Johnson finishes 14th at Wild Horse Pass

Living up to the standard of being the one of the toughest classes in Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series presented by Geico (LOORRS), today’s Pro Lite race at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park in Chandler, Ariz., proved to be a rough 15-minutes for Luke Johnson and Radar Tires.

Sunday marked Round 2 of the E3 Spark Plugs Arizona Nationals.  Johnson and Radar Tires aimed to surpass Saturday’s qualifying and race result.

Goal One: Improve qualifying position. Johnson wheeled the No. 14 Project648 Motorsports Nissan Frontier during qualifying and secured the 13th starting position in the 20-truck field.  Sunday’s qualifying was three positions better than Saturday.
 
Goal Two: Race clean and improve finishing position.  On the first lap, Johnson, and his Pro Lite truck named Becky, suffered contact in Turn 1 and dropped from 13th to 17th.  In similar fashion to his Saturday’s race, Johnson battled back each lap and resumed his 13th place position.  Johnson began to fall on the leaderboard but rallied back to a 14th place finish.
 
Upon post-race inspection, Johnson and the Project648 Motorsports determined that Becky suffered from a dropped cylinder during the opening laps of the race.
 
“My right leg is a bit sore from pushing on the throttle pedal so hard,” said Johnson.  “We knew something wasn’t right because Becky was running at her best.  Something broke on the parade lap and we weren’t able to determine that we lost a cylinder until after the race.  Considering we ran the race on only seven cylinders, I’m satisfied with our 14th place finish.  Glad we were able to get some of the gremlins out of the way this weekend in our first LOORRS race with Radar Tires.  The Radar Renegade R5s were strong and I’m looking forward to getting racing in the TORC series in a few weeks and then we’ll be back in LOORRS.”
 
Johnson used size LT265/75R16 and 31X10.50R15 Radar Renegade R5 tires this weekend at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park, the five-turn, one-mile track that featured 1,000 feet in elevation changes.
 
Next up for Radar Tires is the season opening The Off Road Championship (TORC) race in Primm, Nev., on April 5-6.
 
Some of the Radar Tires used this weekend feature the Breast Cancer Research Foundation pink ribbon logo. For every Radar tire sold, Omni United will donate $5 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) with a minimum annual donation of $200,000 and a maximum donation of $250,000.
 
For the second consecutive season, Radar Tires is competing in both long and short course off-road racing. In addition to LOORRS, Radar Tires will compete in TORC series with Johnson and Cam Reimers Motorsports drivers Cam Reimers and Ian Harris. Radar Tires also competes in SCORE International with Bronson Motorsports and Robinson Romo Racing. In March, Robinson Romo Racing drivers Cody Robinson and Roberto Romo won the Baja 250 Class 10 race.