Kurt Johnson plans to spend a few days enjoying Thanksgiving with his family and neighbors, but come Monday the veteran Pro Stock driver plans to be back in the shop working the dyno and tweaking engines for 2010. Those are the plans he revealed while a guest Tuesday evening on Joe Castello’s WFO Radio show.

Earlier the same day, Johnson’s sponsor of 14 years, ACDelco, announced the end of their sponsorship program. The 39-time NHRA Pro Stock winner confirmed that he’s got his work cut out for him if he hopes to race.

Kurt Johnson plans to spend a few days enjoying Thanksgiving with his family and neighbors, but come Monday the veteran Pro Stock driver plans to be back in the shop working the dyno and tweaking engines for 2010. Those are the plans he revealed while a guest Tuesday evening on Joe Castello’s WFO Radio show.

Earlier the same day, Johnson’s sponsor of 14 years, ACDelco, announced the end of their sponsorship program. The 39-time NHRA Pro Stock winner confirmed that he’s got his work cut out for him if he hopes to race.

“It’s going to be tough to race out there without sponsorship,” Johnson said. “It’s going to take one big company or three associate sponsors to try and float the boat.”

One thing is for certain, if Johnson’s boat floats it will be with a familiar make and model.

“It’s going to be a Chevrolet or Pontiac … it will be a GM car,” Johnson confirmed.

“We started out with [Olds] Cutlasses in 1993 and then Pontiac came along in 1997 and in 1998, we jumped into the Camaro. Then we jumped into the Cavalier and put it into the winner’s circle in 2001 at the very first race with it. We had great success with that car and went to the Cobalt in 2005 and won the first race amongst all the Cobalt drivers. The relationship has been great with GM in my career.”

This season completed Johnson’s seventeenth consecutive NHRA Top Ten season but on the downside, the final round loss at the NHRA Auto Club Finals ended the fourteen-season streak of at least one national event victory.

The 2009 season, Johnson admits, was one of frustration.

“It was an up and down year and we had some vendor issues,” Johnson explained. “There were some screw-ups on getting some parts and some companies closing up and that didn’t help. Crane Cams had been with us for 30 years and you go through those periods and you dig down deep and drive harder. We ran well but we didn’t run consistently well. It was good enough to finish in the top ten.”

Johnson faces a tough reality, and in his words, “These cars don’t run on gasoline, they run on money.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, we have some real good people looking for some help for us,” Johnson confided. “We have a lot of friends out there who know a lot of people. We’ve got our fingers crossed and it would be tough for me to sit at home. I’ve always raced all my life. The helmet still fits.”

Listen to the complete interview

Advertisement