Allen Johnson Looking to Turn Struggles into Success at Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals

NORWALK, Ohio (June 25, 2016) – Pro Stock World Champion Allen Johnson experienced trials and tribulations during qualifying at the 10th annual Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals but has the fighting spirit to win from the No. 13 spot on Sunday at Summit Motorsports Park.

In Friday’s first session, Johnson aborted the run about 100 feet out and coasted to the finish line with a 19.134-second pass at 71.31 mph. Johnson bounced back in the second session on Friday with a 7.093, 152.90 even though he experienced tire shake again on that run.

With the track temperatures rising, the Marathon Petroleum team came up to the line hoping for a conservative run to get them in the field. Johnson once again had massive tire shake but got back in it once the car calmed down and clocked in with a 7.639, 197.71. Approaching the final run in qualifying and not being in the show, the entire team kept their heads down and worked hard to get Johnson in the top 16 for Sunday. It was a 6.743, 207.34 that got Johnson in the field in the No. 13 spot.

“We’ve been fighting the car since we got here and we don’t know why,” Johnson admitted. “We’re still searching for it and we went up there in Q4 ready to grab it if the tires started trembling and it did. We did everything we could to just get it down that last run and we barely did. Our team is very lucky to have qualified and we’ll stay here and work on the car until we find out what’s wrong.”

Johnson will race Bo Butner in the first round tomorrow.

“We’ll change the things we think are wrong on the car and head into tomorrow like nothing happened,” he added. “We gotta go up there loaded for bear and hope we fixed the problem.”