Championship Drag Racing

Fram Autolite NHRA Nationals
Sonoma, CA
(July 29-31)

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Tommy Johnson TBA Funny Car

Sonoma, Sunday: Six-time NHRA winner Tommy Johnson Jr. drove his Skoal Racing Chevy Funny Car to a first-round finish Sunday at Infineon Raceway during the 18^th annual FRAM-Autolite Nationals.

The veteran nitromethane pilot used one of the best reaction times of the opening round of Funny Car eliminations (.081 of-a-second) to drive his Skoal Racing Monte Carlo to an early lead over opponent and No. 2 qualifier Eric Medlen before Johnson’s flopper lost traction and slowed to a pass of 5.597 seconds at 187.18 mph. Medlen cruised to a run of 4.901 at 314.39 to earn the trip to the second round of eliminations. Johnson remains fifth in the NHRA Funny Car standings.

“I didn’t see him for a long time,” Johnson said. “I didn’t realize that it was that big of a holeshot. It’s frustrating when you have that big of a lead and can’t capitalize on it. We could have run a 4.98 and won.

“This was just a frustrating weekend for us. We struggled during qualifying and that got us behind. Every team suffers a tough weekend like this during the year. We just need to buckle down and make sure that it doesn’t happen again because we want to stay in the hunt.”

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