For Whiteley, there's just one thing left: a championship. Will he, like Reichert in 2006 and Shields last year, finally break through after beating on the door for years?

Annie Whiteley’s TAFC.

"I sure hope so," says Whiteley, who will be joined on tour this year by wife Annie, who impressed in her Top Alcohol Funny Car debut last November at the Vegas divisional. "I've got to win at least one before I'm done with this sport. That's the way I've always looked at things, in my business and in everything in life. I won't say that this all will have been a waste if it never happens, but I know that my career definitely will be incomplete if it doesn't."