{"id":29098,"date":"2016-07-28T15:18:26","date_gmt":"2016-07-28T22:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=29098"},"modified":"2018-08-16T12:36:14","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T19:36:14","slug":"tommy-johnson-jrs-nhra-western-swing-part-ii-sonoma-nationals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/tommy-johnson-jrs-nhra-western-swing-part-ii-sonoma-nationals\/","title":{"rendered":"Tommy Johnson Jr’s NHRA Western Swing, Part II — Sonoma Nationals"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Photos:<\/strong> Courtesy of NHRA and Tommy Johnson Jr.<\/p>\n

For the next four weeks, RacingJunk.com\u00a0will be following Tommy Johnson, Jr., driver of the Don Schumacher Racing\u2019s Make-A-Wish Dodge Charger R\/T Funny Car , on the NHRA Western Swing. Have questions for Tommy Johnson Jr? Find us on Facebook or Twitter and ask away!<\/em><\/p>\n

In\u00a0Denver, Johnson Jr had a quarterfinal finish defeating Chad Head, before getting beat by Courtney Force in a very close race, 4.016 seconds, 215.56 mph \u2013 4.032 seconds. 315.71 mph.\u00a0 Going into Sonoma, Johnson returns to wine country after reaching the finals last year before bowing out to Jack Beckman in a side-by-side race.<\/p>\n

Part 2: Toyota Sonoma NHRA Nationals, Sonoma Raceway<\/h3>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s so tough in Denver and I was just so happy we didn\u2019t tear up any parts at all.\u00a0 The car ran good, didn\u2019t run as good as we wanted, but it still ran good.\u00a0 Just to lose a close one like that in the second round, it was actually pretty frustrating.\u00a0 You hate to lose but you really hate to lose a close one like that.\u00a0 It could have gone either way.\u00a0 A .01 to a .03 and a 60 to 62 light (reaction time) is a good drag race, but this time I was on the short end of it.<\/p>\n

“Qualifying is so important and it\u2019s so important to qualify in a good spot to put yourself in position.\u00a0 I mean it doesn\u2019t always work out that way.\u00a0 A lot of times you go back and look at the ladder, qualifying is way more important than you think it is.\u00a0 It sets you up for race day and puts you in the right place.\u00a0 We qualified in the bottom half of the field; we were No. 9, and I was able to win first round — No. 8 against No. 9, but then go up against No. 1 second round.\u00a0 It all has to goes back to qualifying and how you did in qualifying to set you up for a great race day.<\/p>\n

“I stayed over in Denver on Monday.\u00a0 As you know, Jack Beckman\u2019s team has raised awareness about Infinite Hero and Terry Chandler funds that sponsorship.\u00a0 They put on a great golf tournament on Monday and it\u2019s the second year in a row we\u2019ve done it.\u00a0 It\u2019s just a great event to raise some money for Infinite Hero and the great things they are doing for our veterans.\u00a0 Being able to meet a lot of them this weekend was a great experience. \u00a0J.R. Martinez (All My Children, Dancing with the Stars<\/em>) was out at the track with us this weekend.\u00a0 I also met the brothers of Marcus and Morgan Luttrell.\u00a0 Marcus is the author of Lone Survivor<\/u>, from which a movie was made after.\u00a0 To hear their stories was fascinating and I was reading their books as I was flying out here.\u00a0 It was a great event that I was able to attend and thankful for their service.<\/p>\n

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(L-R) Tommy Johnson, Jr., Shawn Langdon, Terri Chandler, Neil Strausbaugh and Mike Green up in Wine Country.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“So, when you fly to San Francisco, what do you do when you\u2019re in wine country but go on a wine tour so that\u2019s our plate for Wednesday.\u00a0 We always try to visit the petite wineries, the small ones that are family businesses along with some big corporate ones, but we tend to favor the small private wineries.\u00a0 I\u2019ve gotten to know of lot of them and it\u2019s been nice because over the past few years of doing this\u00a0\u00a0 We\u2019ve become good friends with a lot of them and have some really great relationships with the people who own the winery and we always look forward to seeing them and having them out at the races.\u00a0 Not only are they good friends, they also bring great wine to the track.<\/p>\n

“I always tried to visit Scoma\u2019s when we\u2019re out here because Joey Scoma is always at the races.\u00a0 I love their seafood, but IN-N-OUT is always on the menu.\u00a0 There\u2019s one right down the street from the hotel.\u00a0 I\u2019m trying to be on a diet on this western swing and lose a little weight.\u00a0 We now have to put so much weight on the front end of the race cars to keep the front end on the ground, I thought I would try to help by taking off 10 pounds, but it seems every time we get to the Bay area, it\u2019s all good restaurants.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to be hard to stick to that diet this week.<\/p>\n

\"The
The fog rolls in off the Northern California Coast.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Now this weekend, I\u2019d never really done much at Sonoma until last year when finished runner-up and now I\u2019m looking forward to it.\u00a0 It kind of set our team our team off in the right direction after making it to the finals against Jack (Beckman) and went on to Seattle to win.\u00a0 From there we went on to get to the finals at Brainerd.\u00a0 It was the first of three races in a row to go to the finals.\u00a0 Just getting to the finals is so tough.\u00a0 We won one of the three, but just to get there and do three in a row is a really great feat.\u00a0 It would nice to kick that off again, get back to the finals, and start things swinging again.\u00a0 Maybe we peaked a little early last year.\u00a0 I already have a win this year (Bristol) like last year coming into here.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve started our peak yet, which is good because with the Countdown coming, I think it needs to start here.\u00a0 Last year we started a little earlier.\u00a0 I went four of five races last season in the finals starting in Chicago.\u00a0 Then Sonoma was our second finals in the string.\u00a0 This year, I would like start maybe say, Sonoma to be the first, that way we could peak a little later in the season. “<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part II of our journey with Tommy Johnson Jr as he travels the Western Swing in the NHRA Mello Yello series.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":29105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,17,3399],"tags":[3085,2,547,7,4641,862,956],"class_list":["post-29098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-guest-column","category-nhra","tag-2016-mello-yello-series","tag-drag-racing","tag-jay-wells","tag-nhra","tag-sonoma","tag-sonoma-raceway","tag-tommy-johnson-jr"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/TommyJohnsonJR_Feature.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-7zk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29107,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29098\/revisions\/29107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}