NHRA (LAS VEGAS) - WJ Battles Back to Qualify 11th in Las Vegas

After suffering a mechanical failure on their opening attempt on Friday afternoon, Warren Johnson and the GM Performance Parts GTO Racing team found themselves battling to come back and qualify for the ACDelco Las Vegas Nationals in Las Vegas, NV. Calling on his years of experience, The Professor overcame the loss of valuable tuning data from that initial run to produce a suitable tune-up for the tricky Nevada track.

Making progress with every attempt, the six-time champion completed his qualifying effort with three solid passes, topped by a 6.757-second, 204.66 mph best on Saturday afternoon to earn the 11th starting position for Sunday's final eliminations at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

"We broke a bearing in the rear end on our first qualifying pass, forcing us to abort the run. Without current tuning data to go by, we were forced to make an educated guess for the second run, which explains why we spun the tires so hard.

"However, armed with the information from that run, we made the appropriate changes to our GM Performance Parts GTO for the first session today, and came up with that 6.757, which was among the better runs in the right lane, which is the bad side here in Las Vegas. We came back with another decent run this afternoon, giving us a position to strike from tomorrow. Now it's time to go to work."