St. Louis: Team Mopar final summary

ALLEN JOHNSON ADVANCES TO SECOND ROUND IN ST. LOUIS

MADISON, Ill. (May 6, 2007) - Piloting the Mopar/J&J Racing Dodge Stratus R/T, Allen Johnson advanced to the quarterfinals today at the O'Reilly NHRA Midwest Nationals at Gateway International Raceway.

Johnson avenged his Mopar teammate Richie Stevens Jr. in the opening stanza by eliminating the man who bumped Stevens out of the field in qualifying. Johnson added another stellar reaction time to his repertoire, a .017 (.000 is perfect), to oust Larry Morgan with a 6.682-second pass at 206.48 to Morgan's 6.698/206.42.

In the second round, without lane choice, Johnson was relegated to the less-favorable right lane against Dave Connolly. He pulled out another outstanding reaction time, .016, but it wasn't enough to grab the win, as Connolly crossed the finish line three feet ahead of Johnson with a 6.657/206.83 pass to Johnson's losing 6.676/206.76.

Johnson is seventh in the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series Pro Stock rankings. Richie Stevens is 10th.

"We made the best run over there," Johnson said of the right lane. "I think we would have beaten anybody else the whole round; he just made an awesome run. He had to have every bit of it.

"We can't take anything away from ourselves. Shoot, I think the next quickest car in the right lane was a 6.70. We were a 6.67, and Connolly went a .65. So, he did what he needed to do to beat us."

As for the continuing improvement in Team Mopar's performance: "I think we're onto something," he said. "We got some stuff on this car that we tested last week that's different from Richie's and it will definitely help his too. We just didn't have time to instigate it on his for this race. But, yeah, I think we've got a good race car now on hot, grimy tracks."

-credit: dsr/mopar