Bristol: Kurt Johnson Friday notes

KJ Powers to the Provisional No. 1 Spot in Bristol

Ten days removed from their first win of the season, Kurt Johnson and the ACDelco Cobalt Racing team paced the Pro Stock field during the first day of qualifying at the O'Reilly Thunder Valley Nationals in Bristol, TN.

Posting the quickest elapsed time in each of Friday's two sessions, Johnson opened with a strong 6.714-second pass before resetting the Bristol Dragway track record in the evening session with his 6.687-second, 206.16 mph run, earning him the provisional No. 1 qualifying session heading into the final day of qualifying.

"We really didn't know what to expect for the evening session. We looked at the corrected altitude, and it looked to be about a hundredth to fourteen thousandths better, so we thought we were looking at running around a 6.70. But we made some changes to our ACDelco Cobalt, throwing everything at it, and, after spinning the tires a little bit on the first run, it hooked up. We might have left a little on the table, but you really can't complain after putting that 6.687 on the board.

"Testing here the Tuesday before the Atlanta race was huge. Ironically, the conditions were about the same as they were today. We made six nice runs and even though we had the quickest pass of the test at 6.73, I felt we should have been able to run a 6.68. It's just a matter of looking at the information, figuring out what's going on, and put the whole package together.

"For tomorrow, we'll go out and see what we can do. We've been thinking about changing engines since we hadn't run this one since Houston, and although it seems like it can really put up a strong e.t., it can also be a little finicky. Still, it's hard to change too much when you're running so well. We'll just have to play it by ear."

-credit: j2r