitted performance drought the last couple of years, the likable 47-year-old Illinois native seemed to turn the corner towards the end of last year with two semifinal-round appearances in the season's final three races, and that momentum has carried over to 2008 where the single-car owner/driver is the only Funny Car driver with multiple wins (Las Vegas, St. Louis), and he leads the class with four No. 1 qualifiers. Wilkerson sat down recently for a Q&A session on his strong start to the 2008 season.

Wilkerson vs. Force
How did it feel winning at Las Vegas? "Even after such a long drought of going to the winner's circle, and we've come close a couple of times, the car was running fine and I was pretty confident that it was just a matter of time before everything came together. We had a good chance at Gainesville and Houston both, but I let us down at Gainesville and then the car put a hole out in Houston, so we're happy with the win at Las Vegas. But that's behind us now and we're not even going to think about it. We're going to go to each race and do the same thing we've been doing all year which is just trying to qualify as high as we can, win some rounds, and hopefully by the time we get to Indy we'll be in good position."

You and the team seem to have a lot of confidence now. "Yea, we really do. I felt like that leaving Pomona the first race of the year. The car is really responding, and everything I ask it to do, it does. As long as I don't get off track or get greedy, I think it's going to be okay. I think it's just been a carry-over from last year."

Despite just being a single-car team, do you think you've been on the right track this season? "People have been asking, 'Wow, how come you're running so well?' I really think it's a carry over from last year. At the Finals at Pomona we were the fastest car down the track more than once and just got beat in the semis by a little bit, at Reading we ran good, at Richmond we ran good, and at Dallas we were No. 1 qualifier and ran good. So I just figured what I did wrong at those races and how I could better prepare myself for each round.

Tim Wilkerson
"I have Jeff Jacobs, my team manager and car chief, he has been with me for five or six years now, and then Rich Schendel, who worked for Schumacher Racing on the U.S. Army car and on our car is in charge of pulling the cylinder head on and off plus doing all of the blower maintenance. They get together and look at the racetrack and all three of us kind of concur on what my thought processes are on how the car should go down the track before each run. We've kind of got a little system built up based on the track temperature, the track condition, how I think I have the motor tuned up and all of that - that's how we determine what to do. If you watch us, we wait until we're three or four cars away from running before I'll put the timing curve in it and before I'll make the clutch change, and that's been working pretty well. We've got a little chart figured on all of our different scenarios, and the chart messes us up every once in awhile, but after that we figure out what to do with it again and away we go."

Things have really seemed to come together for your team. "There's just a nice chemistry with the team and the car's being prepared well. We've gone all of these runs and haven't oiled the track and we haven't been leaking. Even the young kids have fit right in. They're in their middle 20s and they're going to make mistakes, but who doesn't? I make mistakes tuning the thing. It's no big deal and we're all just working hard on it. Minimizing the mistakes is what makes the car run good, there's no doubt about that. That's what happened to us the first two races of the year. At Pomona we broke an exhaust valve, and then at Phoenix I got all tangled up in the brake lever. I mean, what are the chances of that happening? But as we go along we have little pow-wows and talk about what's the best way to keep from having these mistakes happening again. As we do that, the car seems to be responding.

"On Saturday at Las Vegas was the first time in like 36 runs that I smoked the tires that close to the starting line. The last 10 years that I've been tuning the car I've always lived and died by running the car simply on clutch because I didn't have the motor that everybody else had, I didn't have the good blowers and I didn't have all of that stuff. Running the car that way is a little more of a problem on tricky racetracks because it ends up with high wheel spin when it leaves the starting line. But last year in the middle of the year I decided I'm not going to do that anymore, I'm just going to figure out how to make 60-foots as quick as I can without being dangerous, and that's what we started doing. When we started that the car started running well, and now, believe it or not, I've got the car in the top-five 60-foot times every run it makes, so now I'm back getting greedy again. But it's safe and that's what makes it good."

When you're running well like you are now, are you tempted to try and swing for the fence? "Oh yeah, that's what I did Saturday at Las Vegas. Usually I don't do that, but regardless of what the other guy does in the other lane, you've got to run your car. Especially on race day, I don't care what anybody else does. I figure if my car will run 4.90 in a lane, then that's what I try and run. If somebody in the other lane runs 4.80 and beats me, then good job. In qualifying, you can maybe get away with taking a big swing at it, especially if you're sitting No. 1 or No. 2 anyway, but I wouldn't do it on race day, I guarantee it, I don't care what anybody else does."

In the off-season you entered into an alliance with Don Prudhomme and his Top Fuel team. "Yea, that's obviously working out well. Just the availability of more thought patterns is great. I don't use those guys a whole lot for that kind of stuff, but there's probably once or twice a weekend that I'll walk over there with some question after staring at my data and going through my own mind what I think is right or wrong. I'll just go over there and bounce it off of those guys and they'll tell me their opinion. Most of the time what they've got on the dragster does not apply, but Todd worked on Gary Densham's Funny Car for awhile, so he's got a pretty good grasp on what happens with Funny Cars, so he's got some good ideas. Sometime after that I won't even make a decision for two or three races, and then I'll think that particular scenario might work in these conditions and might not be a bad idea so I'll try and apply it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

"But it's really has been a good situation. We lost a fuel pump in Houston in the second qualifier, and what are the chances of that happening. It was making a real nice run, truckin' right down the track next to Cruz, who ended up low e.t., and then the thing lost almost 15 gallons of fuel. It burnt the motor up and, of course, I'm in deep depression with my head hanging down. Don comes over and asked what happened because the car looked so good leaving the starting line. I told him it didn't have any gas and he told me to get that fuel pump off of the car and get it over to them so they could flow it. I thought, 'Wow, I've never had that opportunity before.' That kind of stuff is really going a long way. 'Snake's' really helping us out more than you know. Every cylinder head I've got came from him; they're all used parts off of his Funny Car (driven by Tommy Johnson Jr.) from last year. And I spent all day Friday and some of the day on Saturday at his shop in Indy last week running clutches and blowers again on his dyno. Even at Las Vegas some of the guys came over and helped us with an engine change before the finals. What a terrific deal that was. A couple of the guys who had worked on Funny Cars before came over and I thought that was pretty cool. We hurt the motor against Ron (Capps) in the semis and I don't know if we would've got done without them."

Talk about your sponsor, Levi, Ray & Shoup, and what they've meant to you. "When you run badly the sponsor's usually the first one to call, right? And we've been basically two-and-a-half years not running very well, but Dick Levi has stayed right in there with us and not thrown me under the bus or threatened pulling the sponsorship, so God bless him. He just says I know you're working hard and says that's what it takes. He's just a terrific guy, and another company that he's involved with, Diversified Yacht Services, came on the car at Gainesville since they're out of Ft. Meyers, Fla., and now they want to stay on the rest of the year and that's just terrific. That's sure going to help us out."

Wilkerson with family and crew.
What about the support you get from your family? "I couldn't do this without the support of my family. My wife Krista is just so cool, there's no doubt about that. There's always a running gag that we never do any good unless she's there, and she was there in Las Vegas. We're not near the race team, or at least I'm not, without her around. That's a very important part of this equation. My daughter, Rachel, is taking dance so if there's a recital on a race weekend both of them will have to do that, but other than that they'll both be at all of the races this summer. Heck, it aggravates me if I have to miss them so hopefully I can see her some. My son Kevin, he's going to go to every race and he actually helps on the car in the summer, helps the clutch guy and he just loves this car. In fact, he'd probably rather get a job on the car than he would work or go to school. He just drives me crazy. He's a good worker, but I want to encourage something besides racing. Although it's been good to us, you never get paid for the amount of time you spend on these cars. Daniel, he's finishing his second year of college and is going for his bachelor's degree in accounting. He wants to go racing, but I told him what better opportunity could he have than being young with the chance to finish school while your dad can give you a chance to do this if you want to. But he has to finish what's important. He'll run his Alcohol Funny Car on a limited schedule again this year, probably only six or seven Division races and three or four national events. We don't have a lot of sponsorship for that car. Who knows, some day he can go to a team owner and say in between the time he's running his race car he'll make sure his books are done."

What do you hope to accomplish as you go forward this season? "We just don't want to get cocky and we don't want to get lazy. We're going to try and figure out how to make our car run every weekend. We'd like to go into the Western Swing in a good position. We're going to have a new car starting at Denver and Murf McKinney's working on that for us. We're going to have it in the next three weeks or so. You'll probably see us stay at Chicago and test, and maybe at Norwalk, but we really need to get that thing dialed in.

"So we've got a lot of good things to come, I hope. I got the guys together just the other day and told them we've still got a lot of pitches left to be thrown at us so we've got to keep our eye on the ball. Just because we got a home run doesn't mean we don't need to get on base again. There's still a long way to go. Like everybody else, once you win a round of racing you feel good, and once you win two you feel pretty good, but, boy, after you win a race you think I can get used to this. So we're going to knuckle down and try and keep our head on straight."