NHRA

Sonoma: Warren Johnson Saturday summary

Career-Best Elapsed Time Propels WJ to Third Starting Spot in Sonoma The second day of qualifying for the NHRA Nationals in Sonoma, CA opened with near-perfect conditions, with overcast skies and cool temperatures allowing the naturally-aspirated ...

Published: Jul 30, 2006, 10:04 PM

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Career-Best Elapsed Time Propels WJ to Third Starting Spot in Sonoma

The second day of qualifying for the NHRA Nationals in Sonoma, CA opened with near-perfect conditions, with overcast skies and cool temperatures allowing the naturally-aspirated Pro Stock cars to take advantage of the lightning-fast racing surface at Infineon Raceway. Entering the day in the fourteenth position, Warren Johnson looked to use the situation to his advantage and put himself in a better position for Sunday's final eliminations.

Wasting little time, Johnson's GM Performance Parts GTO Racing team put it all together in the morning session, rocketing through the quarter-mile in 6.644-seconds with a top speed of 207.40 mph. This not only established a new career-best elapsed time for The Professor, bettering his previous mark by over three hundredths of a second, but it also earned him the third starting spot in the very quick field.

"The best runs really are boring, because the car tracks straight and doesn't do anything erratic, so all the driver has to do is make sure to shift on time and keep it straight as possible. That's how this morning's run was -- everything went along nice and smoothly, and even though we gave up a little from the 30 to the 60-foot mark, we'll take what we got and learn from it.

"I think we have righted this ship to the point that it shouldn't capsize in the foreseeable future. This was only our second weekend with these latest repairs in place, and, since the conditions were significantly different from those we had in Seattle, it took us a little while to get dialed in here in Sonoma.

"For example, last night's run was not as good as it could have been, but, based on the information we gathered, we made a few adjustments for this morning's attempt knowing the conditions would be the same, if not slightly better, and our GM Performance Parts GTO certainly responded. I guess it's just a matter of patting this race horse the right way."

-tmgs

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