KJ: NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Thu, 2009-04-16 11:00
Atlanta Dragway Has Been a Home Race Since the 1980s …
There
are no long lines at the airport when you race at home, no delayed
flights either. There are no rental-car shuttles, and no extended hotel
stays.
Life couldn’t be grander at this moment than it is for Kurt Johnson this weekend at the NHRA Summit Southern Nationals in Commerce, Ga. About the toughest the travel gets for the second-generation driver is a short 30-minute drive north up I-85 from their race shop in Sugar Hill to a race venue they know very well.
Atlanta Dragway Has Been a Home Race Since the 1980s …
There are no long lines at the airport when you race at home, no delayed flights either. There are no rental-car shuttles, and no extended hotel stays.
Life couldn’t be grander at this moment than it is for Kurt Johnson this weekend at the NHRA Summit Southern Nationals in Commerce, Ga. About the toughest the travel gets for the second-generation driver is a short 30-minute drive north up I-85 from their race shop in Sugar Hill to a race venue they know very well.
"Racing so close to home makes it lot easier on everyone as far as traveling," Johnson said. "We don't have to go to the airport, we don't have to go to hotel rooms – a lot of the stuff that's been difficult lately. This is the one time during the season when we can get up in the morning, leave the house and go to the track.
"There may be a few distractions, but once you shut the door on the race car, you're 100-percent focused. You can have some friends and family running around and having a good time, but that's what being at the races is all about."
Atlanta Dragway is the de-facto home track for Johnson, who has been a resident of Northeast Georgia since 1981. He's been coming to this venue for more than 30 years either as a competitor at the Southern Nationals, testing, or as a crew member on his dad's, Warren, Pro Stock car.
"We've been coming here since 1979 when we first had fiberglass doors on race cars and we shed the outer skin on our '76 Camaro at 180 mph," recalled Johnson. "We ripped the laminate off right at the finish line."
Johnson knows this racetrack as well as any on the circuit, and he's made hundreds of laps down the strip – an accumulative distance that could probably best be measured in a multitude of miles. But he doesn't necessarily feel the extra time on the track gives him any sort of performance advantage.
"The texture of the track is always changing a little bit, so from a performance standpoint, there's not really an advantage to playing at your home field, so to speak, but the fact that the shop is just down the road, that certainly helps."
Johnson's lone win at Atlanta Dragway came in 1996 when he defeated Jim Yates in the final round. He was runner-up in 1993 to his dad, and in 1997 he was runner-up to Jim Yates.
There
are no long lines at the airport when you race at home, no delayed
flights either. There are no rental-car shuttles, and no extended hotel
stays. Life couldn’t be grander at this moment than it is for Kurt Johnson this weekend at the NHRA Summit Southern Nationals in Commerce, Ga. About the toughest the travel gets for the second-generation driver is a short 30-minute drive north up I-85 from their race shop in Sugar Hill to a race venue they know very well.
Atlanta Dragway Has Been a Home Race Since the 1980s …
There are no long lines at the airport when you race at home, no delayed flights either. There are no rental-car shuttles, and no extended hotel stays. Life couldn’t be grander at this moment than it is for Kurt Johnson this weekend at the NHRA Summit Southern Nationals in Commerce, Ga. About the toughest the travel gets for the second-generation driver is a short 30-minute drive north up I-85 from their race shop in Sugar Hill to a race venue they know very well.
"Racing so close to home makes it lot easier on everyone as far as traveling," Johnson said. "We don't have to go to the airport, we don't have to go to hotel rooms – a lot of the stuff that's been difficult lately. This is the one time during the season when we can get up in the morning, leave the house and go to the track.
"There may be a few distractions, but once you shut the door on the race car, you're 100-percent focused. You can have some friends and family running around and having a good time, but that's what being at the races is all about."
Atlanta Dragway is the de-facto home track for Johnson, who has been a resident of Northeast Georgia since 1981. He's been coming to this venue for more than 30 years either as a competitor at the Southern Nationals, testing, or as a crew member on his dad's, Warren, Pro Stock car.
"We've been coming here since 1979 when we first had fiberglass doors on race cars and we shed the outer skin on our '76 Camaro at 180 mph," recalled Johnson. "We ripped the laminate off right at the finish line."
Johnson knows this racetrack as well as any on the circuit, and he's made hundreds of laps down the strip – an accumulative distance that could probably best be measured in a multitude of miles. But he doesn't necessarily feel the extra time on the track gives him any sort of performance advantage.
"The texture of the track is always changing a little bit, so from a performance standpoint, there's not really an advantage to playing at your home field, so to speak, but the fact that the shop is just down the road, that certainly helps."
Johnson's lone win at Atlanta Dragway came in 1996 when he defeated Jim Yates in the final round. He was runner-up in 1993 to his dad, and in 1997 he was runner-up to Jim Yates.
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