Brainerd: Kurt Johnson Saturday summary

Kurt Johnson Qualifies Third in Brainerd

Kurt Johnson and the ACDelco Cobalt Racing team worked throughout qualifying for the Lucas Oil Nationals to improve their race car's performance, and effectively picked up the pace with every run. On his fourth and final attempt on Saturday afternoon at Brainerd International Raceway, KJ recorded his best elapsed time and top speed at 6.721-seconds with a top speed of 205.13 mph to claim the third starting position for Sunday's final eliminations.

"We had freshened up our motor during the week, putting in new pistons and rods. Although it seemed close on the dyno, it just didn't want to run the last 600 rpm as it had in the past, which showed up in the last 300 feet on the racetrack. The bottom line was that it just wasn't happy, the oxygen sensors were off, everything was just a little crazy, and at first it had me scratching my head."

"We started to look at the data to see what the car was doing, and what it was telling us it needed, and started heading in that direction. We got after the motor and made it better, and changed the four-link around to what we ran low elapsed time with in Sonoma."

"Fortunately, our ACDelco Cobalt responded and we went from eighth on Friday afternoon to third today, which has us pretty pleased. We now have a race car that may not be the fastest tomorrow, but certainly one we can win with."

-j2r-