{"id":80330,"date":"2021-06-30T16:47:41","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T23:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=80330"},"modified":"2021-06-30T16:47:41","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T23:47:41","slug":"steve-johnsons-quest-for-nhra-glory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/steve-johnsons-quest-for-nhra-glory\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Johnson’s Quest for NHRA Glory"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Steve Johnson currently holds second place in NHRA\u2019s Camping World Drag Racing Series\u2019 Pro Stock Motorcycle standings behind reigning champ Matt Smith. Johnson, riding a four-valve Suzuki with Monster cylinder heads, has looked primed for good results since the season began and earned his first Wally winner\u2019s trophy at Charlotte\u2019s Four-Wide Nationals – his first in seven long years. He hasn\u2019t come down from that high yet – it might last until Pomona in November.<\/p>\n

During that first-place famine, Steve Johnson rarely lost his cool, kept his composure and kept on racing against riders who might not have been born when he started racing NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle back in 1987. At one point a couple of years ago, he thought about ditching his own team and joining Jerry Savoie\u2019s White Alligator Racing; he tested at Bradenton and raced at Gainesville but realized he was always at his best with control over all facets of his race prep.<\/p>\n

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Always a long-serving Suzuki rider, Steve Johnson hasn\u2019t raced with the big trailer, the large team – and has pretty much done all the prep work on his own, along with crewman Jock Allen. When COVID hit last year, he nearly lost Jock, whose mother succumbed to the pandemic, but both Johnson and Allen came back and this year they\u2019ve shown they can run with the best, whether it\u2019s Matt Smith, who beat Johnson at Norwalk last weekend in the finals, Andrew Hines and Eddie Krawiec from Vance & Hines – or any other hot shot in NHRA\u2019s Pro Stock Motorcycle class.<\/p>\n

What Johnson has is the knowledge about his motorcycle, the tracks where he races and the competitors he\u2019s lining up to beat. When NHRA allowed 4-valve Suzuki engines, Steve and Jock were ready. In the season-starter at Gainesville, they went to the semifinals; Johnson went to the finals at the DENSO Spark Plugs Four-Wide Nationals at Las Vegas, had issues at Atlanta that saw him out after the first round, won in Charlotte – and got to savor that victory until the final round at Norwalk, as NHRA parked the motorcycles for two races.<\/p>\n

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In that lag between competitive outings, Johnson bought trophies to personally give to his sponsors. As he put it, \u201cFor some, these are very, very difficult to earn. People have told me they\u2019ve raced for a lifetime and never won [an] #NHRA Wally,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cAfter seven years, we had lots of people to thank. Ordering 20 trophies is surely a lot easier than spending the budget of seven years!\u201d<\/p>\n

After Norwalk\u2019s runner-up finish, Johnson was positive and looking forward to racing at altitude in a few weeks, when the tour goes to Bandimere Speedway outside Denver. \u201cAs much as our Slick 50 Suzuki team would have loved another win, I\u2019m still so proud of this team. Coming off a win at our last race, getting the No. 1 qualifier and then making it to the finals again! We\u2019re showing high level performance and consistency,\u201d Johnson declared. \u201cWe\u2019re No. 2 in the points and we\u2019re going to keep at it. Our hopes are to be serious contenders and we\u2019ll continue to prove that.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he\u2019s not prepping or racing his Suzuki motorcycle, Johnson spends a good deal of time working towards advancing new talent in the sport of drag racing. His support for all STEM education initiatives that bring both young men and women into the sport has been ongoing for many years; his activism has brought new fans and friends to drag racing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Johnson currently holds second place in NHRA\u2019s Camping World Drag Racing Series\u2019 Pro Stock Motorcycle standings behind reigning champ Matt Smith.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":80333,"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":[17,3470,3399,22],"tags":[5614,2,41,7,1632,641],"class_list":["post-80330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-column","category-news","category-nhra","category-event-coverage","tag-anne-proffit","tag-drag-racing","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing","tag-steve-johnson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/NHRA-photo-Johnson-with-trophy-min-e1625096818786.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-kTE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80330","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=80330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80334,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80330\/revisions\/80334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}