Alan Johnson Racing To Keep Drag Racing Team Operational
SANTA MARIA, Calif. – For more than two decades, Santa Maria’s Alan Johnson has established himself as arguably the top mind in all of professional drag racing. However, despite his legendary resume, Johnson is in danger of having his successful team parked permanently.
An unexpected turn of events in late December 2014 has put the Alan Johnson Racing team in a precarious position just as the 2015 NHRA season has kicked off.
Johnson says he was told in early December by the Qatar-backed Al-Anabi Racing Team that funding for 2015 was secure, only to be told two weeks later that it was being withdrawn. He didn’t want to go into details about the situation or speculate what might have been the reason Al-Anabi decided to shut down operations without notice.
“It’s in the past, there’s nothing I can do about it, so we’re trying to make a plan going forward,” said Johnson at the Santa Maria-based headquarters of Alan Johnson Performance Engineering.
For the past six years, Johnson led the Al-Anabi team to unparalleled success. As team manager, Johnson guided the team to 42 races wins, and most importantly, three NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Top Fuel world championships. Incredibly, those titles came with three different drivers, Larry Dixon (2010), Del Worsham (’11) and Shawn Langdon (’13).
Now, with the Al-Anabi out of the picture, Johnson is without a primary sponsor and is scrambling to find funding so the team can remain operational.
“Unfortunately, the timing is poor,” said Johnson. “Most corporations that can afford that type of a marketing budget have settled their budgets and everything is finalized I’m sure by November of last year.”
In an effort to keep the team afloat until sponsorship might be found, Johnson is self-funding the operation through the first two NHRA events of the year.
“The funding for our first two races is from AJPE, Alan Johnson Performance Engineering, so I’ve budgeted “x” amount of money to race the first two races and after that, if we haven’t found additional funding, then we’re going to have to stop.”
At the season opening NHRA Winternationals in Pomona, things couldn’t have gone any better for the team, which joined forces there with celebrity chef Guy Fieri.
“We brought Guy Fieri on board as a marketing partner and the Knuckle Sandwich top fuel car managed to win that race, in good fashion as well, in setting the low ET, the lowest ET in the history of top fuel at 3.700, so some good accomplishments there,” said Johnson.
The victory, the 122nd in Johnson’s legendary career, was a temporary respite to the difficult situation the Santa Maria native finds himself and his team in.
“We’re going forward and you know, if we happen to find some funding, great, I think we’ll definitely challenge for the championship this year, but if we don’t, we’ll have to reassess,” said Johnson.
Johnson has been tirelessly working the phones and his contacts to find sponsorship, but with costs to fund a top fuel team running several millions of dollars, he knows it won’t be easy.
“We know performance is not everything when it comes to securing sponsorship,” said Johnson. “It has to make sense for a company to invest the money, there needs to be a return on that. We feel like we have a brand that we can provide the marketing source for a company that fits well with us and fits well with drag racing, but we are realistic.”
Helping to hopefully attract a new sponsor, besides the recent Winternationals victory and Johnson’s distinguished resume, is the fledgling partnership with Fieri.
“We’ve created a little partnership, a little marketing partnership with Alan Johnson Racing and Guy Fieri, Knuckle Sandwich,” said Johnson. “Hopefully with his help and our brand, we can collaborate on this a little bit and hopefully bring some appear to our top fuel team so we can entertain some sponsors and get some money flowing back into AJR.”
Without that money, Alan Johnson Racing will abandon operations, leaving one of the most successful men in NHRA history on the sidelines. It’s a potential situation that would leave a huge void in the world of drag racing.
Despite the long and seemingly impossible odds, Johnson is keeping a positive attitude he can pull it off.
“Were optimistic and we’re going to race like we have full sponsorship, at least until we stop racing,” said Johnson.
Alan Johnson Racing, with top fuel driver Shawn Langdon, will race this weekend at the CARQUEST Auto Parts NHRA Nationals. It may be the last race the team ever runs, or it could be the start of another Johnson championship run.
While time may be running out on acquiring sponsorship, those who know anything about drag racing, know not to bet against Alan Johnson.
