Tim Wilkerson brought another new chassis out on Sunday during yesterday's testing at Palm Beach International Raceway testing, making one aborted lap followed by one nearly full-pull, and although he posted his best lap of the weekend on the second attempt (a 4.198 at 284.62 mph) it was the construction of the new chassis that had the attention of the other testing pros in West Palm.  The new McKinney chassis features front suspension, with struts and springs attached to the beefy A-arms.   It is the first McKinney Funny Car with a suspension system, and represents a radical departure from the norm.

On the first lap, the new car ran well to nearly half-track but began drifting left and, when Wilkerson lifted off the throttle, the move toward the wall became more abrupt.  The Levi, Ray & Shoup veteran was able to keep the LRS Mustang out of harm's way, but adjustments had to be made to a body strut to correct a problem related to the left front tire rubbing across a diagonal support.

Making one more pass, late on Sunday afternoon, Wilkerson made his clean 4.19 run and reported no handling issues with the new pipe.

"It's a pretty cool car, and once we got that tire-rub issue fixed, it drove like a sedan," Wilkerson said.  "We've been discussing this car with NHRA and Murf McKinney, and I really wanted to bring it out here and test it out.  As far as I can tell, with today's second lap and another test lap we made earlier this off-season, in Valdosta (Ga.), I think it has a ton of promise.   The concept is to take some of the violent action away, which is always a dangerous and dicy thing when you're going as fast as we go, while you give the driver some more calm control over the car.  So far, it seems to do that.

"I'm always interested in new ideas and new approaches, and this one is different enough that we had a parade of guys from other Funny Car teams coming over here to see it.  I'm not into the whole 'put a towel over it and don't let anyone in' kind of thing, so we let everyone take a look.  And, of course, anyone who was here could watch us run, to see how it worked.  The second run worked better than the first, so maybe we're on to something. 

"It was kind of like being a test pilot, and pretty exciting, but it went great.  We weren't trying to set any kind of low E.T. on the run, and our tune-up was pretty soft out there in the middle, but the best thing to do was just get it to the other end, to see how it would react, and it earned a passing grade from me.  We think this will be a safer car, and (Force Racing crew chief) John Medlen has had a lot of input on this design, as part of their dedication to making this class as safe as it can be.  Like anything, it will probably be a work in progress for a while, but this was a very good testing day for this car and we feel real good about it."