[coverattach=1]DENVER, July 12, 2009 – The first leg of the three-race NHRA Western Swing, the 30th annual Mile-High Nationals held at Bandimere Speedway, did not go as well for Kurt Johnson as he would have liked when he entered today's eliminator. But even with a round-one loss to Greg Anderson, the ACDelco Chevrolet driver is confident that some key chassis adjustments made to the car this weekend will move the team forward during their next two stops at Seattle and Sonoma (Calif.).
"We thought we ran pretty decent here Friday night during qualifying and then we chased the chassis around on Saturday," explained Johnson. "In the first round today, we finally made the kind of run that we made during all of last year, but it was apparent that we had a motor issue because we didn’t run the backhalf yesterday or today. Looking at the computer we now know that we had a motor going away.
"We know what's wrong. We'll put another motor in and go to Seattle. We're confident that the chassis problem is fixed because we didn't bounce at all. The ACDelco Chevrolet made a nice, smooth run on the graph."
The next stop on the schedule is the 22nd annual Northwest Nationals on July 17 – 19 at Pacific Raceways in Seattle, Wash. It is the 14th race on the 24-event NHRA Full Throttle Series tour. Johnson is a three-time winner of the Northwest Nationals (1993, '99, '05), and he was runner-up in 1996 and '98.
"The biggest thing is that we have the car, the suspension package, back to the way we had it when we won the Full Throttle last year," Johnson said. "It took a lot of work, but the guys on this race team did a great job making those changes. We were here late last night, and early today getting the ACDelco Chevrolet ready to race. We're pretty pumped about the run today; we're upset about the 7.08, but the computer shows that we have an issue with the crankcase vacuum. We can fix that, maybe not with that particular motor, but we have others that are similar to it that have last year's package in them."
"We thought we ran pretty decent here Friday night during qualifying and then we chased the chassis around on Saturday," explained Johnson. "In the first round today, we finally made the kind of run that we made during all of last year, but it was apparent that we had a motor issue because we didn’t run the backhalf yesterday or today. Looking at the computer we now know that we had a motor going away.
"We know what's wrong. We'll put another motor in and go to Seattle. We're confident that the chassis problem is fixed because we didn't bounce at all. The ACDelco Chevrolet made a nice, smooth run on the graph."
The next stop on the schedule is the 22nd annual Northwest Nationals on July 17 – 19 at Pacific Raceways in Seattle, Wash. It is the 14th race on the 24-event NHRA Full Throttle Series tour. Johnson is a three-time winner of the Northwest Nationals (1993, '99, '05), and he was runner-up in 1996 and '98.
"The biggest thing is that we have the car, the suspension package, back to the way we had it when we won the Full Throttle last year," Johnson said. "It took a lot of work, but the guys on this race team did a great job making those changes. We were here late last night, and early today getting the ACDelco Chevrolet ready to race. We're pretty pumped about the run today; we're upset about the 7.08, but the computer shows that we have an issue with the crankcase vacuum. We can fix that, maybe not with that particular motor, but we have others that are similar to it that have last year's package in them."
