Tim Wilkerson may have lost his semifinal match with Matt Hagan at the Texas NHRA Fall Nationals at the Texas Motorplex, but a season-best elapsed time in Sunday eliminations gave the driver/tuner of the SCAG Power Equipment/Levi, Ray & Shoup Ford Mustang a confidence boost. Knowing he has a Maynard Wilkerson Racing hot rod that can consistently run in the 3.80-second range, Wilkerson is already looking forward to the next race as the 2023 NHRA Camping World Series season starts to wrap up.
In qualifying, Wilkerson started the weekend with a strong baseline run in Friday’s first session before laying down a 3.884-second pass at 317.80 MPH to go into Saturday as the provisional No. 7 qualifier. He had to lift off the throttle in the third session on Saturday, but came back in the final session and recorded a 3.879 E.T. to qualify No. 9 in a nearly all-3-second field.
Wilkerson was one half of NHRA’s Funny Car marquee matchup with Alexis DeJoria. It was a nailbiter, as Wilkerson had the starting line advantage while DeJoria had traction issues, but Wilkerson encountered his own issues late in the run. He held on to get the win, but lost lane choice to Bob Tasca III in the second round. That didn’t matter, though, since Wilkerson used a season-best 3.866-second performance to power past Tasca and his 3.921 E.T. Wilkerson’s SCAG Power Equipment entry slowed a bit in the semifinals, dropping a side-by-side race with Matt Hagan.
“We had some real weird conditions on Sunday,” said Wilkerson, who won the Fall Nationals in 2008. “The sun was out, track was good, all kinds of people were smoking the tires, but the air was so good early. That got us in trouble first round. We came back for the second round and fixed it and it went good. Last round, the clouds came in before the last run and I didn’t have enough clutch on it. It just ruined the clutch, so it slowed down two or three hundredths. We had a good car today and the guys performed well and I’m real happy for everybody here, but I really wanted to be in the finals.”
Wilkerson went into the weekend seventh in points ahead of Alexis DeJoria and John Force by just a few points. He slipped one spot to eighth, but he’s less than two rounds behind No. 5-ranked Force going into the next race on tour, the NHRA Nevada Nationals, Oct. 27-29, at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
