After making one of the best passes in the first round of eliminations at the betway NHRA Carolina Nationals at zMAX Dragway, Tim Wilkerson got a little too aggressive in his second-round match with Matt Hagan on Sunday afternoon. The hot track couldn’t hold Wilkerson’s SCAG Power Equipment/Levi, Ray & Shoup Ford Mustang Funny Car, marking the end of Wilkerson’s time at the second event of the six-race NHRA Countdown to the Championship.
Wilkerson, who is competing in his 15th Countdown, opened qualifying with a 3.900-second lap to end Friday as the provisional No. 4 qualifier. He improved to a 3.876 E.T. in the second session before driving into tire smoke nearly immediately in the third and final qualifying session, ending up No. 7 on the final qualifying order.
The first round of Funny Car eliminations on Sunday morning saw numerous higher qualified drivers bow out. Wilkerson emerged unscathed, though, as he left the line first against No. 10 qualifier Cruz Pedregon and laid down a 3.918-second pass at 329.91 MPH to beat Pedregon’s tire-smoking 4.822 E.T. He was the third-quickest driver of the round, but not quick enough to get lane choice over Matt Hagan in the second round. There, Wilkerson left first by .002 seconds and held an early lead before losing traction and lifting to a 4.543 E.T., while Hagan won with a 3.996-second pass.
“I’m a little disappointed in my second-round appearance, of course,” said Wilkerson, the 2021 event champion. “We had a good car first round, and a good car throughout qualifying. I really didn’t think it would do what it did there during round two. It would be easy to blame the lane, but after I looked at what I did there, I was probably a little too greedy from 200 to 500 feet and the car just didn’t like it. Anyhow, we’ll go to St. Louis and put this in our memory bank, and when the track gets to be 120 degrees, we need to do a better job next time.”
The next stop on the 2023 NHRA Camping World Series schedule is a home race for Wilkerson, the longtime owner and operator of a NAPA AutoCare Center in Springfield, Ill. The No. 7 ranked Maynard Wilkerson Racing team will briefly return to its home base before making the 90-mile drive south to World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Ill., for the NHRA Midwest Nationals on Sept. 29 – Oct. 1.
This story was originally published on September 25, 2023. 
