After a strong effort in qualifying where Annie Whiteley and her Roger Bateman-led crew qualified the Ford Mustang second in the field with a 5.601-second elapsed time at 255.48 mph, tire shake derailed the efforts of the up and coming TAFC rookie driver and her YNot Racing team.

“The car shook pretty good in the second round,” said Whiteley.  “It was just a bad run. We had the brake plunger get caught in the master cylinder, so I didn’t have enough brakes to hold it and almost rolled through the beams staging. That didn’t have anything to do with the tire shake, but I guess we will just have to chalk the round up to experience. We ran pretty good otherwise and really enjoyed racing at the facility. “

Jim Whiteley, Annie’s husband, scored his second national event win and his third of the year as he took out defending Lucas Oil Series National Champion Duane Shields in the final round of Top Alcohol Dragster. The Grand Junction, Colo., racer qualified No. 1 and worked his way through the field beating Buddy Domingue and Mark Taliaferro in rounds two and three.  He then ran low elapsed time of the event with a 5.264 second lap at 273.77 mph in the final to Shields’ 5.380, 268.97.

Shields came from the No. 3 qualifying position, defeating Lee Callaway, David Brounkowski and Ryan Copeland to advance to the finals.

“We just wanted to go up to the starting line and make a good run. We hoped to beat him but it wasn’t our day. Besides, I don’t think we could have beat a 5.26 since there was high humidity and the conditions were not favorable to us. But it was a good weekend and we’re happy to have gone to the final round,” Shields said.

A pair of Texans won trophies for the home state with Hagen Gary winning in Stock and Rob McKinley Jr. in Top Dragster.