NHRA Saturday: Kurt Johnson Will Roll Off Second in Las Vegas

Event: 4th Annual Summitracing.com Nationals
Location:  The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway
       Las Vegas, NV
Day/Date: Saturday April 5, 2003 

For the second consecutive race, Kurt Johnson's ACDelco Cavalier was one of the quickest and fastest Pro Stock cars in qualifying.  On Friday at the Summitracing.com Nationals, Johnson took advantage of the favorable tailwind and cooler temperatures to record a 6.883-second elapsed time with a top speed of 200.74 mph, placing him second in the Sunday's field.  

Although conditions at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Saturday precluded a serious challenge for the top position, K.J. continued his string of strong performances, closing out his qualifying effort with the second quickest pass of the day at 6.895 seconds.  Johnson's pursuit for back-to-back POWERade national event wins will start with a first-round encounter against Gene Wilson.

"Right now, the chassis on our ACDelco Cavalier has been responding well to everything we do to it.  For example, every run we made in qualifying was good enough to get us in the show.  Our last run today was perfectly smooth, and could have been even better.  We've been making subtle changes to the carburetors and the timing, and the tune-up was slightly off on that pass.  We'll put it back to where we had it, and we should be pretty decent tomorrow.  

"We'll evaluate all our notes tonight and figure out which lane will be better.  The track has been getting worse, just like it was in Gainesville, which means this morning's run should help us a lot for eliminations.  We'll have to be ready for first round just like it was the second, because I don't think the track will be as good as people think it will be.   But, overall, we're pretty pleased, and looking forward to tomorrow."