It’s been a long time since this happened but Tim Wilkerson will head into Saturday not qualified.  Even though Wilkerson’s Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevrolet Impala SS made two consistent runs which put him in the No. 13 spot tonight at the Schuck’s Auto Supply Nationals; he fell under the new qualifying ruling where only the top 12 cars qualify on Friday.  Wilkerson and the other non-qualifiers will have their Friday runs thrown out and must start from scratch on Saturday. It’s been a long time since this happened but Tim Wilkerson will head into Saturday not qualified.  Even though Wilkerson’s Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevrolet Impala SS made two consistent runs which put him in the No. 13 spot tonight at the Schuck’s Auto Supply Nationals; he fell under the new qualifying ruling where only the top 12 cars qualify on Friday.  Wilkerson and the other non-qualifiers will have their Friday runs thrown out and must start from scratch on Saturday.

Wilkerson ran 4.118 at 299.06 mph on his first qualifying pass and even though he tuned it up, it slowed slightly to a 4.125 on the evening run.

“We don’t like not being in,” said Wilkerson, “but I feel that we’ll be okay tomorrow.  We made good runs today, but just not quite good enough.  The track is so good and the air is so good and we just didn’t get our clutch right.  We tuned it up for our second pass, but it just blew through the clutch.

“We’ve already made some changes our clutch and if we can get it to cooperate tomorrow, we should be good.”