NHRA: Steve Johns wins his first pro stock truck title
16 November 1999
Posted By Terry
Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
STEVE JOHNS, driving Jim Kessinger's Bluegrass Transportation Chevy S-10,
parlayed his years of Sportsman competition experience, a Winston
Championship in Competition Eliminator in 1992, and his job as shop
foreman for the legendary Bill "Grumpy" Jenkins into his first
professional win in NHRA competition. He defeated newly-crowned Winston
Champion Bob Panella in the final round on a holeshot advantage with a
7.561-second pass at 178.85 mph (.420 R/T) to Panella's 7.504/178.50 (.497
R/T).
This was Johns' first final round appearance and the third time he's qualified for an event in the four races he's entered this season. He lives in Lancaster, Pa.
JOHNS: "It's really unbelievable. It is and it isn't. We came here finally with a decent engine in the Chevy S-10. We had to run two different events with secondary engines. They're not bad engines, but Mark (Osborne, Kessinger teammate) was still chasing points. We got here and it didn't look good for him for the points with Bob (Panella) getting the record. I was allowed a decent engine and I just can't believe it. We qualified second, we weren't making the best of runs, but we pulled it off at the end. For not having lane choice it's pretty nice. It was sort of unexpected." DO YOU FEEL A LITTLE RUSTY AFTER NOT DRIVING FOR AWHILE? "I was pretty full tilt in '92 and '93 and a little bit in '94. The way I ran in Comp Eliminator was with a blinder on the (Christmas) Tree, so it was actually a pro light. I kept doing the same thing here that I was doing back then. It worked out." ON THAT RUN AGAINST PANELLA: "He had the favored lane, he ran the quicker e.t. in the semifinal. There wasn't any other thought but that I had to go for it. I knew I had to be about perfect. You never know what could happen. The truck can go out, the transmission is not bulletproof. You don't have a winner until that light goes on."
PANELLA: "Obviously, we won the war, and we lost the battle today. But we had a great day, great weekend. This Chevy S-10 was flying. We went testing last week and I don't know that we found a whole bunch of stuff, but we found a few things wrong and it paid off this weekend. Our main goal was to come here and run good and give the whole team the best chance of winning that we could. I just couldn't be happier for the whole operation. The win would have been great, but I'm glad to see Steve win. He took Jeter out for me. I was his biggest fan this weekend."
ON THE FINAL ROUND, AFTER AN AWESOME .401 REACTION TIME IN SEMIS: "Everybody asked if that was in my mind, if that's why I was late this time. Sometime at night I might back off instinctively. I didn't want to make a mistake and red-light and ruin the race. I probably told myself that. I'm sure I did and didn't know it. He did a great job and we came up a little short."
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