Allen Johnson at the top of Mopar's mountain
Craig Wack, Senior Editor
Friday, 23 July 2010
Allen Johnson knows how to keep the sponsors happy.
If things go as planned on Saturday, Johnson will stay on top of the Pro Stock field in his Mopar Dodge Avenger at the Mopar Mile High Nationals and be the No. 1 qualifier at Denver’s Bandimere Speedway for the fourth straight year.
“We didn’t test here this year and normally we do, so we were a little nervous coming into the first run,” Johnson said. “We hit it pretty close, so second run we were able to tweak it just a little bit.
“We’ve got a lot of data for this track and use a lot of blood, sweat and tears to run well here.”
Other provisional No. 1s were Antron Brown in Top Fuel, John Force in Funny Car and Michael Phillips in Pro Stock Motorcycle.
Johnson was in the last pair of the second qualifying session on Friday when he snapped off a 7.020 second pass at 197.19 mph.
“Conditions got a lot better (that second run),” Johnson said. “I think the track temperature was 20 degrees cooler. We put some gear ratio in it, revved it up and got after it. We’ll still adjust to the track tomorrow. I think tomorrow will be the best day, so we’ll have to work tomorrow to hang on to it.”
Brown, who is the defending champion of the event, was up early in the second session and posted a 3.961 at 286.19 mph in the Matco Tool dragster that few, even Brown, thought would hold up.
“The conditions are really good right now and people are spinning the tires,” Brown said. “We put the same power on the car that we did when we ran a 3.88 here at night last year. The car took off hard in the middle of the run.
“Everybody else went after it, but needed to add a little more power the track. This track is a tuner’s racetrack, all the crew chiefs have their hands full.”
Force said the team was conservative in the first run, but he still wound up No. 1 in that session as well. The time to beat on Saturday is Force’s 4.191 at 296.76 mph. Del Worsham ran the exact same ET, but ran a slower mph, so Force won the tiebreaker.
“We really choked it down on the first run, just to make it go A to B, just to see what would happen,” said Force, driver of the Castrol Ford Mustang. “I’m at half track thinking, ‘This is almost embarrassing.’ The crew chiefs made the critical decision to get down there.”
Phillips had a best pass of 7.308 at 183.12 mph, which set a track record for ET. He said he was surprised that the second run wasn’t as good as his opening salvo.
“I was shooting for a 7.28, and hit everything dead on the head,” said Phillips, who won in Sonoma last weekend. “I wound up with a 7.34. But I’ll take a No. 1 any way I can get it.”
Qualifying for the Mopar Mile High continues at 1:45 p.m. MDT on Saturday.
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