NHRA Warren Johnson Qualifying Wrap Up: Career-Best Elapsed Time Propels WJ to Third Starting Spot in Sonoma

Contact:  Jon Knapp   

TMG Sports Marketing, Inc.

 Ph: (704) 662-3121

jgknapp@tmgsports.net 

 

Career-Best Elapsed Time Propels WJ to Third Starting Spot in Sonoma

 

Event:  19th Annual NHRA Nationals

Day/Date: Saturday, July 29, 2006

Location:  Infineon Raceway, Sonoma, CA

 

The second day of qualifying for the NHRA Nationals in Sonoma, CA opened
with near-perfect conditions, with overcast skies and cool temperatures
allowing the naturally-aspirated Pro Stock cars to take advantage of the
lightning-fast racing surface at Infineon Raceway.  Entering the day in
the fourteenth position, Warren Johnson looked to use the situation to
his advantage and put himself in a better position for Sunday's final
eliminations.  

 

Wasting little time, Johnson's GM Performance Parts GTO Racing team put
it all together in the morning session, rocketing through the
quarter-mile in 6.644-seconds with a top speed of 207.40 mph.  This not
only established a new career-best elapsed time for The Professor,
bettering his previous mark by over three hundredths of a second, but it
also earned him the third starting spot in the very quick field. 

 

"The best runs really are boring, because the car tracks straight and
doesn't do anything erratic, so all the driver has to do is make sure to
shift on time and keep it straight as possible.  That's how this
morning's run was - everything went along nice and smoothly, and even
though we gave up a little from the 30 to the 60-foot mark, we'll take
what we got and learn from it.  

 

"I think we have righted this ship to the point that it shouldn't
capsize in the foreseeable future.  This was only our second weekend
with these latest repairs in place, and, since the conditions were
significantly different from those we had in Seattle, it took us a
little while to get dialed in here in Sonoma. 

 

"For example, last night's run was not as good as it could have been,
but, based on the information we gathered, we made a few adjustments for
this morning's attempt knowing the conditions would be the same, if not
slightly better, and our GM Performance Parts GTO certainly responded.
I guess it's just a matter of patting this race horse the right way."

# # #