The first day of qualifying for the eighth annual ACDelco Las Vegas NHRA Nationals happened to fall on Halloween, and several drivers and crewmembers got into the spirit by putting on costumes or otherwise commemorating the day. Not unexpectedly, Warren Johnson and the GM Performance Parts Pontiac GXP Racing team were all business during their two attempts at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, making two solid passes, with their 6.735-second, 205.07 mph best slotting them seventh midway through qualifying.
Although naturally looking to improve his standing during one of his final two attempts on Saturday, The Professor was nevertheless pleased to have regained the handle on a race car that had fought him at the last event in Richmond, VA.
“After the last race in Richmond, we took our GM Performance Parts GXP back to the shop and completely dismantled it in order to find what was wrong, because the data acquisition system could not show us where the anomaly was. We were able find the problem and fix it, and it went right down the track when we tested in Charlotte.
“As for today, we felt the track would be a little iffy for the first attempt so we ran some carburetion parts that had shown some promise in testing, and it ran relatively well, ending up in the middle of the pack. We went back to our standard set-up in that area without really changing anything else on the car, and it went from A to B without a hitch.
“From this point on, it’s a matter of fine-tuning. We’ll be in the left lane for the morning session, which is definitely the better of the two, and the conditions should be about the same as they were this afternoon. However, now that we have a better handle on our race car, we’ll see what we can do to pick up the pace and move up the ladder.”
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