Allen Johnson
My wife Pam traveled with me down to Valdosta where we did some testing right before the Gatornationals. We made like a little mini-vacation out of it. On the testing side, we concentrated more on Johnny Gray’s car than we did on mine. I think we proved that our hard work on Johnny’s car paid off. He qualified in the top half of the field for the first time this year at Gainesville, and in the process we learned some things on my car. My Mopar®/J&J Racing Dodge Stratus R/T seemed to be more consistent, where Johnny’s car stepped it up a little. Combined we both made 36 runs between the two cars at Valdosta, so we worked our butts off. We tested a bunch of parts and some off the wall stuff to make our cars better.
We headed to Gainesville and attended Don Garlits’ Hall of Fame dinner, and had a great time. Gainesville is a place that we always love to go to. That dang race is always just great. I love it—the sunshine, people walking around in shorts. It’s a race that really gets your blood pumping. It’s one of my favorites. It was also my mom Revonda’s birthday on Sunday at the race, and two of my crew guys, Brian Voeck and Matt Hensley, also had birthdays the week of Gainesville. So we ate a lot of birthday cake down there!
It was also the first race out for the Mopar folks, with people we’ve known for awhile from Mopar, like Andrea Dicola and Stephanie Rooks, and also Jim Sassorossi, the new Director of Global Parts Sales & Marketing at Mopar. I got a real big kick out of showing Jim all of the hands-on stuff, like the graphs and how we read them, and why we do tire pressures a certain way based on the track conditions. He really understands the hands-on stuff and it was a pleasure watching him absorb all that data. It was like he just wanted to jump right in there and get a wrench and start working!
The race itself was awesome. I reached my 350th round of racing at the event. I still can’t believe I’ve been around that long. It actually made me feel old to think I’ve already been to all those rounds. Every milestone my dad Roy and I reach together is special to me. To be able to do all this with my family, through our J&J Racing team, with my wife, mom and dad along for the ride, it’s great. Even some of my crew guys have been with me eight or nine years. It’s like we’re all a big family.
We went all the way to the finals and lost a close one to Jason Line at the Gatornationals. The weekend at Gainesville moved us up to second in points, so of course I was very happy with the weekend. Now we’ll try to do even better at the next race in Houston!