The Pro Stock War Of Words Is Heating Up

The Pro Stock gloves are off.

Allen Johnson threw his down at Topeka, serving notice that the KB / Summit team of Greg Anderson and Jason Line had better look out. He backed it up by qualifying No. 1 and winning the Dollar General Summernationals and promised that “this Pro Stock battle for the rest of the year will be a knock-down drag out.”

“I’m so darn tired of those Summit cars winning that I could just, you know . . . Grrrrrrr,” Johnson said after notching his 11th career triumph Sunday with a final-round victory over Anderson. “We’ve been after them the last two or three races. We finally got this win and gave ’em a run for their money.

“We’ve had a big rivalry over the years,” Johnson said, “We’re going after them with a vengeance. He’s got the upper hand at this point, but we may just have something for him with these Hemis.”

He proved that in the final round at Heartland Park Topeka. Anderson challenged with a nearly perfect .004-second reaction time (perfect is .000) but Johnson still had more horsepower to earn his second Wally trophy of the season.

But Johnson had  lost to Anderson four times in the first seven races this season. And he entered the Topeka race in third place in the standings, behind Anderson and Line — the same place he is now as the tour heads to Englishtown, N.J., for the Toyota SuperNationals. He’s 93 points behind No. 2 Line and 132 off Anderson’s pace.

Anderson and Line have retired their hard-working, performance-delivering Pontiac GXPs and will be bringing out their brand-new Rick Jones-built twin Chevy Camaros next weekend at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park.

Johnson said Monday he’s “not sure if they are better or not.” But he’ll put his Dodge Avenger up against those new Camaros. He said the new cars “may help” the Summit tandem but that they “may struggle for awhile. Bring it on and let’s see.”

He landed a stinging jab at the KB / Summit team, saying, “The Mopars and the off-brand cars have a little rivalry going. It’s a rivalry that I’m sure their sponsors are noticing also.”

He knows his are noticing.

“My boss at Mopar, [Mopar CEO] Pietro Gorlier, has told me that he’s tired of seeing those Pontiacs out front,” Johnson said. “That’s our deal — to keep this momentum going, keep our consistency going, to put this Mopar Dodge Avenger out in front of them two cars.”

The father-son team of Allen and Roy Johnson finally is seeing the fruits of its considerable labors.

Engine wizard Roy Johnson knew back in 2007 he had prepared his Pro Stock troops for NHRA battle as much as he could with the resources he had. But he needed reinforcements.

He said son Allen handled driving the Team Mopar / J&J Dodge with aplomb and was exemplary in keeping the business end of the organization on track. The crew was talented.

“And I don’t think I’m a dummy,” he said quietly. “I have talent in my hands that nobody else has got. But that don’t go far enough anymore. We just need a budget to have more good people. It all comes down to money. You’ve got to have money to pay these people. It don’t work no other way.”

Today he has that funding. And one of the newest weapons in the Johnson arsenal is two-time series champion Jim Yates, whom he hired to take some of the load off longtime crew chief Mark Ingersoll.

“Mark has been fighting the Pro Stock battle. He’s been with me for 10 or 11 years. But take those Summit cars. They’ve got three crew chiefs over there. Everybody in the Pro Stock pits will tell you Mark’s the best crew chief in Pro Stock. But come Sunday he’s been fighting unfair odds,” Allen Johnson said.

“I had to get him an engineering-type person to help him think and keep all the data straight. Jim has done that for Mark, and Mark relies on him to feed him data to make decisions with and help keep him calm,” he said. “That’s the reason I got him, and it’s paying dividends.”

Last year Johnson used what he called “the best power in the pits” to stun the drag-racing community during preseason testing at Florida’s Bradenton Motorsports Park. He reeled off a run of 6.498 seconds at 213.06 miles per hour, becoming the first Pro Stock driver to break the 6.5-second barrier. That was unofficial in NHRA’s book. Nevertheless, he showed his hand.

Again this January, but with Richie Stevens test-driving as Johnson’s arm mended from off-season surgery to repair a torn right bicep, the Avenger cranked out an elapsed time of 6.466 seconds at 212.51 mph. That, unofficially, was the fastest pass in Pro Stock history — before Line rewrote the record in April at Charlotte with a 213.91-mph clocking. And it was quicker than the NHRA’s national E.T. mark of 6.477 seconds (which also belongs to Line).

Johnson said after qualifying No. 1, tying the late Lee Shepherd in top starts for the class,
“We are friends, but this is turning into [a rivalry] and it’s getting a little heated. They make a few comments about us, and we make a few about them. It’s going to be a knockdown drag-out for the rest of the season.”