WILKERSON: CONSISTENCY IS KEY
Last Year’s Contender Fights for Consistency in 2009 …
Last season, Tim Wilkerson made winning look so effortless.
This season has been a greater challenge for Wilkerson, which comes as no surprise.
He knew after finishing runner-up for the championship last year, that the expectations would be lofty in 2009.
That’s why Wilkerson’s toughest challenge at present is to find the
right balance between a healthy effort and trying too hard. The driver
of the Levi, Ray & Shoup Shelby Cobra has finally clawed his way
back into the top ten in points.
"One of the real direct things between drag racing and other sports is
the tendency to try too hard, and you see that all the time," Wilkerson
said. "You can't score a 21-point touchdown, and you can't hit a
six-run home run, so trying to get it all back or take over the world
in one big shot just doesn't work. I get impatient too, just like
anyone, but once we left Pomona we knew we had to focus on doing
everything like we've always done it. You just go step by step with
everything under control. When you try to do too much, you over-step it
and just go backwards.
"Whether it's qualifying or racing on Sunday, you have to be calm about
how you're attacking each lap and you can't get too excited about
jumping all over one pass, unless you have one of those free shots
where you can go ahead and lean on it a little to see what's out there.
On Sunday, if you're racing a car that's been faster than you, you
still have to race the track. How many times do you see the slower car
go up there and instantly smoke the tires, which just hands the round
to the other guy? It happens all the time, but we try not to fall into
that. We try to just go up there and go as quick and fast as we can,
and then hope for the best. Hopefully, we'll leave the mistakes to the
other guys."
Wilkerson opened the 2009 season with an unceremonious DNQ when rain
abbreviated qualifying to just one day. He’s since rebounded with
impressive consistency in winning the first round in five of the last
six events.
At the last two races, in Atlanta and St. Louis, Wilkerson has shown
flashes of the same impressive performances of 2008. He's not been the
fastest, nor the quickest, at any event, but he's almost always been
one of the most consistent.
"We still do need to get a little faster, because the really tight
races against the quickest cars are really a toss-up, at this point,"
Wilkerson said. "We went up there to race Del (Worsham) in the second
round at St. Louis, and that race gave us a pretty good idea about
where we stand. We were basically dead even, from reaction time to the
finish line, but we lost and Del went on to win the race. We don't
want to change the approach at all, we just need to find a little more
in terms of speed and e.t., and then some of those laps might start to
fall our way, one after another.
"We could've gone up there against Del and tried to make a big jump,
maybe trying to pick up three or four hundredths thinking we needed to
be heroes, but that probably wouldn't have worked. We just went up
there to make our best lap, and it was a great race that just happened
to go the other way. Now, if we just keep pecking away at it and pick
up just a little, we could do some damage out here."
Wilkerson isn’t busy counting points. He knows the time points will
count the most is when the tour rolls into Indianapolis for the annual
NHRA U.S. Nationals. That’s the cutoff race for the Countdown to the
Championship.
"Yeah, you really can't get too hung up on it right now," Wilkerson
said. "You can drive yourself nuts, and probably get off your game a
little, if you let the points deal eat you up. If we have a good
weekend in Bristol, we'll probably move up a little higher, but if
things don't go our way we'll probably fall back out of the Top 10. We
still have 11 races to go, before the Countdown, so we have to approach
the points exactly the same way we approach every lap. We'll just stay
with the program, try to get better, and try not to pay attention to
the other stuff. It will all sort itself out."
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