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Seattle: Kurt Johnson final report

KJ is Too Quick in the Seattle Semifinals Entering Sunday's final eliminations of the Schuck's Auto Supply Nationals in Seattle, WA, Kurt Johnson and the ACDelco Chevy Cobalt Racing team knew they would need an error-free performance ...

Published: Jul 24, 2007, 4:38 AM

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KJ is Too Quick in the Seattle Semifinals

Entering Sunday's final eliminations of the Schuck's Auto Supply Nationals in Seattle, WA, Kurt Johnson and the ACDelco Chevy Cobalt Racing team knew they would need an error-free performance in order to score their second win of the 2007 season and fourth at Pacific Raceways. Further complicating their task was the persistent rain that had hounded the event throughout the weekend, with intermittent rain showers periodically halting the action throughout the day.

However, when the skies cleared long enough for the Pro Stock contingent to complete the first two rounds, the red, white and blue-crew took full advantage, with Johnson combining lighting-quick reaction times in the teens with consistent 6.69-second runs to eliminate Greg Stanfield and V. Gaines. This set the stage for a semifinal encounter with friend and rival Allen Johnson.

Racing without the benefit of lane choice, Kurt knew he would need an edge at the line in order to make his 67th career final round appearance. Unfortunately, he left the starting line four thousandths of a second early, handing the automatic win to his opponent and negating another solid 6.681-second, 206.54 mph run. Despite the initial disappointment, Johnson was quick to point out the positives of his weekend in the Pacific Northwest.

"Being too fast at the line is actually a good problem to have, but it just doesn't need to happen that frequently. It's a lot harder trying to improve your reaction times than slow them down. After having .017 and .013 lights in the first two rounds, we backed things down a little, putting some better tires on our ACDelco Cobalt, and raised the rpm's, but we still came up four thousandths short. I actually needed to be nine thousandths of a second on the other side of the line, which is something you can't measure.

"Looking back at the data from the runs, I think we could have been a little bit better to the 330 foot mark. We were costing ourselves as much as 26 thousandths right there. Still, we went a few rounds today, and might have even won a round that we shouldn't have. We put a little distance between ourselves and the people behind us in the points, and even gained on the guy in front of us.

"Over all, it wasn't a bad day for the ACDelco crew, and we know what we need to do to make our race car better. We'll take what we learned here, regroup and try to put it all to work in our favor next weekend in Sonoma."

-credit: j2r

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