After two days dominated by clouds and cool temperatures, racers and fans arriving at Pacific Raceways for Sunday’s final eliminations of the Schuck’s Auto Supply Nationals in Seattle, WA were treated to clear blue skies and temperatures in the middle 70’s. These totally new atmospheric conditions sent teams scrambling to find the right tune-up to adapt to the hotter racetrack.
Starting from the sixth position, Kurt Johnson and the ACDelco Cobalt Racing team quickly showed that Sunday’s weather suited them just fine, as they made the quickest and fastest pass of the first round, a tremendous 6.617-second, 209.39 mph blast to eliminate Justin Humphreys.
In the second round against Jason Line, KJ’s mount was once again the class of the field, covering the quarter-mile in 6.625-seconds at 209.20 mph. Unfortunately, this solid effort went for naught, as Line was able to combine a starting line advantage with a 6.639-second, 208.04 mph run to score the narrow victory and put a premature end to Johnson’s day.
“Our ACDelco Cobalt was good today, but unfortunately, the driver just wasn’t on his game. I felt fine this morning, but for some reason, I didn’t have a good light all weekend. We changed a few things after qualifying trying to pick up a little on the tree, and ended up going. 050 in the first round and. 059 in the second round.”
“Of course, the hotter weather didn’t help in that regard, because the car wouldn’t move when I let out the clutch. I had been as good as an. 040 in qualifying when the track temperature was 80 degrees, but today it was thirty degrees hotter, and on the video you could see the tires rotate and the car not move. I thought I had a decent light against Jason (Line) but it didn’t happen.”
“We’ll just put this one behind us and head on to Sonoma. We gained a little ground on the guy in front of us, and we showed we have a fast race car. With four races left until the start of the Countdown to One, I think we might be able to catch him.”
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