Father’s Day was last week but Tim Wilkerson felt a special need this weekend to be a dad.

 

After watching Scott Kalitta lose his life in a racing accident on Saturday afternoon, he felt the need to call his son Daniel.

The 20-year old, second-generation Wilkerson has aspirations to become a nitro Funny Car driver and has piloted his dad’s car on occasion.

Wilkerson just wanted to remind his son how dangerous the sport can be. He tried his best to understand how Connie Kalitta was feeling. Such a thought was too painful for him to imagine.

Father’s Day was last week but Tim Wilkerson felt a special need this weekend to be a dad.

 

After watching Scott Kalitta lose his life in a racing accident on Saturday afternoon, he felt the need to call his son Daniel.

The 20-year old, second-generation Wilkerson has aspirations to become a nitro Funny Car driver and has piloted his dad’s car on occasion.

Wilkerson just wanted to remind his son how dangerous the sport can be. He tried his best to understand how Connie Kalitta was feeling. Such a thought was too painful for him to imagine.

“I told my son I love him and make sure he knew how dangerous this is,” Wilkerson recalled. “Being 20 years old this is the perfect answer I thought I’d get out of him…’Oh well Dad you know it’s okay.’ So you know he wanted to make sure I was alright.

“For all fathers out there it was a tough day. Here at the race track, even crew members. I talked to every crew member before the finals between every round; everyone had a somber look on their face.”

Lost in the pain was Wilkerson’s tenth national event victory, and ninth in the nitro Funny Car division. He extended his point lead over second place Ashley Force to 132 points.

Points were the least of Wilkerson’s concern. His concerns were clearly focused on the shutdown area of the track which has led many racers in the pits to call for a reduction from the standard 1320-foot racing surface.

“I went down and looked at the end and no I wasn’t confident,” Wilkerson said. “I don’t like the net, I think it’s too short. The sand trap is too short. That’s the bottom line. It was before and it still is. I’m not going to sugarcoat that. In my opinion, Scott’s tragedy at the speed he was going, I don’t know if anything would’ve saved his life but there needs to be standards – and this place is below them.

“That’s all there is to it for a shutdown area. So I’m not going to talk about that anymore because I’m not going to slam the track. It’s a great facility and a great family. If you look at it, it’s too short. Especially if you drive down there, you look and say holy moly; it’s a lot shorter than anything we’ve had.”

In the end, Wilkerson put the weekend’s experience in perspective.

“You come to the race track, you always think there is a chance of something happening to somebody but you never believe that,” Wilkerson said. “You just race the race and we all enjoy it. It’s what we do for a living. It sounds cliché but after some tragedy goes on, it really puts it in perspective that there needs to be a safer way to make a living if this is what’s going to happen from time to time.

“I think we really need to address that and if we don’t learn something from the tragedies, it’s not a good race. Knowing Scott the way I knew Scott, he would’ve wanted us to come out here and race because he was that kind of guy. You know he’s part of Connie and Connie is a racer and he loves the sport like we all do. With that in mind, we all came to the race track with the intention of winning. That’s the only way you get through these tragedies, in my opinion, is to put your heart and soul into what you do and you hope for the best.”