Allen Johnson isn’t exactly an old dog, but he’s been learning a lot of tricks this season.
Johnson, who won the 2012 NHRA Pro Stock championship and is credited with 27 national events, retired from professional drag racing in 2017. He had a few stints behind the wheel of the family’s Factory Stock Showdown car before returning in 2023 as the driver of Geoff Turk’s Factory X entry.
“It brings back a lot of old memories and getting to see all my old friends, but the performance of the cars coming around,” Johnson said of the Dodge Challenger he pilots.
Johnson is one of five drivers who have been making laps to get the new class dialed in as the next level of the Factory Stock Showdown, which are cars limited to a 7.5-second chassis spec. These cars run engines producing up to 1400 horsepower with superchargers and weigh in the neighborhood of 2,650 pounds. All must employ a manual transmission.
Johnson pulled the gears in thousands of runs while in Pro Stock, so that aspect is no big deal. Now, the car he’s in with virtually stock dimensions and other challenging configurations is a big deal. He and his fellow Factory X racers had their hands full finding the right groove.
“The first couple of races until they really got a handle on the chassis, it was pretty tough,” Johnson admitted. “I don’t think I ever got to the point that I didn’t want to do it. It takes time. Anything new and this brand new combination, never been around this wheelbase, all this pretty fun just seeing it evolve.”
It’s kind of like swinging a left-handed golf club. Johnson says the differences take a little bit of getting used to.
“First gear is where you get your biggest lesson,” Johnson explained. “These things with this tire, you can’t get after it in first gear as much as you could with the Pro Stock car. In the Pro Stock car, you’re in first gear, just a little over one second, these 1.7 [seconds]. So waiting on that first shift light’s pretty hard.”
Johnson has adapted rather well and rapidly, carding both the first-ever six-second pass and speed in excess of 200 miles per hour.
Presently, there are three former Pro Stock drivers in the Factory X division; joining Johnson are new series champion Greg Stanfield and former IHRA Mountain Motor Pro Stock Champion Chris Holbrook, making runs in the inaugural season. Johnson said the Pro Stock experience helps in adapting to the new class.
“It certainly doesn’t hurt,” Johnson said. “Steven [Bell], he’s a good example. He’s never, I guess, had a stick car and tube car and all that. He says he’s scared of it a little bit and where I might yank it over out of the first gear to get it back in the groove either, that’s all. And just in time, he’ll do fine.”
Though Johnson said driving Turk’s Dodge is a big difference from his Avenger back in the day. He added that each one of the cars in Factory X presents its own nuances.
“The evolution of each car, all these cars are different, and the learning curve for the tuner and the driver is going to be different,”
Johnson said of the Mustang. [The Camaro] same thing. I mean, we’ve traded a lot of notes, and those cars are going 60-foot better than this one. Like Turk said, ‘This is a tank.”
But as Johnson believes, on the battlefield – tanks make things happen.
Tanks… Factory X Challengers, Camaros, and Mustangs, he believes in the grand scheme of things, will move the needle in the drag racing world. They will make things happen.
