RS: Are you satisfied with the progress of the engine program?

BA: I think we're in as good of shape as we've been in 10 years. When we make a good run, and everyone else makes a good run, we're within a hundredth to two-hundredth's of a second of the absolute fastest cars. We're still giving up a little bit in the middle of the track though, spinning the tires even on our very best runs. When we fix that, we'll be one of the fastest cars. We need to get that done because our engines run good enough to be one of the top-three qualifiers every week. But that's not good enough — we need to get an advantage. You can't just be as good as everyone else; you have to be better! That was Warren's (Johnson) strong suit over the years, that he could always out-power everybody. We have some things here that we're working on in the engine shop that I think will improve us and hopefully soon. I hope these engines will run even better then than they do now, but they're certainly good enough now to win a race. In the past couple of years, I wasn't very happy with our engine program, but midway through last year we really got it going good. The engine certainly isn't our problem right now. Our shop is pretty intertwined, with the staff from the engine shop and the race team, so everyone is pretty much working on our engine program in one way or another. More than that, it's when you start working on the right thing, whatever that happens to be, it accelerates your program so much because when you're working in the wrong area, all you do is go backwards. At the same time, other teams are working on the right areas as well, so they're getting better and better. In the last year or so, we started working on some things that have continually improved our performance. Like we always say here at the shop, we're looking for 15 to 20 horsepower over the course of the year but we're only going to find it one or two horsepower at a time. When you do find your 10 sets of two horsepower, you've got your 20 horsepower. You're not going to get 20 horsepower all at once, so the big thing is to be willing to do whatever it takes to find a piece of horsepower or two and that takes a lot of work and a lot of hours. The guys here at the shop have been doing that very well. We've been increasing our engine performance every race, going to the next event with that one or two extra horsepower.

RS: Who else does Reher-Morrison supply engines to in NHRA?

BA: Right now, we supply engines to some Pro Stock Truck teams, such as Rick Jones, Kim Smith and others. We're currently not supplying any of the Pro Stock car teams with engines, but we are working very hard on the truck program because we feel in the long run that could be a large part of the income for the Reher-Morrison race team. We need to get our Pro Stock Truck engines running better so that the teams using our horsepower are the fastest trucks out there.

RS: Are there any exchanges of information or feedback between Reher-Morrison and the Pro Stock Truck teams?

BA: Not really, at least directly. What we've learned on our Pro Stock car engines we try to put into the truck engines, but they may not have the same requirements. The truck engines like to wind up a little bit higher and the guys who run the trucks prefer to run them higher, so if the things that we're learning makes those engines go up to 9,800 to 10,000 rpm's, that may not necessarily help our Pro Stock Car program. But over the course of several months, maybe we can increase the rpm that a Pro Stock car engine runs and that may help everybody in the long run. Right now though, they're two different programs.

RS: What are your goals for 2000?

BA: My personal goal is to win a number of races. I'm obviously going to be happy when I win the first one, but I won't be content with that. I want to win four or five races and I think we're capable of doing that. I think we can finish in the top three or four in points and I wouldn't rule out winning the championship. I'm also very realistic and know that until we fix some things on the car, we're not in a position to do that just yet. But we're certainly in a position at this time to win races.

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