Kurt Johnson advanced to his fifth final round of the season at the NHRA Carolinas Nationals in the ACDelco Chevrolet and he will leave North Carolina with a 15 point lead over second-place Greg Anderson. It also marked the 72nd career final-round appearance for Johnson and his 498th career round win.

Johnson's ACDelco Chevy Cobalt was No. 1 qualifier for this event. He defeated Vinnie Deceglie in round one, outran Greg Anderson in round two after cutting a .003 light on the Christmas Tree, and in round three he defeated V. Gaines with the quickest e.t. of the day at 6.688 seconds.

"That's the first time I've ever had something like that happen," Johnson said. "I hit the ignition switch to get the starter spinning, and the engine must have tried to fire right away because it kicked back and chipped a tooth on the starter drive gear. We took it apart once we got back to the pits and found a sliver the size of a penny nail had jammed in the armature. That cost is a chance at winning the race, 20 championship points and little bit of money.

"Despite how things ended up, I prefer to look at it on the positive side. It could have happened earlier in the day, I could have gone red in the second round instead of that .002, or it could have been someone else in the other lane. There are a lot of things that could have gone wrong, but we made it to the final, our ACDelco Cobalt ran flawlessly and we leave here with the points lead."