NHRA (JOLIET) - KJ SIXTH IN INITIAL QUALIFYING

With the King Demon all-star race on the schedule for Saturday at Route 66 Raceway, the first day of qualifying for the Torco Racing Fuels Nationals took on added meaning for Kurt Johnson and the ACDelco Cobalt Racing team. After all, if they were able to use one of their opening two attempts to secure a position in Sunday's final eliminations field, they could fully concentrate on capturing the $50,000 first prize offered to the winner of the three-round, single-elimination tournament. Fortunately, they were able to accomplish this initial objective, with their best effort of 6.646-seconds, 207.75 mph slotting Johnson in the sixth position midway through qualifying. "We had expected to run a 6.62 on that run, not we're not fully satisfied, but the key was to put our ACDelco Cobalt solidly in the show so we could focus on winning that $50,000 tomorrow, and we've accomplished that. "Besides, looking at the graph after the run, we can see where we can pick up the pace, so overall we're pretty pleased.