NHRA Warren Johnson Friday Update: WJ Rolls to No. 1 Position at Vegas Qualifying Midpoint

WJ Rolls to No. 1 Position at Vegas Qualifying Midpoint

 

Event:  Sixth Annual SummitRacing.com Nationals

Day/Date: Friday, April 15, 2005

Location:  The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Las Vegas, NV

 

Coming off their dramatic win five days ago in Houston, Warren Johnson
and the GM Performance Parts Pontiac Racing team continued their strong
performance during Friday's first day of qualifying at the NHRA
SummitRacing.com Nationals.  In each of the two sessions, "The
Professor" posted the quickest pass to claim the No. 1 position.  

 

After opening with a 6.900-second, 200.00 mph pass, "The Professor" came
back in the evening run to cover the Nevada quarter-mile in 6.824
seconds at 201.46 mph to sit atop the 24-car Pro Stock field. 

 

"We made two pretty decent runs today.  We got off to an excellent start
this afternoon, especially given the fact that we were able to get down
it fairly smoothly when there wasn't much of a racetrack, while a lot of
other cars were sliding around.    

 

"As for the run tonight, we didn't have any experience with this
particular DRCE III under these dry atmospheric conditions, so we played
it pretty safe on the tune-up.  With the fuel cars having deposited some
rubber from the eighth mile on during their first qualifying runs, the
surface was fairly decent tonight, especially when it got cooler, and we
adjusted to it well.  Given the same conditions, we might be able to
improve on it slightly, but not that significantly.

 

"However, with warmer temperatures forecast for tomorrow, we expect
conditions to be similar to what we encountered this afternoon.  In any
case, we'll keep working on our GM Performance Parts Pontiac,
fine-tuning and seeing how we can improve it for race day."