September 7, 2001

News And Quotes From Laguna Seca In Monterey California

In the Friday morning practice session at Laguna Seca Raceway, Johnny was fifth quickest with a time of 1:28.38. Johnny said “ We were skating around quite a bit out there this morning. We ran the session on old tires from Road America. I flat-spotted a tire and it turned out we were running around on only seven cylinders. So, all in all, being fifth was pretty good. We’ll change the engine in plenty of time for qualifying and go out to give it our best shot.”

The crew dug in and got the engine changed, tuned, and ready for a good qualifying session with plenty of time to spare.

The afternoon qualifying was under sunny skies and 80 degrees. The session was short for Johnny. His comments were…”It didn’t feel like we went in the right direction with the changes that we made after the morning session. I was struggling with the car. It was a bizarre thing as it felt like I was running with about half of the motor. Then it felt like we lost a plug wire. Something was definitely wrong. I was at pit-in so I just shut it down and coasted in. We didn’t want to take a chance and really hurt the motor. We will take a close look at things and get it sorted out before the last practice session. “

It turned out that the motor had something break in the cam shaft. This caused the need for a motor change for the second time today. The crew had to really rush this job…but completed the changes minutes before the afternoon practice. Johnny went out and ran the motor hard. He was very pleased with the performance as is shown by his 4th fastest time of 1:28.47. Johnny was able to get the car dialed in during the last session and believes we will have a good race car for the 125 mile fuel stop event tomorrow.

Tommy Archer will start on the pole position, followed by Scott Pruett (Driving the Rocketsports #5 Jaguar), Boris Said, Lou Gigliotti, then Paul Gentilozzi. Due to the motor change, Johnny will start at the back of the 23 car field. Brian Simo (who is chasing Johnny for 2nd place in the drivers points) will also start in the back due to a technical error.

The event is televised live on Speedvision at 5PM ET on Saturday. Johnny has only started at Laguna Seca one time, in year 2000. He started sixth in that race and finished fifth after dogging Stu Hayner all day but could not make the pass.