NHRA Warren Johnson Saturday Update: WJ Will Start Fifth in Sonoma

Event:  18th Annual California Nationals 

Day/Date: Saturday, July 30, 2005

Location:  Infineon Raceway, Sonoma, CA

 

After reestablishing the Infineon Raceway elapsed time track record with
his 6.689-second, 205.13 mph run on Friday evening, Warren Johnson knew
he would not get bumped from Sunday's starting line-up.  Therefore, the
GM Performance Parts Pontiac Racing team decided to use their final two
attempts on Saturday to fine-tune their set-up for raceday.

 

Although his Friday effort remained his run of record, and earned "The
Professor" the fifth starting position, he still found a benefit from
his solid Saturday attempts, gathering information that could prove
valuable on Sunday.  

 

"We made two decent runs today that gave us a lot of information.  We
were a little conservative on our clutch setting this morning, and it
cost us a couple hundredths.  I feel we should have at least been
second, but we just backed it down a little too much.   

 

"The only way to make the cars faster is to try different things. For
example, this afternoon we tried a few things that Kurt had been running
in his car to see how it would work.  It seemed to slow us up a little
on the back half, which we couldn't have predicted unless we tried it.
However, at the very least it gave us a direction to go in.  Overall,
I'd say it was a very productive day, allowing us to learn a lot about
our GM Performance Parts Pontiac. We're banking on it helping us
tomorrow."