NHRA Friday: Kurt Johnson Opens Englishtown Qualifying in the Fifth Position

Kurt Johnson Opens Englishtown Qualifying in the Fifth Position

Event: 35th annual NHRA SuperNationals
Location:  Old Bridge Township Raceway Park
       Englishtown, New Jersey
Day/Date: Friday June 18, 2004

For the first time in many years, the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series made their annual visit to Englishtown, New Jersey in the middle of June.  Therefore, it was not surprising that the first day of qualifying was held on a very hot and humid Friday at Raceway Park.

Kurt Johnson continued to run well in his ACDelco Cavalier, posting two of the quicker times in each of the two qualifying sessions.  Johnson's best effort of 6.804-seconds, 202.36 mph on Friday evening placed him in the fifth position heading into Saturday's final twin time trials.

"I think we're sneaking up on it.  We came into this race saying we weren't going to be conservative, and we certainly weren't.  We got after it on that last run, and our ACDelco Cavalier was smooth as can be.  It drifted towards the centerline a little, which probably added five thousandths, but it was definitely spunky. Looking at the sheet, we're within two hundredths of the low qualifier, which is better than we were at the last race.   

"We'll keep working on it, trying to make it even better.  The main thing is not to lose the baseline tune-up.  Running at this time of year reminds me of when we used to come here in the 70's and 80's, and is similar to what we have in Atlanta, except we have some barometric pressure here, which makes it better.

It's supposed to progressively cool off for the rest of the weekend, so we'll keep tweaking the set-up to compensate.  It will come down to who nails the gearing, transmission and rear-end, and we've got the right parts and the right crew, so we'll just shoot from the hip."