Allen Johnson is now two days away from a perfect Western Swing.
Johnson and the Mopar Dodge Avenger had the quickest ET during Friday's first two qualifying rounds in Pro Stock at the O'Reilly Auto Parts NHRA Northwest Nationals which now makes it 10 rounds in a row he's been quickest in qualifying.
"This car is strong and bad to the bone," Johnson said. "The crew is hitting on all cylinders, hyped up but still focused. You would think this sweep talk might unglue us, but believe it or not, everyone is just having fun and enjoying the highs."
Other provisional No. 1 qualifiers on Friday at Pacific Raceways were Spencer Massey in Top Fuel and Ron Capps in Funny Car.
Johnson has been unstoppable during the Western Swing. Friday's best pass of 6.554 seconds at 211.66 mph continued his recent qualifying trend. All that's left is two more top qualifying passes and four more round wins on Sunday.
"We ended 2010 with five No. 1s in a row, but we were very inconsistent on Sunday," Johnson said. "This year we've put some plans and personnel in place to be more consistent on Sunday and it's really paid dividends.
"We've got the ability to pull this off. Our focus is on getting as many bonus points as we can. If we can keep this up during the Countdown, how important will that be?"
Don Schumacher Racing's Funny Cars seem to have the track down cold with DSR Dodge Chargers occupying four of the top five spots in the class with Capps' NAPA Charger leading the way after a best pass of 4.119 seconds at 298.47 mph.
"I didn't expect to get low ET," Capps said. "Cruz (Pedregon) threw that 4.12 out first session. The new concrete the track laid out (since last year) made the difference. You look at the 4.11 and .12s with a bunch of .15s and .16s, which is amazing considering the track was 120 degrees.
"On the old concrete the low maybe would have been a .16 or .17."
Capps' teammates occupy second (Jack Beckman), fourth (Johnny Gray) and fifth (Matt Hagan).
DSR had a better than average showing in Top Fuel with Massey and Tony Schumacher running identical 3.873 second qualifying passes with Massey getting the provisional pole thanks to a speed of 319.60 mph in the Fram rail to Schumacher's 318.02.
"It's what we try and do every race," Massey said. "We lost in the final to our teammate Antron Brown last week and today, we're a little better than our other teammate, Tony. We all have the same technology behind us and these cars should be running as close as they are right now. It just shows how well the entire program is put together."
Qualifying continues on Saturday with two more sessions at Pacific Raceways starting at noon PDT.
