NHRA Sunday: A family affair earns WJ an early exit in Sonoma

Contact: Jon G. Knapp
									TMG Sports Marketing 
									Phone: (704) 662-3121
									jgknapp@tmgsports.net
Final Results					

 A family affair earns WJ an early exit in Sonoma

Event: 16th annual NHRA Nationals
Location:  Infineon Raceway
       Sonoma, CA
Day/Date: Sunday August 3, 2003 

Entering Sunday's first round of eliminations at Infineon Raceway, Warren Johnson faced an unenviable task.  Throughout qualifying, Johnson's GM Performance Parts Grand Am was one of the top cars in the division, placing fourth with an elapsed time of 6.785 seconds.  

Johnson's reward for this outstanding effort was a first round match-up against his son, Kurt, whose car has also been among the top three in the extremely competitive Pro Stock category throughout the year.  Despite his son's early struggles in qualifying which resulted in his 13th starting position, WJ knew he would need a nearly perfect run to advance to the second round.

Racing his son just as hard as he would any other competitor, WJ scorched the quarter-mile with one of the quickest passes of the round at 6.796 seconds with a top speed of 203.40 mph.  However, it was not enough to overcome K.J.'s starting line advantage, who used a 6.807-second, 203.09 mph pass to score the first round upset.  

"I guess you could say we were at the wrong place at the right time.  It was one of those unfortunate situations where we were racing Kurt early in the race, with each of us still in contention in the POWERade points standings.  He was a little better on the light than I was, and I ran just a little faster than he did, which made for a great race, but it just didn't work out the way we wanted it to.  

"It's still not a bad situation.  One of our team cars did advance, and we're making strides with this GM Performance Parts Grand Am.  It's starting to consistently go down the race track, which is one thing we've been after, and we seem to have found a starting line set-up for the types of tracks we'll be racing on the rest of the year.  Overall, our program is headed in the right direction."

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