NHRA Kurt Johnson Friday Update: KJ Comes Out Fast in Richmond, Sits Fifth on Friday

RICHMOND, VA (October 13, 2006) - After a one-week delay due to rain, qualifying for the Torco Racing Fuels Nationals got underway on Friday at Virginia Motorsports Park under sunny skies and with temperatures in the low 60's. Racing in the nearly perfect atmospheric conditions, the Pro Stock contingent entertained the capacity crowd by delivering the quickest field in the class's history.

Knowing they would need a career-best effort in order to guarantee their position, Kurt Johnson and the ACDelco Cobalt Racing team responded. Even though their race car still bears signs of their off-track excursion from two weeks ago, the blue crew was able to better their previous best elapsed time on each run. After opening with an extremely quick 6.626-second pass in the afternoon session, they came back on their evening attempt with an even better 6.613-second run, which came with the fastest top speed of the session at 209.01 mph. Sitting fifth with two attempts remaining, Johnson will look to take advantage of the ideal conditions forecast for Saturday to climb higher on Sunday's final eliminations ladder.

"We're pretty pleased to be in the thick of it, but we want to be on top. Although we made a good run tonight, we did leave a little on the table. Now it's a matter of executing and picking it up. The good news is that our ACDelco Cobalt is going straight and we have power under the hood. As a result, we're making good runs and running good speeds.

"However, we feel there's a couple hundredths left. Even though we ran a 6.61, that was a pretty conservative set-up, and the clutch was a little soft. We're confident we know what to do to go faster, so we're going to get after it tomorrow. The weather is looking pretty good for the first session, which is telling us we can step it up. Now it's up to the people working on the car to get it done."