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Las Vegas - On the strength of a 6.756-second, 203.28 mph pass recorded on his second attempt on Friday evening, Warren Johnson qualified his GM Performance Parts Pontiac GTO in the seventh position for Sunday's final eliminations of the SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals in Las Vegas, NV.
Fairly confident that his strong opening effort combined with Saturday's less favorable atmospheric conditions would ensure his spot in the top half of Sunday's final eliminations ladder, Johnson used his final two attempts to test some new components and gain knowledge that could prove valuable in the future.
"We were fairly confident looking at the weather that our 6.75 would keep us in the show and probably in the top half, so we tried a different engine in our GM Performance Parts GTO today that we hadn't had a chance to use in national event competition before.
"We wanted to establish a baseline with it insofar as the tune-up in case we had an issue with our primary motor and had to press it into service. In the first run this morning we had a vacuum leak, which we repaired, and then put a comfortable air-fuel tune-up in it for the afternoon session.
"We know we have some work to do on it, but we're confident that once we dial in the tune-up it will run as well if not better that the engine we have been running. We'll stick that engine back in for tomorrow and go from there. As far as the car is concerned, it made four essentially flawless runs, so we have to start working the tune-up around it, improve our transfer times early on in the run, and we'll be right where we need to be."
WJ will roll off seventh
Las Vegas - On the strength of a 6.756-second, 203.28 mph pass recorded on his second attempt on Friday evening, Warren Johnson qualified his GM Performance Parts Pontiac GTO in the seventh position for Sunday's final eliminations of the SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals in Las Vegas, NV.
Fairly confident that his strong opening effort combined with Saturday's less favorable atmospheric conditions would ensure his spot in the top half of Sunday's final eliminations ladder, Johnson used his final two attempts to test some new components and gain knowledge that could prove valuable in the future.
"We were fairly confident looking at the weather that our 6.75 would keep us in the show and probably in the top half, so we tried a different engine in our GM Performance Parts GTO today that we hadn't had a chance to use in national event competition before.
"We wanted to establish a baseline with it insofar as the tune-up in case we had an issue with our primary motor and had to press it into service. In the first run this morning we had a vacuum leak, which we repaired, and then put a comfortable air-fuel tune-up in it for the afternoon session.
"We know we have some work to do on it, but we're confident that once we dial in the tune-up it will run as well if not better that the engine we have been running. We'll stick that engine back in for tomorrow and go from there. As far as the car is concerned, it made four essentially flawless runs, so we have to start working the tune-up around it, improve our transfer times early on in the run, and we'll be right where we need to be."
