Allen Johnson
While it’s pretty chilly back home in Tennessee right now and in a lot of the country, we are down here in sunny Florida at Bradenton doing some more testing, as we prepare our Mopar Dodge Avenger for the 2012 Pro Stock season.
Before I get into the testing, I just want to mention what a great holiday season I had. We spent Christmas at home and had all the family over. There was plenty of good food and it was great to visit with a lot of people and just enjoy the time. For New Year’s, my wife Pam and I went to Sanibel Island in Florida. We had a great time down there and it was an amazing place to ring in the New Year. With the season almost here, it was nice to slip away for a little R&R and enjoy some nice warm weather as well.
My arm is feeling pretty good right now, after my recent surgery. I started rehab a couple of weeks ago and am able to lift some weights with it now and continue to get it stretched back out. I have five exercises that I do every day. It’s getting better and better, and I just have to be careful with it for a few more weeks, not to overextend it or do anything that could cause any damage to it.
This week is the second time we have tested so far this off-season. The first test session before the holidays went really well. We had both of our cars at that test, with Richie Stevens doing the driving. We had a number of scenarios we wanted to work on and things we wanted to learn, and we came away with a lot of good information that we took back to the shop.
For this test session, we brought just one car and Richie is driving again, as I continue to heal up. We’ve made about 12 runs so far and will finish by putting in a few more. We’ll take what we learned with a couple of different engines and combine it all into our race engine and get everything freshened up and ready to head west. We want to be at the top of our game right out of the box at Pomona.
It’s definitely been different watching the testing and not being in the car. It’s been a great experience to watch the crew and see what they do behind the scenes. Those are things I never really get to see when I am in the car and focused on driving and it has been pretty interesting. We’ll test once more before the season starts. On the way to Pomona we’ll stop in Las Vegas for a day or two there, so I’ll get a chance to be back in our Mopar Dodge Avenger and test out my arm and get back into a rhythm for Pomona. I can’t wait for the season to get started, as we look to build on the strong ending we had to last season. Just a few more weeks and it will be time to race!