Perhaps by habit, perhaps from a keen sense of judgment about his on-track rivals, Wilkerson said, "The rest of the group is a little bit struggling. And that makes me look good, to tell you the truth. I'm not as good as I look. I'm hoping they're going to keep on the back burner and keep me looking cool."
Wilkerson's self-effacing humor has made him popular among his peers. Even now that he leads the points chase, his colleagues tease him. "Jim Head told me that if I went a 4.80 in the middle of the day at Las Vegas, he'd burn my trailer to the ground," Wilkerson joked. "And Jerry Toliver said there's a bounty on my head. I asked him, 'What's it take to beat me?' He said, "No -- just to beat you up!' I said, 'I hope you get one of the girls from hospitality to do that and not some mean guy.'
"Really, there's nothing personal out there between most of us. We're just trying to get our jobs done," he said. "It's just you racing the racetrack. Most of the time you're the enemy, not the other guy."
He said, "Regardless of what the other guy does in the other lane, you've got to run your car. Especially on race day, I don't care what anybody else does. I figure if my car will run 4.90 in a lane, then that's what I try and run. If somebody in the other lane runs 4.80 and beats me, then good job. In qualifying, you can maybe get away with taking a big swing at it, especially if you're sitting No. 1 or No. 2 anyway, but I wouldn't do it on race day, I guarantee it. I don't care what anybody else does."
That was spoken like a true independent. Worsham called him "old-school." Said Worsham, "He does it all over there. He tunes it, he drives it, and he even drives the tow vehicle back to the pit after the run. He's very old-school."
Wilkerson definitely has his own way of thinking and conducting business. And that is what has attracted the attention -- the positive kind of attention -- from some of the bigger teams. The Kalitta Motorsports brain trust once considered him a person they might like to invite into their organization. But this past winter, he entered into an alignment with Don Prudhomme's Snake Racing, and it already has paid off, Wilkerson said.
"We lost a fuel pump in Houston in the second qualifier, and what are the chances of that happening? The thing lost almost 15 gallons of fuel. It burnt the motor up and, of course, I'm in deep depression with my head hanging down. Don comes over and asked what happened because the car looked so good leaving the starting line. I told him it didn't have any gas and he told me to get that fuel pump off of the car and get it over to them so they could flow it," Wilkerson said.