Reading, pre-race: As the teams roll into Maple Grove Raceway for this weekend's 20th annual Lucas Oil Nationals they are concentrating on their car's performance at the upcoming race. Last year's event winner, Tim Wilkerson however, is looking beyond this weekend and is making plans for the future for his Levi, Ray & Shoup Chevy Monte Carlo Funny Car.

"We're going to stop at Route 66 Raceway on the way to Reading and test," explained Wilkerson. "We'd like to run our set-back blower in Joliet a little bit. We need to get tuned-up for the west coast, because when we get to Vegas we're not going to have enough compression to run the thing if we're not careful. So we need to work on being ready to do a great job."

With five races remaining on the 2004 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series tour, Wilkerson knows he has to make the most of the remaining races in order to move up out of his current seventh place points standing.

As last year's winner of this event, Wilkerson has a positive attitude for this weekend's race and looks for it to be the beginning of his upward climb.

"We'll have to see how things go," said Wilkerson, "but I'm optimistic. We just hope we can keep our stuff together again and get down the race track, and hope we can do some good."

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