Tim Wilkerson is always thinking.
 
Sometimes it gets him into trouble, as it did a week ago at Charlotte, when he tried a strategy that didn't work and left him and his Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Ford Mustang with a DNQ.
 
But sometimes it pushes Wilkerson to the top of the Funny Car class. That's what happened Saturday when he was declared the No. 1 qualifier for the O'Reilly Super Start Batteries Fall Nationals after a third-session rain delay of more than five hours.

Tim Wilkerson is always thinking.
 
Sometimes it gets him into trouble, as it did a week ago at Charlotte, when he tried a strategy that didn't work and left him and his Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Ford Mustang with a DNQ.
 
But sometimes it pushes Wilkerson to the top of the Funny Car class. That's what happened Saturday when he was declared the No. 1 qualifier for the O'Reilly Super Start Batteries Fall Nationals after a third-session rain delay of more than five hours.
 
With a new combination that he's starting warm up to, confidence from a sponsorship extension from Dick Levi for 2011, and a little bit of lucky timing, Wilkerson will lead the class in eliminations Sunday at the Texas Motorplex with a 4.079-second pass at 305.77 mph.
 
Wilkerson's constant deliberation left him a bit puzzled earlier in the week about what his mindset should be.      
 
He knew that, as always, he would show up, planning to win the event. ("You never go to the starting line thinking you don't care if you win or not," he said. "We always want to win.)
 
But slipping to eighth place, 163 points off pace, with just four races to go after his ill-timed failure to qualify had him calculating. He had one foot in the "comeback" camp and the other in the "test-mode" camp.
 
 "The only thing I'm thinking about right now is those 10 rounds we probably need," he said as he prepared to arrive at the Ennis, Texas, all-concrete supertrack. "If we come out of there still in the position we're in now, you have to start thinking about trying new stuff and testing on the fly for the rest of the season."
 
However, Wilkerson wouldn't give up on the notion that he could pull off an upset.
 
"Dallas is the big one for us, right now, if we want to think in terms of the championship," he said. "We need to have a really good weekend, and by that I mean we need to probably get to the final round or win the race if we want to have even a distant chance. That's a lot of rounds in four races, but we're going to Dallas with the idea of picking up three or four of them on some people, and then the strategy gets a little more realistic. If we can bite off a big chunk, we have a chance."
 
He bit off a big chunk, if you will, besting No. 2 qualifier Ashley Force Hood by more than two-hundredths of a second Saturday to claim his first top spot of the season and first in 60- events (since the May 2008 St. Louis race).
 
One other matter was in the back of his mind: "On top of that, we'll need some help, because some of those teams ahead of us need to lose." No one has lost an elimination round yet, but he picked up some bonus points Saturday and saw the cancellation of the fourth qualifying session rob other Countdown hopefuls of the chance to start better on the ladder and maybe earn some bonus markers.
 
Moreover, Wilkerson saw non-Countdown driver Jeff Arend assert himself again, this time as No. 3 qualifier, and saw Cruz Pedregon, who missed the cut but won at Charlotte, nail down the No. 6 starting position. And he saw the lineup pit leader John Force against teammate and reigning champion Robert Hight in Sunday's first round. So the opportunities are there for Wilkerson to use that new combination to its fullest.
 
Trouble is, Wilkerson isn't sure what the new combination might throw at him, let alone what it might throw at his opponents. But he said Saturday he's getting a better idea.
 
"We have a new combination we're testing," he said. "I don’t know if I know how to run it yet. We won’t find out until tomorrow. I think I do. Hopefully I can prove we're not as dumb as we look or at least as dumb as we looked last weekend. We just had a bad weekend last weekend, and we need to come back in order to stay in this chase. If the right people lose, maybe we can get right back in the middle of it."
 
Again he said he's "not sure I know how to race this combination yet. It's a little trickier than what I used to have. It's fast. And a fast car is an evil car. So we have to learn to run it."
 
Although this is a splendid rebound from the Charlotte DNQ, Wilkerson said, 'I don't get wound up about that stuff. I'm very methodical. I run the racetrack I can run. I try to base every run on the racetrack. I just do the best I can do every weekend. We're happy to be here, fortunate to be here."
 
He announced Levi's continued presence with his team and said, "Dick Levi is backing us again next year. For Dick Levi, I'm happy that we did well here."
 
Wilkerson said he "figured somebody else would run faster." And he said the long rain delay "played into our hands, quite frankly. I felt more confident about everything I did, every decision I was going to make when the sun went down."  
 
So is Tim Wilkerson back? He's on his way. But he knows he has to knuckle down and do his job Sunday for anyone to consider him on a roll.
 
"It's a nice rebound for us after Charlotte, so now we just have to capitalize a bit on Sunday. If you overlook Dale Creasy you're about as stupid as a fence post, because that guy won a lot of races and the championship over in IHRA, so they know how to race. There is no doubt about that. We'll go out there and race the lane, and hope we get to the stripe first, just like we would if we were racing John Force or anyone else. We'll let the chips fall where they fall, but we hope to have a good day."

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