NHRA Warren Johnson Satruday Update: WJ Qualifies Third in St. Louis

Event:  Ninth Annual Sears Craftsman NHRA Nationals 

Day/Date: Saturday, June 25, 2005

Location:  Gateway International Raceway, Madison, IL

 

Warren Johnson and the GM Performance Parts Pontiac Racing Team
completed a solid qualifying effort at the Sears Craftsman Nationals in
Madison, IL.  In each of their four attempts, the Johnson entry was
among the top performers in the highly competitive Pro Stock category,
with their best effort of 6,757 seconds, 203.89 mph slotting them in the
third starting position for Sunday evening's final eliminations.

 

"Overall, we're relatively pleased with where we are on our GM
Performance Parts Pontiac as far as the set-up and the performance
level.  We'd like to pick up the pace a little bit more, but we're
certainly competitive.  We made solid runs in both lanes, so we'll just
have to start fine-tuning from there, and we should be in good shape.  

 

"We're getting to the point where we can qualify consistently at or near
the top of the field, so we can now work on improving our race-day
tune-up so we can perform as well on Sunday as we've done in qualifying.

 

"If we endure similar conditions tomorrow as we had today, we really
won't have to worry about the track changing drastically until the later
rounds.  Basically, it will look better than it really is, so you have
to avoid the natural tendency to get very aggressive with the tune-up,
because more often than not, you'll end up shooting yourself in at least
one foot, if not two.  Our plan is to see what we have tomorrow and take
it from there."