A day after one of his finest driving displays ever, Mopar Pro Stock driver Allen Johnson was smiling. The Greeneville, Tenn.-based driver reeled off a perfect .000 reaction time to defeat Greg Anderson in the finals of the K&N Horsepower Challenge, a special race-within-a-race staged during qualifying at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio.

Johnson’s feat put an extra $50,000 in his pocket courtesy of K&N Filters.

“To win this means a lot,” said Johnson, who made his fifth appearance in the bonus event. “Mopar hasn’t won this race in 17 years. I don’t think this will be our last. Dad [engine builder Roy Johnson] and the whole crew, everybody’s been doing an awesome job with our program.”

Perfect light in the finals provides perfect celebratory platform …

A day after one of his finest driving displays ever, Mopar Pro Stock driver Allen Johnson was smiling. The Greeneville, Tenn.-based driver reeled off a perfect .000 reaction time to defeat Greg Anderson in the finals of the K&N Horsepower Challenge, a special race-within-a-race staged during qualifying at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio.

Johnson’s feat put an extra $50,000 in his pocket courtesy of K&N Filters.

“To win this means a lot,” said Johnson, who made his fifth appearance in the bonus event. “Mopar hasn’t won this race in 17 years. I don’t think this will be our last. Dad [engine builder Roy Johnson] and the whole crew, everybody’s been doing an awesome job with our program.”

The toughest task was determining whether Johnson’s smiles were the result of the large payday or how he earned it.

“The perfect light in the final, I don’t know where that came from,” Johnson added. “We had a really good day. The second round, I was able to cut a little bit of a better light there, and then in the finals, of course, you’re just sucking up everything you got to really get it close. Fortunately we were on the green-side of perfect.”

Johnson won with a slower 6.725 elapsed time at 204.91 mph, overshadowing Anderson’s 6.717, 204.91 mph package.

For his part, Anderson smiled a bit, but nothing like Johnson.

"I can't take anything away from Allen," Anderson said, "he went out and earned it.  Call it what you want, but he earned it.  He kicked my butt on the starting line; it doesn't matter what the numbers were.  He was .024 better on the starting line, and that's why he won the race and won himself 50 grand.  I'm proud of my team, though.  We picked up three hundredths on the car, so obviously we learned a ton on that run.  Hopefully that will propel us into better things for tomorrow."

Anderson received $10,000 for his runner-up effort

Johnson wasn’t the only winner as race fan Ed Merry Jr. from Virginia Beach, Va., was the lucky winner of a 2008 Pontiac G6 GXP as part of the K&N Horsepower Challenge Sweepstakes. He was the fan represented by Johnson.