Qualifying for the Toyo Tires Nationals proved to be quite an adventure for Warren Johnson and the GM Performance Parts Pontiac GXP Racing team, as they overcame a series of challenges to claim the ninth starting position for Sunday’s final eliminations at Maple Grove Raceway. After an issue with the transmission sent WJ’s mount into violent tire shake in the first qualifying session on Friday afternoon, the crew fought to get a handle on the tune-up, with their efforts further hampered by the failure of their on-board data collection system.
Undeterred, the Johnson-led crew continued to work on their race car, coming back with two solid runs down the Reading quarter-mile on Saturday. Finally, they ended their qualifying effort on a high note, recording the sixth quickest time of the final session at 6.651 seconds with a top speed of 208.75 mph securing their starting position and generating tuning data that could prove to be invaluable on race day.
“We lost the first run because we dead-headed a slider in the transmission, which caused us to shake the tires and put us behind in the tune-up. As if that was not enough, on our second run, the computer decided to fail, so we had no data to tune from other than the seat of our pants.
“As a result, we were a little off in this morning’s session, but we made some adjustments for this afternoon and got our GM Performance Parts GXP a little closer, running the sixth quickest time in that last session. We still have some work to do before the first round tomorrow, and we’ll have to be on our game from the very start, but I’d say we’re in pretty good shape.”
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