YNOT Pomona Preview

Car Quest Auto Parts NHRA Winternationals

Pomona, California - A very short and busy off season has brought Driver /Owner Jim Whiteley and Team YNOT to this point, their first Car Quest Auto Parts Winternationals with Norm Grimes at the helm.

Testing this year was not just limited to the car. New crew members and new duties assigned, the YNOT Team began learning to work the Norm Grimes’ way. Organized, clean and efficient.

The new team immediately has begun to work well together and the testing results show it. After a couple of 330 foot shots, Norm decide to stretch the legs of the YNOT dragster a little and Whiteley started making 900 and 1000 foot passes. What showed the most improvement was the consistency of the 60 foot and 330 foot numbers. The engine came back clean and happy. However another problem was brought to light. The facts that the car would have a tendency to wheel stand leaving the starting line. At the time it was not affecting the short numbers and it was spectacular to watch. This changed on Sunday’s final session when Whiteley drove through a 2 foot wheel stand which promptly unloaded the chassis and the car smoked the tires. Upon returning to the pit area Grimes stated with a wry smile” we might need a wheelie bar for this car”. Monday’s only run on, the car once again started to wheel stand, Whiteley was forced to shut the car off, and Grimes pulled the plug on the rest of the day, and had the car brought back to his shop in Sun Valley California.

Once the car was back at the shop, a course of action was brought into play, and it was decided to make some adjustments to the weight distribution of the car to see if that would cure the wheel stand problem. With this done it was on to the Last Chance Test session held at “The Strip” at LVMS to see if the changes would pay off.

The test in Vegas proved that the corrections to the balance of the car did in fact pay off, and with out loosing the consistency factor in the sixty and 330 numbers.

“Norm was satisfied with the second test in Vegas “Whiteley said. “But for those who know Norm Grimes, satisfactory isn’t his goal”.

Whiteley is very excited about this year. “We had a good year in 2006 and we learned an awful lot of things from the Strasburg’s, and we can’t thank Mike, Jeff and Lindsey enough. We wish them all the best in their top fuel deal and will be pulling hard for them. But this year we intend to make some noise in this class and really get peoples attention. Norm has brought us (Team YNOT”) to another level already, and I can not tell you how pumped up I am to be in the seat of this car this year.”

Team YNOT would also like to thank the company who have helped them so far this year: Permatex, NGK, Impact Race Products, and Joe Gibbs Racing Oil.
Team YNOT will be making their qualifying attempts on Thursday at 12:30pm and Friday 12:30 and 4:00.

First round of eliminations are scheduled for Saturday afternoon, with the final rounds of eliminations set for Sunday.