Steve Johnson sent out a video Friday through social media, laughing that “What are you going to do?!” kind of laugh and showing his NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle and team and friends all huddled under his small pop-up canopy tent in the pits while the rains poured down on Summit Racing Equipment Motorsports Park near Norwalk, Ohio.

Johnson always makes the most of any situation, turns wild and seemingly unpleasant occurrences into a party or some sort of positive. So he did what he could during the rainstorm, then went out and staked himself Friday night to a provisional No. 11 position in the qualifying order for the Summit Equipment Nationals.

That might not have sounded all that stellar. But it’s a positive for Johnson. He has a 20-foot trailer while others have the drag-racing-elite equivalent of a mobile Taj Mahal.

“But the tractor-trailer takes all of my energy and all of my time – and all of my money,” Johnson says, not seeking pity but rather adding perspective.     

Don’t think of him and crew chief Jock Allen as “The Little Team That Could.”

They’re “The Little Team That Does.”

Johnson won last month’s four-wide race at Charlotte, the most recent for the bike class on the Camping World Drag Racing Series tour. And Saturday, with a 6.789-second elapsed time at 198.44 mph, Johnson claimed his first top-qualifying position for the first time since the fall Charlotte race in 2019.

Actually, Johnson moved from 11th overnight to No. 2 early Saturday on his Slick 50 Suzuki, improving with a 6.853-second pass and a faster 196.44-mph speed. Then he climbed to the top of the ladder in the final session Saturday evening.

But this is no fluke. It’s true that Johnson’s best finish in the standings during his career was third – in 1995, but he has finished out of the top 10 only 10 times since then – and in the top 10 16 times in the past 26 years.

He’s third in the standings now, taking a 7-3 eliminations record into his Sunday first-round match-up against No. 16 starter Jimmy Underdahl.

In the season’s four completed events, Johnson has won once, reached the final quad at Las Vegas, and had a semifinal effort at the season-opening Gatornationals. And he has qualified in the top half of the field at four of the year’s five races, including three times in the top three.

So in recording his second No. 1 starting spot at Norwalk – he did it first in 2010 – Johnson continued to prove he’s studying the sport more and that it’s paying dividends.

“It's probably confusing to watch when we barely got down the track in Q1. But it's like life, you know. It’s like, ‘OK, I woke up early and I ate, you know, bad fast food. How do I feel? I feel bad. So I got to change it.’ A lot of people don't ever change. They just keep doing the same thing,” he said.

“So we look at the data, and I see all the mistakes that I made. I made the mistakes, nobody else – riding specifically and some on the tuning – and then you just start tweaking on it,” Johnson said. “But I've gotten to where I understand what's going on with controlling the engine, controlling the fuel. When I talk to Brian Corradi [Antron Brown’s Top Fuel crew chief who’s helping Johnson in an unofficial advisory role], I actually understand what he says now. It's really, really cool.

“So I guess the confidence comes from understanding a little bit,” he said. “I mean, I have been doing it for a little while [since 1987], but definitely I've been to school. I understand. And the coolest thing is you see the results. Nobody likes to make changes and not see results. We see results.”

Johnson said, “It gives us a lot of confidence to see the data. The advisory committee [his hand-picked experts who lend advice], the manufacturers, the people here on the ground. I mean, it's a team. We look small. We have a little tiny Mac Rack and EZ-UP, if you can envision this, and a 20-foot trailer.” And he said he was excited that he got for this race a brand-new new Liberty transmission, calling it “a help.”

Johnson never thinks small.

Besides, he said, “This is a special weekend. Slick 50 is on is a major sponsor. And you need confidence when you really want to do something for your major sponsor.”

He said fans have flocked to his pit this weekend: “We’ve had so many people come by. And you know, that warms anybody up. And the fact that they'd come by somebody that doesn't have a tractor-trailer, or just a small little deal [and] that they find us out. But to have them in the grandstands and to know that tomorrow’s show’s live on FOX, that’s some special stuff.”

Just like earning the fifth No. 1 qualifying position of his career is “some special stuff.”