Kurt Johnson's first-round loss to Pro Stock rival Jeg Coughlin Jr. at Sunday's SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals certainly had its share of unpredictable drama, even though the eventual outcome was not what the ACDelco driver would have liked. Especially on a weekend when the black-and blue crew continued to make substantial gains on their Chevy Cobalt with each pass down the race track.

 Tree malfunctions cost almost 90 minutes of Friday’s qualifying in Las Vegas. A rubber malfunction in the first round of Pro Stock almost cost Kurt Johnson a disqualification.

KJ was pre-staged and then his side of the tree went dark.

"To be honest, I thought I had completely lost my mind," Johnson said. "I rolled in, lit the top bulb, and Jeggie was pre-staged, and he went in. I rolled through there, and before I knew it, my top bulb was out. There were no lights on whatsoever. It's like, did I miss the second bulb coming on and roll right through? I gave it a bump, enough for it to come on. I took a bite out of it, and probably rolled six or eight inches, and nothing came on, so I stopped, because you're being timed on the seven-second rule to be red-lighted. I said to myself, 'All right, we'll take another bite at,' and then the top bulb went out."

Kurt Johnson's first-round loss to Pro Stock rival Jeg Coughlin Jr. at Sunday's SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals certainly had its share of unpredictable drama, even though the eventual outcome was not what the ACDelco driver would have liked. Especially on a weekend when the black-and blue crew continued to make substantial gains on their Chevy Cobalt with each pass down the race track.

 Tree malfunctions cost almost 90 minutes of Friday’s qualifying in Las Vegas. A rubber malfunction in the first round of Pro Stock almost cost Kurt Johnson a disqualification.

KJ was pre-staged and then his side of the tree went dark.

"To be honest, I thought I had completely lost my mind," Johnson said. "I rolled in, lit the top bulb, and Jeggie was pre-staged, and he went in. I rolled through there, and before I knew it, my top bulb was out. There were no lights on whatsoever. It's like, did I miss the second bulb coming on and roll right through? I gave it a bump, enough for it to come on. I took a bite out of it, and probably rolled six or eight inches, and nothing came on, so I stopped, because you're being timed on the seven-second rule to be red-lighted. I said to myself, 'All right, we'll take another bite at,' and then the top bulb went out."

Coughlin's side was unaffected, and he bolted off with a normal launch, turning on the win light at the top end. Johnson, with nothing left to lose, decided to make the most of the situation.

"I figured I had lost and decided to at least get some data out of it," Johnson said. "I let the clutch out and made a nice run."

NHRA officials quickly descended upon the faulty starting box, and in no time, discovered the culprit. A small chunk of rubber had lodged inside the staging beam socket causing a malfunction with the right side of the tree. A quick ruling was made to rerun the round following a 30-minute hiatus that would allow both teams to regroup.

In the runoff, Johnson tripped the starting beams too soon with a -.001 red-light which automatically gave Coughlin the win.

"We had to run the world champion first round, and we knew we had to be on top of our game and that I had to be on time," Johnson explained after the race. "I knew I had to be .020 or better on the tree if we were to have a chance, and after last weekend's .065 light, I wasn't leaving anything on the table.

"The biggest issue about going back up there is that you're out of sequence and you're not running behind the same cars that you run behind on a normal basis. The track, actually, it looked good, but it kind of threw us a curve. The car spun the tires hard the first 60 feet and that's where we lost it all. We actually should have made some bigger changes, but not knowing what out e.t. was from the first run, or how fast we really went, it was kind of tough to judge. It gave us some good information, though, when we come back in October.

Johnson left Las Vegas in eighth place in the Full Throttle points standings, and returns to the friendly confines of Atlanta Dragway, the de facto home track for the ACDelco crew. It sits approximately 30 minutes east of the team's Sugar Hill, Ga., race shop. 

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