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Winning isn\u2019t easy in any form of motorsport. No matter whether the competition is between single or multiple competitors, it\u2019s tough to see that checkered flag or win light before the other car or motorcycle.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a long, long haul for Tommy Johnson Jr., driver of Don Schumacher Racing\u2019s Make-A-Wish Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Funny Car. His was the first car adopted by philanthropist Terry Chandler to satisfy her drag racing love; Johnson\u2019s car was later joined by the Infinite Hero Foundation Dodge driven by 2012 Funny Car champ Jack Beckman.<\/p>\n
After Chandler\u2019s death, her husband Doug elected to continue the program for both Johnson and Beckman. His two race cars have been competitive in every outing, but for Johnson Jr. the wins have been few and far between. That ended this past Sunday in the 22nd annual Route 66 NHRA Nationals at Route 66 Raceway outside Chicago, IL.<\/p>\n
It was there that the car tuned by JohnCollins finally made its way to the NHRA Winner\u2019s Circle, giving this segment of DSR its first victory since the World Finals at Pomona in 2017. Now, that\u2019s a 32-race drought. This victory marked Johnson Jr.\u2019s 18th career win in his second final round appearance of the 2019 season and his 50th final round overall in a career marked by driving, testing, crewing, testing, driving at various stages along the way.<\/p>\n
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Johnson Jr.\u2019s team has been beset by blow-ups over the past year and this race was no different as his engine exploded feet before the finish line timing beams. Still, his blow-up was late enough to thwart his competitor Robert Hight, whose Chevrolet Camaro SS from John Force Racing was a tenth and a half of a second behind the Dodge as he smoked the tires on his run. Johnson Jr. turned 4.175-sec at 229.86mph to best Hight\u2019s 4.438 at 202.55.<\/p>\n
Johnson qualified second and advanced past Paul Lee, teammate Matt Hagan and John Force to meet Hight in the finals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes your heart stop for a second, because you\u2019re sitting there coasting and you know he\u2019s got to be there somewhere,\u201d Johnson Jr. said of his winning pass. \u201cIt\u2019s the longest coasting you\u2019ve ever done in your life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw the win light come on and I was just so thrilled for the guys and (team sponsor) Doug Chandler. He continued this program in his wife, Terry Chandler\u2019s, honor, so I\u2019m happy we could get this win for him. We\u2019ve been close a lot – six times we were there in the final and couldn\u2019t get it done – so it was nice to finally do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Make-A-Wish Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat has a star on its roof, purchased in Terry Chandler\u2019s honor by the St. Louis Make-A-Wish chapter. It was crew chief Collins\u2019 idea \u201cto put the coordinates of her star on our roof hatch,\u201d Johnson Jr. explained. \u201cThe roof hatch comes up every time I get out and every time I turn around and look at it, I see the coordinates, so I know she\u2019s always there. She\u2019s a lasting impact on our team and she\u2019ll be with us forever.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Johnson Jr. had confidence coming through four qualifying sessions and into Sunday eliminations. \u201cThis is a track where we\u2019ve had a lot of success,\u201d he said. \u201cI think we\u2019ve been in the finals four of the last six years here. I\u2019m not superstitious, but the way the weekend went,\u201d as he earned six qualifying bonus points, \u201cthings just kept pointing to it. I felt good about it. I went up there for the final and really wasn\u2019t even nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n Tommy Johnson Jr.\u2019s victory in the Route 66 NHRA Nationals, the ninth race on a 24-race schedule – and halfway mark in a regular season that ends with the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals over Labor Day weekend – marks the third consecutive victory for the Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, introduced in competition last July in Denver by DSR\u2019s two-time champ Hagan; teammate and 2016 Funny Car champ Ron Capps earned the two previous win lights, at Atlanta and Richmond.<\/p>\n The victory brought Johnson ever closer to points leader Hight, who has 818 points. Johnson Jr. has 650 points in second place, followed by Capps with 610, John Force (596), reigning titleholder J.R. Todd (593), whose Kalitta Motorsports Toyota Camry exited in the first round, Hagan with 559 points, Beckman\u2019s 553, Tim Wilkerson in his new Ford Mustang with 495, Kalitta\u2019s Shawn Langdon (435) and Bob Tasca III with 401 points.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no time for the Make-A-Wish crew and driver to savor their victory as next weekend, June 7-9, marks the Menards NHRA Heartland Nationals at Heartland Motorsports Park outside Topeka, KS., the second in a four-races-in-four-weekends flog.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s been a long, long haul for Tommy Johnson Jr., driver of Don Schumacher Racing\u2019s Make-A-Wish Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Funny Car.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":62621,"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","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3470,5029,3399],"tags":[574,6769,2,41,7,1632,6768,956],"class_list":["post-62617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-don-schumacher-racing","tag-doug-chandler","tag-drag-racing","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing","tag-terry-chandler","tag-tommy-johnson-jr"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Tommy-Johnson-Jr.-top-end-action-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-ghX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62617","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\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62617"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62623,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62617\/revisions\/62623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Finally](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/John-Collins-at-Vegas-II-2018-min.jpg\")
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