Having a his weekend’s O’Reilly Midwest Nationals at Gateway
International Raceway just 90 miles from home makes Springfield, Ill.
native, Tim Wilkerson in his Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevrolet Impala SS
Funny Car the local favorite.  And giving powerhouse Wilkerson home
track advantage and support gives him the added incentive to continue
the staggering performance he has been enjoying this season.

Wilkerson is experiencing one of the best years of his career.  He has
chalked up three No. 1 qualifiers, one win, and sits No. 2 in POWERade
Championship points and No. 3 in U.S. Smokeless Showdown points.  But
the talented driver and tuner knows that he and his team need to keep a
level head in order to stay abreast of the tough competition.

The three-day Pacific Street Car Association’s (PSCA) K&N Filters
Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway now resides in the
record books.  Kelly Bluebaugh of Phoenix topped the Pro Street class
with a final-round win over John Mihovetz of Ontario, Calif., but
Giuseppe Gentile also caused quite a stir.

With the quarter-mile strip back in its usual excellent form, as
prepared by the LVMS track crew, Gentile’s 2008 Mustang “doorslammer”
shattered the PSCA’s Pro Street elapsed time (ET) record.  Gentile, of
Sun Valley, Calif., bettered the old mark with a pass of 6.297 seconds
at 226.05 mph.  The old ET record (6.357 sec.) was set by Mihovetz at
Firebird Raceway on Oct. 7, 2007.

Ron Lummus of Anaheim, Calif., defeated Rich Zehring of San Jose, Calif., for Outlaw Street honors.

The Extreme Drag Radial class was won by Matt Schmidt over Steve Short of Mission Hills, Calif.

Summit Motorsports Park racers have the largest points fund in
sportsman racing history with the Moser Mega Series, but the bonuses
that have been added to the generous $50,000.00 year end prizes make
weekly participation more lucrative than at any other track. Rob Moser
and Bill Bader Jr. put their heads together and devised a plan that
will make instant winners out of the SMP weekly racers. Now a racer doesn't have
to wait until year’s end to be in the money.

Last weekend, at the first
completed points race of the 2008 season, SMP racers walked away with a
combined total of $350.00 in bonus cash.

Now
that his first 2008 NHRA POWERade Series race is in the books, Dave
Connolly is ready to make improvements. Finding time to do so, however,
is a problem, as is being in early-season form when your competitors
are five races ahead of you.
 
Connolly
and the new Charter Communications Chevy Cobalt team’s preference would
have included a weekend off between races in Atlanta and St. Louis to
fine-tune the new car.  But the O’Reilly Midwest Nationals will be
contested at Gateway International Raceway Friday through Sunday.
 
So, instead of putting vital test laps on the Cobalt, the Victor
Cagnazzi team packed their bags Monday and headed for St. Louis.

Ron Capps credits credits his crew and their efforts for his
performance turnaround in the last two races. His recent semi-final
finish launched him into the No. 9 points position in the 2008 NHRA
POWERade Drag Racing Series point standings.

Capps is ready to defend his 2007 victory at this weekend’s NHRA
Midwest Nationals in St. Louis. He is the winningest Funny Car driver
at this track, with three triumphs (1997, 2005, 2007).
 
Last year at this time, Capps was enjoying a solid points lead when he
arrived in Madison, Ill., after pocketing two season victories. He left
Gateway with another win and an even heftier margin in the standings.
He continued to lead the pack through the next 10 events by as many as
154 markers until the Countdown to the Championship kicked in and the
team began to struggle. He ended the season in fourth place.

This year the NAPA team struggled through the first four events, but
now that crew chief Ed "Ace" McCulloch and the NAPA crew have tweaked
the NAPA Dodge back into contention, reaching the semifinal round in
the last two events, Capps and the crew are confident and comfortable.

Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson Pro Stock rider Andrew Hines couldn’t help but notice the trend in

Andrew Hines became the third Pro Stock Bike rider in 2008 to win from the No. 1 qualifying position. (Roger Richards Photos)

his
class. The two-time world champion from Brownsburg, Indiana realized
after the Houston final round, the key to winning an event was to
qualify No. 1. After all, the formula had worked for Matt Guidera and
Matt Smith, winners of the first two events on the ten race schedule.

Hines took his concerns to his father Byron Hines, one-half of the legendary Vance & Hines legend.

“I pointed out both of them won the event after qualifying No. 1,”
Hines recalled. “I said, ‘dad I want to qualify number one in Atlanta.”

Hines continued, “I swear that is what I told him and he said, ‘Okay make it happen.” 

The Hines brothers had better get used to that kind of input because
the elder Hines is beginning to step away more and more from the
operation and putting it into Andrew and Matt Hines’s hands.

With all the water seeping to the surface of Summit Racing Equipment Motorsports Park, it was a good time to be a Nitrofish.

Nitrofish-sponsored drag racers Matt Smith (Pro Stock Motorcycle) and
Richie Stevens (Pro Stock) lead provisional qualifying at the NHRA
Summit Racing Equipment Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio.

The defending Pro Stock Motorcycle world champion Smith rode his way to a 7.059, 187.23.

The
Western Sydney International Dragway is hosting it’s final Group One
event of the 2007/2008 ANDRA Championship Drag Racing season this
weekend (2nd–3rd May) and will also see the return of the only female
to ever win a professional Top Alcohol event.

Debbie Reed from the Reed Racing team is set to make her first
Championship passes since December last year when she suffered her
first major accident of her professional Drag Racing career when an oil
line gave out on her 3500 horsepower Dragster causing fluid to pour
straight under her rear tyres at over 400 kph.

Luckily she was able to call on all of her skills as one of the
county’s leading female drivers and managed to keep her car from
hitting both the walls and the competitor in the other lane before it
spun and rolled onto its top.

Roger
Burgess heads into this weekend’s NHRA Midwest Nationals in St. Louis,
Mo., with a valid question engrossing his thought process. The
successful businessman from Duluth, Ga., drives a supercharged 1963
Corvette on the Jegs ProMod series and in his first full season is
doing quite a job of it.

His mind continually asks, “How can you top the last outing?”

The soft-spoken Burgess has a clear set of objectives aimed at answering those questions.