Close finish something to build on for Funny Car driver, businessman Tim Wilkerson
One red-light stood between Tim Wilkerson and his first championship during the final points event of the 2008 NHRA Nitro Funny Car playoffs, but the 48-year-old driver and tuner has new sponsorship and a family of five to help chisel his name on this year’s championship trophy.
Q: You’re a businessman and own a garage. How do you balance your business with racing?
A: The fortunate part about us is that we have a good group of people at home taking care of the business while we’re racing. I was in the service station business for 22 years and we’ve been back up to a repair facility in the last eight. I’ve got two guys that have worked for me, one of them for 20 years, and he has made it so that I can leave there and come back four days later and everything’s still alive.
Q: There have been plenty of highs and lows this season, but undisputedly an incredible overall performance from you and the Valvoline-backed LRS Chevy Impala SS team. Take us through the greatest and most awful moments of 2008.
A: Best part of the year was being the points leader most of the year. We had a terrific car all year long and the guys did a good job running it, and it made it easy to drive and tune for me. Unfortunately when that red-light came on during the playoffs, our year was done. It had to happen at the most inopportune time for us, no doubt about that.
Q: Being an NHRA all-star and running a small business, how do you keep your three kids – Daniel, age 20, Kevin, 19 and Rachel, 17 – involved in the process?
A: They’ve all worked at my service facilities growing up, so they know motors. Daniel actually has his Nitro Funny Car license, and has a car that we race on a limited schedule, and Kevin actually comes and pulls the cylinder head on my car. My daughter, Rachel, comes out and does all those other things like wiping the car down, keeping people fed. It’s a great family operation, with my wife Krista coming to every race and serving as everybody’s mom.
Q: Who’s been the biggest influence on your career?
A: I actually worked for a guy when I was 15 that had a ’63 Super Stock Plymouth. Working all that time with cars, I just fell in love with it. We had a little local drag strip and circle track right there in our hometown, so if you liked cars at all you had some place to hang out.
Q: Tim Wilkerson’s favorite fishing spot?
A: My boys and I try to get away a few times a year to our cabin on the Illinois River to relax a little bit. We have a great time down there, and you can always come back with a mess of channel cat and perch.
Q: As we watched you race last year, it was like the car could sense your growing confidence and was feeding off the team’s success weekend after weekend. That’s crazy talk, right?
A: No, I think you’re absolutely right. We had a car that was just really good at going down the race track, and when that happens, it ends up making the driver better and the crew even better. I kept telling my guys, “Let me be the guy that makes a mistake, let me be the guy who screws up, don’t you guys be that guy.” Every time I went up there I had confidence that, if I had made a clutch change or a motor, the car actually would respond.
