NHRA Friday: KJ Steps Up to Seventh at Pomona Qualifying Midpoint

Event: 44th annual Winternationals 
Location:  Pomona Raceway
       Pomona, California
Day/Date: Friday February 27, 2004

After shaking the tires on his opening qualifying attempt one week ago, Kurt Johnson returned to Pomona Raceway on Friday for the resumption of the NHRA Winternationals determined to reclaim his position among the leaders in the Pro Stock category.  Towards that end, the ACDelco Racing team spent the week in Phoenix testing in order to get a better handle on their new Cavalier.

The Johnson crew's hard work paid off, as KJ posted the quickest pass in the right hand lane at 6.793 seconds with a top speed of 203.80 mph.  This placed the younger member of the Johnson family in the seventh position heading into Saturday's final two sessions.

"Today's run was obviously much better than last week.  It's not running as well as we'd like to sixty feet, and it's spinning the tires down track, but we are the quickest car in the right lane. We know the left side is definitely quicker, so we'll just have to get over there tomorrow morning and see what we can do.  

"This gives us a good baseline to tune from.  We know what changes we have to make, but since we're not completely familiar with this new car's performance characteristics, we have to sneak up on it so we don't shoot ourselves in the foot.  We might not set the world on fire in the next few runs, but we will keep moving forward.  After all, we were the fourth quickest car out there today, so we'll make some subtle changes to our ACDelco Cavalier to make it even better."