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Race Pages Magazine June, 2007 (Interview by Jason Reiss)

John Kolivas
Is it possible to dominate Drag Radial two years in a row? Kolivas is going to give it his best shot…

Who is he?: The 2006 BFGoodrich Tires Drag Radial champ
Why should you care: He’s in the process of dominating the class everyone said couldn’t be dominated…
Written by: The Thumb Written : in the middle of the night Photos: the three stooges

Lately, the feeling around the ProMedia office has been that Race Pages is turning into nothing other than the “Promote Johnny K” magazine. However, when you look at how far John Kolivas has come in the very short time that he’s been racing in the NMRA, the picture becomes a little bit clearer. Kolivas, the 2006 BFGoodrich Tires Drag Radial champion, has done something that nobody since Chris Little has done, and that’s dominate one of the toughest classes in the NMRA. Whether it be taking the tree and knocking his competitors’ feet out from under them in 2006, or, as he did at the 2007 season opener, coming out and simply crushing nearly the entire field, Kolivas is always at or near the top of the list on qualifying day and in eliminations. Johnny’s rookie season in the NMRA, 2005, left something to be desired. As the team was new to serious heads-up competition, the pressure seemed to get to them on race day more often than not. At the end of that stressful year, Kolivas enlisted the services of non other than tuning wizard Job Spetter Jr., and went on to have one of the best seasons ever in the Drag Radial class. The addition of Spetter took the program to the next level, and as this is written, Kolivas has just raised the bar yet again by continuing his winning ways at the NMRA season opener in Bradenton, Florida. We sat down with John to talk racing, rules, and family life, and as always he was candid and honest. Read on to check out how the Drag Radial champion feels…

Race Pages: As if we couldn’t possibly give you any more face time, John, here we are again. What does it feel like to sit here and say you’re the champion of BFGoodrich Tires Drag Radial?
John Kolivas: Unbelievable. All of the hard work that we’ve put in, especially after the 2005 season was so disappointing for us, it was all worth it. We tore everything down, started over from scratch, added Job Spetter to the team, revamped our attitude, and revamped the whole program. We came out in 2006 with the sole purpose of winning the championship, no matter what it took. It didn’t matter if we had to beat them on the tree, or on the track, we just had the attitude to win. It didn’t matter if we were the fastest or not, we just didn’t want to beat ourselves like we did in 2005. It couldn’t have worked out any better. To be in six finals in eight events, and win four of those finals, with the competition that’s in this class, I couldn’t have asked for more.

RP: We’ve just finished up with the Bradenton race, which, just like last year, you won again. What was involved in that?
JK: They were as far apart as two wins could be. In 2006, the fastest pass of the weekend was the 8.18 by Eric LaFerriere, there were two or three other cars in the .20’s, and we were in the high .30’s, two tenths off the pace. The only reason we got that win was due to three holeshot wins in a row in eliminations. We should have never gotten that win. Lucky for us, we cut good lights, and some of the guys we raced didn’t. It allowed us the opportunity to win the event. It’s a simple as that. It was a lucky win. This year, on the other hand, we weren’t two tenths off the pace, we were a tenth ahead of the pace. It’s a whole lot easier to win an event when you’re running with or faster than the fastest cars there.

RP: So what did you have to do in order to be that much faster right out of the trailer this season?
JK: We took everything that we learned throughout the entire season last year, and applied that to this year. The ET reduction this season can be directly attributed to the chassis and suspension work that we did in the off season. We’ve always heard the junk that we didn’t cut good short times, and it wasn’t that we weren’t trying, we certainly were. All credit goes to Wade at Southern Speed for completely re-working the chassis over the off season. We showed up down there with the chassis working. We aren’t making any more power than we did last year, we’re making the same power, we’re just getting it to the ground a whole lot better. It’s as simple as that.

RP: So you don’t have the “I’m going to win this race” turbo?
JK: No, we don’t have any of those yet. Well, maybe for an emergency. [uncontrollable laughing results] You know, everyone talks about ‘we get to do this with turbos, we get to do that with turbos,’ but it’s just not true. The fact of the matter is, I’ve probably run 10 different 88mm turbochargers in the last 14 months, and there’s not a dime of difference between the top six or seven. I’ve had a couple that were duds, but the turbo I’m running now makes no more power than the turbo I showed up in Florida with in 2006. If you think back, Alex Vrettos in Florida ’06, had the top mph of any of the 88mm turbo cars, he went almost 174 mph. That was at 3540 pounds. If you take the weight off of that pass that changed in the off season, he’s going 174+, almost 175. That’s all I’m doing right now. What I have no is no better than what I started with. The problem with that unit is that the quality wasn’t there. Alex has blown up turbos, I blew up a bunch of turbos. That’s where all of the changing turbos came from last year, it wasn’t to find more power, it was to find one that would hold up. It was a new unit from Precision that we were running, it’s something that came out of the import world where guys were running tons of boost with them, but it simply wouldn’t hold up in the applications we have. Those turbos were midframe turbos, and the cross-shaft wasn’t big enough. When we would start to stress the turbo, the shaft would flex, the wheel would touch down, and boom. What we’ve got now is the same large frame turbo that’s been on the market for twenty years. There’s nothing special to it. All you have to do is call Precision Turbo and tell them you want the Johnny K special, they’ll know exactly which one you need.

RP: What about the amount of testing you did in the time between cutting your car apart over the winter, and Bradenton? What did you actually do in terms of testing?
JK: I posted a picture on the internet January 1st or so with the roof cut off of it. Six weeks later it was running. We tested on a few local tracks, where we made a few hits, then we drove to Mobile, Alabama, and made six or eight hits there, and then we went to Bradenton and rented the track two weeks early. We made test pass after test pass after test pass, and we were very disappointed. The results were terrible, we were breaking parts, the car wouldn’t run faster than .30’s, and we just stuck with it, changed some parts and tested some more. By the time Bradenton rolled around, I had put 25 or 30 hits on the car, and we knew what it liked. So when the bell dropped for the race, just like I told everyone, we were going an 8.10 off the trailer, and we went an 8.12, so I was close. We picked up right where we left off last year, we weren’t making any more power. The chassis was working really well, and we started putting more power to it off the line, it kept taking it, and pretty soon we were going 1.35 sixty-foot times. That equated to an 8.02. I went an 8.04, with the same mph to the 1/8 and the same mph to the ¼ that Doyle went on one of his test passes. You can’t tell me he can’t short-track what I do.

RP: In terms of your program, what do you feel gives you an advantage over the next guy?
JK: Well, I have people with me that can cover basically anything that might go wrong. We have a spare engine and transmission in the trailer. Jeff Reed, my brother-in-law and crew guy, has been the head of the transmission department at TCI for 20 years, so he can fix anything in that department. Wade, my chassis guy, can fix anything we might need there, and then you have Job Spetter. Who else better to have there than him? There’s probably nothing he hasn’t come across at one point or another. We feel like we have all of the bases covered in case something might happen. Obviously, if we were to break an engine we’d be hard-pressed to change it between rounds, but we feel that we’re prepared for just about anything else.

RP: How much has the addition of Job Spetter Jr. helped your program?
JK: I’ve been doing this turbo/fuel injection stuff for the last four or five years. In 2005, I did it all myself. It puts me in a position where I can go test anytime I want without anyone’s help. After 2005, Jeff and I talked it over, and I said ‘If having him on our team is going to increase our chances of winning the championship at all next year, then I want him aboard.’ Having him on the team, it’s like a safety net. He makes the final call, we’ll discuss it between runs what we think needs to be changed, but we’re nearly always on the same wavelength. I don’t think he’s ever made a wrong call. It takes a lot of the pressure off of me, I don’t have to go in and debate back and forth what I’m doing. It’s still in the back of my mind, but having him has been great.

RP: So how do you manage to get so much time away from work to test, test, test?
JK: That’s a tough one there. Actually, I own the business, but I think they are about to fire me. Really, I’ve got some great people at the shop, and without them, there’s no way I could do this. Absolutely no way possible that I could do what I do. As far as putting in the time and the effort to compete at the top of the class, if I had to put in forty and fifty hours a week at work, there’s no way I could do what I’m doing. Any champion will tell you that. Ask Manny, he was down there in Florida a week before I was. That’s how he was able to unload off the trailer and went 7.45 the first test hit. He didn’t show up looking like a fool.

RP: You, along with Chris Tuten, have certainly proven that the turbocharged combinations can be a force in Drag Radial. However, others would say that you’ve just been “given” an advantage based on the capability of the turbocharger size. How do you feel about that?
JK: Well, we’ve had it for two years now, and we weren’t running these numbers. It’s not like you can just bolt an 88mm on and go 8.02 or 8.06 or 8.08. We had it on for the entire year last year and qualified first at one race. We were nowhere close to running where the blower cars ran for basically the entire year last year. We’ve worked at it, we chipped away at it, and now we’re reaping the benefits of that hard work.

RP: Do you feel that the supercharged cars actually can compete with the numbers that you and Chris threw down in Florida?
JK: I feel like the top supercharged cars are definitely capable of running mid-to-low 8.0’s. If you look at Chad, he ran an 8.10 100 pounds heavy in Bowling Green last season. If you take out that 100 pounds, that’s an instant 8.05 if you pick up zero horsepower in the off season. The rules are very, very close right now.

RP: Now everyone with a supercharger would disagree with that.
JK: Absolutely. That’s just the nature of the beast. I know how they feel. In 2005, we got murdered the entire year. We showed up and were two to three tenths off the pace and we weren’t crying like they have lately.

RP: You managed to be prophetic the last time we talked [May ’06]. I went back and looked at that, and the one sentence that stood out to me was “The championship will probably come down to the last race and hopefully my team will be fighting for it!” How realistic did you think that was at that point in time, or were you just talking smack?
JK: I wasn’t talking smack at all. I knew what we did in 2005, and we finished fifth in points. Anything and everything that could have gone wrong in 2005 went wrong. We had no good breaks. We shot ourselves in the foot at a few races. We had a boost controller that didn’t work at a couple of races. We put a cam in wrong at one race, we left a blow off valve hose open at one race, so basically something happened to us at every race that cost us a round. We just never flat-out got outrun hardly at all. It was all self-inflicted or just plain bad luck. I knew that if we could eliminate all of those problems, and just come out and race, and make someone beat me, we’d be there at the end of the year with a shot to win it all. My motto as far as being there for the championship at the end of the year, and we can run anywhere close to the top time in the field, and we go up there and cut a good light, and get down the track, the question is how is someone going to beat us? Jeff and I go back and forth with that all the time.

RP: At that time, we also talked about how you felt the 88mm turbocharged combinations didn’t have any kind of advantage at 3450 pounds. Now that both you and Tuten have been 8.0’s at 3375 pounds (the 2007 weight), do you still feel that the rules are even? None of the supercharged competitors feel they are, based on their internet ramblings.
JK: If I was in their shoes, I’d be working on my car, instead of on the internet complaining about the rules. I don’t make the rules, they don’t make the rules, we both have to abide by them, there’s no use complaining on the internet about them. They are so used to having an advantage for all of these years, and now that it’s gotten so close that it comes down to basically 100% driver ability, knowing that you’ve gotta cut a .00 light or a teen light to beat a guy, it’s gotten so tight now and they just aren’t used to that. There’s no doubt in my mind that Chad can run 8.0’s. If they come out and run this next race or two, I think you’d see that, but I don’t know if they are coming or not, and I hate that. I don’t wan tot see them not come. They are my friends, we’re all competitive, we all have fun, but for a group of guys to get together after one race, and say they aren’t coming when most of them showed up untested in Florida, that bothers me. Maybe they don’t have a job that they can’t get off to go testing like I can, but they can’t hold that against me. I’ve tested, and they didn’t, and they are trying to base the fairness of the rules when most of them have done no testing at all. That’s not good for the BFGoodrich Tires Drag Radial class, and I don’t want to see that happen. I want them there. The NMRA always waits three races and does a rules revision if needed. If these guys show up and all they can go is 8.teens, and that’s all they can go, and Chris and I are running 8.0’s, if there’s a need for a weight adjustment, then go ahead. If that’s what needs to be done for the good of the class, then I’m all for it. I’m used to racing at a disadvantage, it doesn’t bother me at all. I love going up to the line, knowing that the guy next to me is as fast or faster, and I know I have to cut a .00 light, there’s no better feeling in the world than that. I revel in that competition.

RP: Where do you see Drag Radial two years from now?
JK: Well, I think it’ll probably be a 7.90 class unless something is done to slow the cars down. If you had asked me this question two years ago, I would have said 8.30’s. I never thought that an F1R would go faster than 8.30’s, and then it went .20’s, and now it’s gone teens and I think it’s capable of 8.0’s. Chris and I are going 8.0’s. It seems like every year the class picks up by a tenth. I don’t know where it’s coming from, or how it continues to happen, but it does. Two years from now, unless there’s a drastic change in rules, I think it’ll be a 7.90 class.

RP: What about your family life? It has to be tough being away from your wife and daughter so much.
JK: It’s tough. I’m lucky to have the wife and daughter that I have, for sure. My wife goes to maybe two or three races a year. When I’m home, I go to work at 6:30AM every day, and we work till about 4:30 in the afternoon. My daughter plays just about every sport there is, and she’s playing something three or four days a week. We’re always running somewhere. It’s pretty hectic around here, I’m actually not at home very much at all, even when I’m not racing.

RP: This interview wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t talk a little bit about your dad, Vern. What’s his deal, he’s always running around like a maniac?
JK: My dad loves the racetrack. Absolutely loves it. I’ve said many times, if there was an NMRA race every week, Dad would live to be about 150 years old. His favorite thing is at the end of the race is being the last ones there. That means we’re winning. He’ll always say ‘Well, son, we’re the last ones here. I love to see an empty parking lot.’ He just loves to be there.