Steadily improving on every run, Warren Johnson qualified his GM Performance Parts Pontiac GXP in the ninth position for Sunday’s final eliminations of the O’Reilly Fall Nationals in Dallas, TX. After opening with a competitive 6.677-second pass on Friday afternoon, Johnson and crew worked throughout the two days of qualifying, fine-tuning their set-up to better adapt to the concrete track at the Texas Motorplex
Despite dealing with significantly warmer temperatures on Saturday, the team’s efforts were rewarded with the second-quickest passes in each of the final two sessions, capped by their impressive 6.648-second pass on their final attempt. In addition, Johnson continued to pace the Pro Stock field in top speed, with his 208.26 mph resetting the track record by almost one mile per hour.
“Looking at the stat sheet, we were quicker on every run, so we’re starting to get a handle on this new approach we’re using with this GM Performance Parts GXP, which is more driver-friendly in terms of getting it down the racetrack, because it doesn’t want to move around as much. It also seems to have a bigger tuning window.
“Our challenge now is to start fine-tuning all the components around it. We see there are areas that show signs of needing improvement, and we should be able to alleviate those obvious anomalies in short order. I honestly believe there is another two hundredths left in it just from that fine-tuning, because these are parts that were generated off the prior set-up, similar to the way Kurt tunes his ACDelco Cobalt.
“There are lot of cars out here that can make four good runs, with the fifth being a complete disaster. We’re now going on two races and a test session with this current set-up where we have gone from A to B each time. Now that we have something we can really work with, it’s up to us to fine-tune it and make it work.”
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