Allen Johnson
This is the first time Pam and I have stayed out for the entire three weeks of the Western Swing. We went from Seattle to Vancouver and it was an awesome place. We stayed two days and it was amazing, cool weather and no humidity. From Vancouver we went to San Francisco and spent the night downtown and went to my favorite place in the world to eat, the House of Prime Rib. Pam also got to do a little shopping, and on Thursday we did what we always do before the Sonoma race, we went to Scoma’s restaurant.
Then, of course, we raced Sonoma and had a little bit of bad luck in the second round with the lifter breaking or I think we would have had the car to beat there, too. We had the No. 1 Qualifier spot there at least, so that was a highlight. Pam and I flew to Denver Monday morning and went up to V. Gaines’ cabin and also spent one night in Vail. We had a blast, charging up the batteries for my biggest race of the year, the Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals in Denver.
We went to the NHRA press conference in Denver, at Morton’s Steakhouse, so I ate good again! I talked with an impressive young reporter from the Denver Post, Shemar Woods, and the paper ran a story on me and my team in the Friday edition of the paper. We had a ton of coverage all during Mopar’s big event.
Thursday brought the Mopar Big Block Event in downtown Golden. I felt like it was the best Block Event we’ve ever had, as far as attendance. Mopar had my car on display and Matt Hagan’s Funny Car, both wrapped in Mopar graphics, and fans crowded the cars all night. We took part in an autograph signing until it got dark, and the fans still kept coming. Each year Mopar puts on a great show for the fans.
Friday we got to meet Mopar’s CEO, Pietro Gorlier. Having Pietro there at the event, and Jim Sassorossi from Mopar and Byron Kearney from Dodge, it was awesome to get that type of support from our sponsors. It means so much for us to have those guys out and see what we do. The entire Mopar gang was amazing all weekend.
I think I made all the Mopar folks happy, qualifying No. 1 on Friday and also holding it on Saturday. We missed the setup on our first run on Friday and Mike Edwards was able to hit it better and take the No. 1 spot. After that we honed in on it and got up to par really quickly. Each run we ran just a little better and had a little better setup each time, all the way to the final on Sunday. It’s awesome for the crew to be able to do that.
The J&J Racing team’s performance amazed me on race day, to be honest. I didn’t do my job very well in the first round and was lucky I didn’t get beat on a holeshot. After that I got on my game. Every round the car got better and I got better. The final against Jeggy was an outstanding run. I reached down deep and had a .004 reaction time and recorded a 6.974/198.26 mark in the Mopar Dodge Avenger to score our first win of the year and third in four years at the Mopar Mile-Highs. To have that kind of performance at your sponsor’s big race, well, it’s a great feeling.
I hadn’t won since the ’09 Denver event. It was very emotional for me. It’s more than just your sponsor’s race. I’ve become friends with many of them. To try so hard to do well there, it takes a lot out of you. After the final run, and to be able to pull it off again, I was just absolutely wore out emotionally and physically. To be able to do it for the people that are depending on you, it’s just so fantastic. I was so happy, yet so tired.
I still had some strength to go out and celebrate with Mopar. We cooled out and had a chance to get our emotions in check. We had a great after-party, but then we started to talk about winning the next one—and the championship!