When Pro Stock Motorcycle rider Steve Johnson pulls off something spectacular, tempering his enthusiasm isn’t an option. However, after riding his four-valve Suzuki to the provisional No. 1 Pro Stock Motorcycle run during opening day qualifying at the DeWalt Tools NHRA Carolina Nationals, he was a bit more subdued than usual. 

Johnson, who entered zMax Dragway as the leader in Pro Stock Bike pits, was someone confused by what had transpired during the 6.807 seconds it took him to reach the finish line stripe while speeding along at 196.47 miles per hour. 

Johnson couldn’t see.

“I’m still trying to process it,” Johnson admitted. “At the end of the day, to answer your question, I could not see in third gear. I literally could not see. I didn’t think about it because when I pre-staged and then staged and then backed up, I could see the lights go on and off. I looked over at the other lane, and I saw the pre-stage light. I could not see anything. 

“Normally, you can see the bulb. You can see the whole round bulb; half of it’s lit, half of it’s not. So you can see the whole bulb. I could not see the whole bulb. 

‘Steve Johnson, with my eyes, on this day, at that time could not see the bottom part. So I thought, ‘wow, that’s weird.” 

“So when it did light up, and I did let go, I feel like I didn’t have a great light. So then I’m going down the track. In third gear, I push third gear, light comes on, and I look up and I could not see anything. I could see a little bit off to the left as I’m reliving it. But I could not see going down the track. Could not see where I was. I felt I was going to the right, and I was, but I just couldn’t see.”

Could sunlight have blinded Johnson?

“When I talked to people, they said, ‘the sun’s behind you,” Johnson explained. “So Brad [Hardy, NHRA Starter] says, ‘I’ll ask Lanny. Lanny knows where it is. Lanny’s the track specialist for John Force Racing, and he can say it was straight above us.” 

“I’m racing a motorcycle. This has taken me 30 years to get where I’m at. I can’t figure out what happened out there, but I’m telling you, I couldn’t see.”

What was very visible to Johnson after the run was that he was considerably ahead of the competition after just one run. He was over .04 quicker than No. 2 runner Angelle Sampey. 

“I’m so happy you brought that up,” Johnson said. “So we went back, and I’m learning about the software that Racepak has. Chris and Terry over there, they’ve really helped, and I have this whole advisory team, the Monster guys, George Bryce and Mitch, everybody. Compressing all those numbers, you can put your weather in and your ET, and it will give you a corrected back to zero. 

“Y’all know that. So I thought I looked at our 6.729 run when we made it here in May, and that corrected to a 6.63. If I don’t correct better than a 6.63, it wasn’t as good a run as it was here, right? Y’all get that. So in Reading, we had almost a tenth on the field, which is unheard of. But we were two slower than our 6.63 run. We were a 6.65 was the corrected. So that means we weren’t fast. 

“Somebody said, ‘oh, you’re trying to tell us that everybody was slow.” 

“So to answer your question, we missed it by  I think drifting, I think some other stuff. I keep going, trying to really educate our fan base and whoever will listen that if you want to go as fast as the motorcycle supposed to go, you can’t ride it. You have to drive it. So I didn’t do a great job driving it which is a nice thing, and we’re still .04 ahead.”