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Las Vegas: Kurt Johnson final report
KJ's Charge Stops in Vegas Semifinals After being one of the most consistent cars in qualifying, Kurt Johnson entered Sunday's final eliminations of the SummitRacing.com Nationals looking to park his ACDelco Cobalt in the winner's circle.
Published: Apr 14, 2008, 10:15 PM
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KJ's Charge Stops in Vegas Semifinals
After being one of the most consistent cars in qualifying, Kurt Johnson entered Sunday's final eliminations of the SummitRacing.com Nationals looking to park his ACDelco Cobalt in the winner's circle. Starting from the third position, he quickly established himself as a leading contender, using the quickest pass of the day at 6.757 seconds to eliminate Max Naylor in the first round. He continued his powerful display in the second round, posting the quickest elapsed time of the round at 6.782 seconds to put a premature end to his father Warren Johnson's day, who was slowed by severe tire shake.
This set the stage for a semifinal match-up with former Pro Stock champion Jason Line. In the closest race of the day, Johnson mounted a strong challenge, covering the quarter-mile in 6.800 seconds with a top speed of 203.92 mph, but was narrowly edged at the stripe by his opponent's slightly better 6.793-second, 203.58 mph pass.
"We finished third today, which is a good day, but we're here to win. We made a decent run in the semis, but just didn't get after it enough, that's all there is to it. My initial reaction is that the track was better than we thought, and we were a little low on driveshaft speed. It had slowed down a little on correction in each round, so we'll have to get it back to the shop, figure out what's wrong and fix it. Fortunately, it ran decent speed, so it doesn't look like it's a motor issue.
"Basically, it comes down to learning what this ACDelco Cobalt wants. The way our car was in the past, we couldn't get after it because it would just spin the tires. This new car, however, seems a little more forgiving, and, looking at the graph, I think we could have picked up a couple hundredths on the reaction time, and probably a hundredth with the car for the final, but we didn't get the chance.
"Still, we're excited heading to Atlanta. This was the hottest race track we've been on this year, and we were able to go A to B on every run. Certainly, we're disappointed that we didn't leave here with the trophy, but I think we have something we can work with moving forward."
-credit: j2r
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