Allen Johnson wasn’t happy about it, but he knew it was coming.

So the Pro Stock veteran isn’t moping about Mopar, which officially announced Tuesday it has transferring its financial support from Johnson, the 2012 champion, to five-time titlist Jeg Coughlin and his Elite Motorsports teammate Erica Enders, the two-time and reigning champion.    

Johnson, a second-generation Mopar-backed racer, had enjoyed 20 years of funding from the company. Now, if he returns to the track in 2016 as he’s hoping to do, he “probably will revert to our old ways of the late ’90s and be ‘the other Dodge’ and, of course, try to be the fastest.”

According to Johnson, Mopar representatives told him midway through the 2015 season they were changing the way they do sponsorships and it was going to be a business-to-business-type relationship. Of course, that’s where the sponsorship came primarily to Jeggie. I don’t do any business with them, so that’s what took me out.”

Coughlin recently had teamed with Allen Johnson and his father, Roy Johnson, as his engine supplier. But, Johnson said in a phone interview from his home at Greeneville, Tenn., that Coughlin “took [his deal] to [Elite Motorsports owner Richard] Freeman to do the engines. That’s his prerogative.”

Johnson and Enders have been close friends for several years, and he described her happy fortune, by association but coincidentally at his expense as “bittersweet.”

Johnson said, “I’m really, really glad for her. I can’t take anything away from [her and her team]. They did a great job. That was Mopar’s decision. They were good to me for a lot of years. The business to business deal, Jeggie brought the money over there. She’s going to share in it, I guess.

“She and I have not spoken of it, and we probably won’t,” he said. “It’s just business, everyday business, you know?”

Twenty years ago, Johnson acquired the Mopar funding because as an independent racer he was using Mopar products to help defeat the factory-backed aces with regularity. Although he doesn’t like being in the current position, he understands what’s happening: “Back then we tried our best to get the sponsorship, like what these guys [at Elite Motorsports] did. They’ve been kickin’ everybody’s butts. That gets you sponsorship.”

Johnson said he isn’t angry at anyone that his longtime deal is gone.

“They’ve been a great sponsor for a lot of years. I can’t have hard feelings for anybody – with Jeggie and Erica and Richard.”

However, that isn’t stopping him from seeking a marketing partner who can help him whip up on Coughlin and Enders and everyone else in the Pro Stock class. And he indicated he’s perhaps close to finalizing a deal.

“I’m still working toward it. If I get the deal that I’m working on, it’ll be the best deal I’ve ever had. And we’ll go out and try to compete under the new rules,” Johnson said. ‘If the sponsorship comes through, we’ll dig in and get to work. But if it doesn’t, we ended on a good note.”

Johnson beat Vincent Nobile for the Pro Stock trophy at the season-ending Auto Club Finals at Pomona, Calif. That gave him the distinction of winning the class’ final race with a carburetor under the hood.

“I’m not going to race on my own money,” Johnson said. “I haven’t in a lot of years, thanks to Mopar. I’m not going to do it now.”

He said he expects to have a cordial relationship with Mopar if he returns to action in February.

“I’m sure they’ll work with us to a small degree but nothing big, no money,” he said.

The splashy “thanks for 20 years” paint scheme that appeared on Johnson’s Dodge Dart toward the close of this season was, he disclosed, Mopar’s idea. “I think they did that to try to recognize and thank us for all the years.”

The J&J Racing team has kept its employees on the payroll until at least the end of this month, Johnson said: “We’ve continued working, just like we’re going to race next year. Hopefully I’m going to hear something in the next couple of weeks [about a possible new alliance]. So we’ll either end on a good note or start back up on a good note.”

Starting back up has its own challenges, for the NHRA mandated sweeping technical changes that include the introduction of electronic fuel injection (EFI), the use of a rev limiter, and shorter wheelie bars.

Johnson said of the last two changes, “I think both of those moves are pretty much idiotic. It just costs everybody a lot of money and won’t help the class at all. If they [NHRA officials] would have done what I asked, it would have taken the computers off the car and wheelie bars off the car. That would make it a driver’s sport. But they didn’t listen to hardly anybody.”

Roy Johnson, his son said, “is chomping at the bit” to master the EFI system.

“That’s the one thing that makes it hard for me if we don’t get sponsorship. He is chomping at the bit to get out there and learn this and do well,” Allen Johnson said, laughing at the suggestion that his dad would be willing to hire out to a Mopar/Dodge team. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“The challenge of being the fastest car under any format is the challenge I look forward to: Has our team been able to adapt to these rules better than other teams? That challenge in itself is exciting.”

That’s something Allen Johnson is happy about, but he doesn’t know what’s coming.