NHRA Sunday: A Slight Slip Costs WJ in Joliet

Event: Third annual Carquest Auto Parts Nationals 
Location:  Route 66 Raceway
       Joliet, IL
Day/Date: Sunday September 28, 2003


The NHRA's Pro Stock division is arguably the most competitive in all of motorsports.  At each of the 23 events on the POWERade circuit, entire fields are covered by a few scant hundredths of a second, and every qualified competitor has a legitimate shot at winning the event, leaving no room for error.

Such was the case during Sunday's final eliminations of the Carquest Auto Parts Nationals in Joliet, IL.  Warren Johnson came into race day on a strong note, with his GM Performance Parts Grand Am starting from the third position.  In the first round, Johnson combined a very quick .011 reaction time with a solid 6.784-second elapsed time to defeat veteran Steve Schmidt.  This set the stage for a second round encounter against another long-time competitor, Bruce Allen.

Despite being relegated to the less-preferred right hand lane, Johnson made his best run of the weekend at 6.753-second, 204.45 mph.  Unfortunately, it was not enough to overcome his opponent's starting line advantage, putting a premature end to Johnson's weekend.

"Something happened between the blueprint and the result on that run.  According to the numbers, I was late.  I'm not quite sure what happened, and even though some of our data doesn't quite agree, it doesn't change the outcome, so we'll take our medicine and move on.

"Even so, we're encouraged by our GM Performance Parts Grand Am's performance. This is the first time we've run this particular car under these conditions.  We've been trying to get it to go straight, and on that last run, it made a relatively good, straight pass at 6.753 seconds, which was fairly respectable for the right lane, where no one wanted to run.  Overall, we're headed in the right direction.  It's just a matter of maintaining our forward progress, and keeping the mistakes to a minimum.  If we do that, we'll be fine."