NHRA Warren Johnson Race Wrap Up: GM Performance Parts Crew's Efforts are Rewarded with a Semi-final Finish in Seattle

Contact:  Jon Knapp   

TMG Sports Marketing, Inc.

 Ph: (704) 662-3121

jgknapp@tmgsports.net 

 

GM Performance Parts Crew's Efforts are Rewarded with a Semi-final
Finish in Seattle 

 

Event:  19th Annual Schuck's Auto Supply Nationals

Day/Date: Sunday, July 23, 2006

Location:  Pacific Raceways, Kent, WA

 

After spending a long, hard week working on their race car, Warren
Johnson and the GM Performance Parts GTO Racing team saw their hard work
pay off as they advanced to the semi-finals of today's Schuck's Auto
Supply Nationals in Kent, WA. 

 

Starting from the 10th position, Johnson was consistently among the best
on race day, with his elapsed times among the best in each round.  In
the first round, The Professor combined a stellar .011 reaction time
with a strong 6.757-second, 204.76 mph run to trailer the most recent
Pro Stock winner on the POWERade tour, David Connolly.

 

After besting close friend and veteran racer Larry Morgan in the second
round, the final obstacle between Johnson and the 150th final round
appearance of his career was No. 3 qualifier Allen Johnson.  Despite
racing in the heat of the day without the luxury of lane choice, Johnson
recorded his best elapsed time and top speed of eliminations at
6.753-seconds, 205.10 mph, which was also the best of the four Pro Stock
cars in the round.  Unfortunately, it came up eight thousandths of a
second shy of overcoming his opponent's starting line advantage, who
used a 6.765-second, 204.17 mph pass to gain the narrow victory.

 

Despite missing the chance to potentially add another win to his already
impressive resume, Johnson was still pleased with his team's performance
in the Pacific Northwest.

 

"The tremendous effort put forth by everyone on this GM Performance
Parts team has finally started to pay off.   The big thing is that not
only did our GTO keep going down the racetrack, but we could make
changes to it and predict the results those changes would produce based
on the condition and temperature of the race track.  

 

"For example, in the semifinals, we knew the track had gotten hotter and
saw the Fuel cars going up in smoke ahead of us, so we made a few
adjustments.  It responded extremely well and ran low elapsed time of
the round.  Knowing what we do now, I could have probably made an
additional few minor changes and picked it up even further to where we
could have won the round.

 

"The bottom line is that we are starting to go in a direction that's
going to bear some fruit.   Therefore, we will continue to fine tune
this GTO for the balance of the year, trying to capitalize on what we
have learned.  I believe that if we can keep on this game plan, we
should hopefully end up in the middle of the Top 10 by the end of the
year, which, considering the position we have put ourselves in over the
last few races before today, would be a pretty monumental
accomplishment. Overall, this was a very encouraging weekend, giving us
something we can work with from here on out."

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