NHRA Friday: Warren Johnson Sits Second on Friday in Houston

Event: 17th annual O'Reilly Spring Nationals 
Location:  Houston Raceway Park
       Baytown, Texas
Day/Date: Friday April 16, 2004

The first day of qualifying for the O'Reilly Spring Nationals got underway on Friday at Houston Raceway Park, with teams working to adapt to the new racing surface.  After opening with the 13th quickest pass on his first attempt, Warren Johnson came back on his second attempt to post the second quickest run at 6.737 seconds with a top speed of 204.51 mph, placing the GM Performance Parts Grand Am in the second position heading into Saturday's final qualifying sessions.

"We've been working on this new engine in our GM Performance Parts Grand Am, and it's coming around slowly but surely.  It does have a significantly different power curve and a physical weight difference from our standard motors that we're trying to adapt to the race track.  We've got numerous factors to balance out, and it's just going to take some time.  Unfortunately, we had rain all last week in Atlanta, which deprived us of the opportunity to test and gather information on this set-up.

"We knew tonight's session would offer the best conditions of qualifying and did not want to shoot ourselves in the foot by blowing the tires off, so we were conservative to the point of getting down the race track and consequently left a lot on the table.  Once again, it goes back to our relative unfamiliarity with this combination.  We're taking our best shots at it based on our past experience, and even though tonight's run was not as fast as we'd like, we can work on it."