Call it the Hot Potato Salad Syndrome.
 
It might be more dangerous to drag racers than any of them realize. And so far, no pharmaceutical company has marketed a pill for it.
 
NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle racer Steve Johnson diagnosed himself and since has started to overcome the harmful side effects.
 
“I was doing hospitality one year, and they didn’t bring enough ice for the potato salad,” Johnson said. “And I was afraid that the potato salad was getting hot in my pit area with all the people. After my burnout, I’m sitting there [at the starting line], thinking about the potato salad being hot. Everybody else is thinking about racing.”
 
What he learned, he said, is that “when I leave the trailer, I need to become a driver. When the doors shut and we leave our pit area, I need to become a racer.”
 
But Steve Johnson’s leap of knowledge has a much broader scope. He said, “What I've learned in 30 years– I learned there was a whole bunch of things that I was missing in racing, and I got to learn that. And so it's like, how many other things do I not know how to do? And there's plenty of it.”
 
Johnson’s on-track performance has improved tremendously since he realized he needed to pay attention to the details of racing – and adopted an informal brain trust, of sorts, to help him sharpen his focus.

He has competed at 438 races, won six times in 22 final-round appearances and has a 252-403 race-day record. So he has plenty of experience. Moreover, he’s a popular and über-energetic ambassador for the sport. He religiously follows a diet and fitness regimen that keeps him light on his motorcycle. But his success before the past few months came from a scattershot approach. Today he is far more attentive and engaged with the task of mastering his riding skills.
 
Johnson didn’t qualify for the Countdown this season, but since it started, he has advanced to two final rounds and two semifinals and improved from 15th to 12th in the standings. And he only can imagine how many championship conversations in which he could been a factor had he wised up sooner.
 
“Oh yeah, yeah. But on the other hand,’ Johnson said, “I say, ‘You know what? At least I did.”    
 
This epiphany hit him like a truckload of Snickers bars.
 
That’s what he likened his learning to: taking the first bite of a Snickers bar.
 
“As frustrated as I am about not knowing it [all the information he was missing], at the end of the day, if you've never tasted a candy bar and you don't know what sugar's like, you go through life and never know what a Snickers tastes like. You just took a bite out of a Snickers bar. It's like, ‘Wow! Does that taste good! I never had it.’ It's the same thing.”
 
So now he’s hooked on information Snickers.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. And math – really hooked on math,” Johnson said. “I’m like anybody who learns something new – I’m so excited about it. My brain is just wrapped around it all the time.”
 
Guiding him to his enlightenment was an unlikely source: Pro Stock racer Chris McGaha.
 
“Met Steve, and our friendship started at Englishtown [N.J.] 2014. Funny deal . . . I was struggling that weekend and couldn’t get down the track. And I was pissed off over the entire deal and was walking to the stands to relax, vent, and get my emotions together,” McGaha said. “Passed Steve’s trailer on the way by, and he stopped me, and it’s been a growing friendship ever since.
 
“He’s learned how much depth I had acquired over the years to do this, from having a shop to working on the car myself. So I have become one of those lifelines, or phone-a-friend,” he said. “As far as the depth of what he’s asked me, it’s been from basic engine knowledge that covers every engine to deep secrets of honing cylinder procedures, cylinder-head sizing. As far as what he’s done to really turn his program around, I’m not even 100-percent sure what he’s done and not done. But if he wants to ask questions, he’s free to ask – but we have to do it over a pizza without broccoli!”
 
Johnson said, “We were just saying hi and chatting, and the next thing you know, I said something about why was it so slow? And he threw it right back at me: ‘Well, it's 40 more grains of water in the air than there was at the on Friday.’ And I'm like, ‘Oh.’ I kind of pretended like I knew what he was talking about, but I didn't. And then I started looking at my own information. And then I went back and finally put my tail between my legs and said, ‘What did you mean by that?’

“And he explained it. And then the greatest thing that he's ever said was, ‘If you ever have a question, just come back and ask me.’ But see?” Johnson said. “That goes to my advisory committee. I always say to everybody, ‘The smartest company in the world, they have an advisory committee. One guy doesn't make the decisions for Apple. One guy doesn't make the decision at NHRA. One person doesn't make the division for big movements. There's advisory committee. They put smart people on a board. That's why people have boards.’ I now have my own board.”
 

It might sound odd that information from Pro Stock about engines and other matters could translate to a Pro Stock bike, but Johnson said that “gear ratios is a huge deal – and the formula. When you're not a math guy and you get shown formulas, it definitely translates to a motorcycle: ‘This made me faster. This made me slower.’
 
“All of the Pro Stock cars guys are so savvy with gear ratios and stuff like that. Those guys are so amazing, to be able to make all the changes they do with all the things they have in that car. And then they go out there and run within one-thousandth [of a second] of each other. It's knowing a formula, and there's so many of them. I never even knew about correcting back to zero. The information is right in front of me, and I never used it. I didn't know what it was for,” Johnson said.
 
He said McGaha has “shown me basically how to use math to make decisions in different atmospheric conditions, and one of the main topics is in transmission ratios. And here's something that's really cool . . . In Phoenix, I brought students over to Chris' [pit], and Chris showed them in the trailer. It's so cool to open up a cabinet door and from the top to the bottom of this cabinet door – it's as big as your pantry door at your house – it’s filled with gears. And he talked about gear ratios. He not only educated me, but he also educated all those students. It was awesome.
 
“And see, my view with education– I'm proud because I'm always trying to share the brand. My presentations are about skilled trades and having a great personal brand that people will pay for. And the education and sharing that information are the two valuable points. Chris definitely has the information and he shared it. He definitely has the education and he shared it. He's just staying to himself. He doesn't run from trailer to trailer to trailer, and he shared the information,” Johnson said.
 
“Discovering or analyzing the situation, coming up with a solution, and then working it through and then having a result: That's issue, solution, result, he said, admitting that he didn’t know he had an issue that needed solving. “He said, ‘Hey, this is an issue. Here's the solution,’ and I'm seeing the results. Now it's mine, too.
 
“That’s what’s so great about education,” Johnson said. “Once you have it, it’s your intellectual property, No one can take it from you.”
 
He said he tells students, “You’re here in class. It’s great to see your friends. It’s super-fun to screw around and be on your phone. But you can be educated, and no one can take that away from you. And education always turns into money.”
 
Right now, Johnson said, “My education on transmissions is getting put together.” With that will come better performance. With better performance will come a more attractive package for a potential marketing partner. And with that will come greater income to keep Steve Johnson Racing on the racetrack and on in-the-classroom missions.
 
He understands that his hit-and-miss method was due to his lack of knowledge.

“Oh my gosh, it was so much,” Johnson said. “One of the most famous sayings out there is ‘You only know what you know.’ And when you don't know how to use math for gear ratios, or when you don't know how to use atmospheric conditions to make changes, when you get shown that, it's like, "Oh my gosh."
 
And with that, Steve Johnson is grabbing another bite of a Snickers bar.