POMONA, Calif. — After nearly two decades of waiting for his opportunity at full-time NHRA Funny Car racing, Daniel Wilkerson can finally say he’s achieved a lifelong dream.
Entering this weekend’s NHRA Finals at In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip, Wilkerson is seventh in the standings.
As Wilkerson sat at a plastic picnic table in his pit pondering how he’d describe his first year of action, he came to a resolution fairly quickly — “Roller coaster.”
“Well, I knew my first year wasn’t going to be a simple task, but this car is a proven car,” Wilkerson began. “My old man (Tim Wilkerson) ran it for… been hanging out with him for 25 years while he ran this car. So it’s not like I was getting in a car. I didn’t know what I was doing and I didn’t know what they were doing.
“But, I mean, started the year off so strong, had a couple fires in the middle of (the) year, blew a bunch of stuff up in the middle here, which they usually don’t do.
“So that was driving me a little batty. You feel like only one thing changed and now all of a sudden the thing’s on fire,” Wilkerson laughed. “You feel like you’ve done something wrong, but it’s just the nature of the beast.
“Everyone says it’s not if you’re going to be on fire, it’s when. We had a couple more than we would’ve liked this year, but we got through it. After we got those gremlins worked out from those fires, we got a pretty badass car again.
“It’s been up, down, up, down. Now we’re on an up, so hopefully we finish it on the up.”
One of the highlights of his season was at the February PRO Superstar Shootout at Florida’s Bradenton Motorsports Park where his father, longtime Funny Car driver Tim Wilkerson, did the honors of passing the torch.
Wilkerson aided his son in suiting up prior to their first pass in new roles, one that Daniel reflects on fondly.
“We both looked at each other and we almost both started crying,” Wilkerson said. “We looked like a bunch of old ladies. But, it kind of hit us at the same time that, ‘We actually sewed this deal up, we’re really, really doing it.’”
With Wilkerson handing the tuner’s tools over to his father while Tim Wilkerson passed the reins of his SCAG Racing Funny Car over to Daniel, the transition period began.
While transitioning into a new role can have its quarrels, especially swapping jobs with your own father, the Wilkerson’s have found a rhythm.
“So far, the driving deal has gone pretty smooth,” Wilkerson said. “There’s only been a couple times where he’s like, ‘Well, that’s not what I would’ve done.’
“Usually I can get back and tell him what I’ve done wrong before he tells me what I’ve done wrong. I think that has been a pretty good dynamic for both of us.
“Honestly, probably only two times this year we’ve had a disagreement on what happened with the car.
“The same thing goes with tuning. I don’t talk to him every run about what he’s doing with the tune-up. But, afterwards, we both kind of look at stuff while I’m getting all my firesuit and stuff off and he’s looking at it.
“It’s been a really cool relationship.”
Despite being fresh off the trailer as a tuner with a wide variety of knowledge, most recently with Chad Green last season, Wilkerson hasn’t been needed in that department much this year.
“Honestly, he’s only even asked me what I thought tune-up stuff two or three times this year,” Wilkerson said.
However, on a whim at the Texas Fall Nationals in October, Wilkerson decided to radio to his father about a potential change on the race car.
“He was doing something and he’s like, ‘I don’t know if I want to do this or that.’ I actually got on the radio, and I was like, ‘Do I get a vote?’ He said, ‘Sure, what the hell.’ So I told him my thought and he goes, ‘OK, we’ll do that.’
“I was in there, like, ‘Holy s—. I can’t believe it. That’s not how I thought that would turn up.’ Usually he says, ‘Alright, shut up, mind your own business.’ Usually, if I say something on the radio, He literally says, ‘Shut up, drive. You’re driving now. Just drive.’
“Like, OK, sorry.’ So, that part, people ask me all the time if I get more nervous now than I drive,” Wilkerson continued. “Honestly, I get less nervous because all I have to do is drive. So far I can do that. It’s not like a thing I have to think about.
“It just happens. So honestly, I just sit in there and drive. I’m never not nervous. You always get first round jitters. It’s a thing that happens. But it’s actually been, frankly, more relaxing than tuning.”
How is tuning on a race car less stressful than racing a nitro-burning dragster at over 300 miles per hour?
“It’s just less stuff to think about,” Wilkerson said. “I don’t gotta think about clutch weight, timing curves, fuel maps. I don’t gotta think about all that. All I gotta do is follow my instincts. So it’s actually been a little less stressful, believe it or not.
“You’d think 330-mile an hour, five and a half G’s would be more stressful. But it’s not.”
With the season completed following Sunday’s eliminations in Pomona, the offseason springs into motion for NHRA. That also means preparation for 2025 is already in the back of team’s minds.
For SCAG Racing and Wilkerson, confidence is firm in their minds knowing they’ve already checked off crucial boxes.
You never, ever go into the winter defeated,” Wilkerson began. “So, it’s not like a thing where we ever go in going, ‘Oh man, I sure wish we would’ve…’ I think getting all these little gremlins out of the car we raced the majority of this year is a load off.
“We’re going to go into next year with a proven car. We’re gonna have all the same guys, and it’s gonna be…everything’s stable. I guess that’s a good word for it, stability.
“We’re gonna pick up the first race right where we left off the last race, and hopefully that’s with a W.”