Racing friendship is no snow job

Did you hear the one about the guy who makes snow for a living and who woke up one day to find himself a crew member for an NHRA team, handling everything from tires to rear suspension to repacking parachutes?

Brian Strait might laugh too, if he wasn't so busy trying to help Kurt Johnson win his first Pro Stock championship.

Now this is friendship. One guy (Johnson) calls his buddy from high school (Strait) in July and asks if he can spare time from running the Las Vegas Ski & Snowboard Resort to work three West Coast races before a full-time crew member is hired.

The idea: Come down off the mountain, attend races in Denver, Seattle and Sonoma, and then get back to preparing for the winter rush to Lee Canyon.

What they didn't count on: The person who agreed to take the full-time gig ultimately freaked out at the idea, leaving the one who knows more about precipitation than Punxsutawney Phil to finish the season working on the car's back end.

You can't buy that kind of loyalty.

Then again ...

"It's pretty hard to find snow in the middle of the summer in Vegas," Johnson said.

He was kidding about Strait's lighter duties, just as he was when he said the 6-foot, 270-pounder is like a cat, putting himself in places he probably shouldn't be each time he crawls under the car.

Friends rib each other this way. They tease one another as much as they trust, which for these two is a profound level dating to their high school days in Minnesota, where their girlfriends -- and now wives -- introduced the pair.

"If you end up making snow the wrong way, you just make rain," said Strait, general manager of the resort 45 minutes from Las Vegas. "But the slightest mistake on a car could lead to some very serious consequences. Everything is checked and double-checked one nut and bolt at a time. We don't make mistakes."

They can't afford one this weekend. Johnson enters the ACDelco Las Vegas Nationals at Las Vegas Motor Speedway trailing Jeg Coughlin by 74 points in the Pro Stock standings. Two events -- this one and Pomona (Nov. 13-16) remain.

It's hard enough to win a title, which Johnson has been chasing for 15 years, but beating someone whose parents named him Jeg -- even if it was after his drag racing legend father -- might be too funny a proposition to overcome.

But this has been a wacky enough season to believe Johnson might do it. Crew members have joined and quit. There was an issue with the starter in the finals at Charlotte, which never allowed Johnson's car to move, which tends to be a bad thing when the other guy is cruising across the finish line.

Johnson also is one of those sons whose career has been overshadowed by that of his father, hardly shameful when you consider the old man is the winningest driver in Pro Stock history.

Warren Johnson is known as The Professor and not for any weekly discourse he gives on the importance of ear safety around the pits. The man has 96 career wins and six championships, numbers that put him in the international motor sports Hall of Fame.

His son has finished second in points four times. He'd sort of like to get one of these things some time soon.

"It's almost like, 'What does it take?' " Kurt said. "It just hasn't been my time yet. But I feel like we have a great shot. It's going to be close."

If it happens, Frosty the Friend would have played a significant part. Strait worked races for Johnson in 2005, so it's not as though he showed up, looked at a four-link suspension and wondered where to add the sodium polyacrylate and water to see how slushy he could make the snow.

He gets about 10 feet of the real stuff annually on Mount Charleston, but there are many nights when technology creates the wonderland.

"It's good for him or anyone to do something different every once in a while, to get away and clear your head so you can go back and focus more on the thing that actually makes you money," Johnson said. "We're sure not paying him a lot to do this. But my life is on the line every time I go down that track. I have a phenomenal group to rely on. I have full trust in everyone."

Especially the 48-year-old snow maker.

So, which is more temperamental -- the car or the machine jetting out white powder?

"They both have their moments," Strait said. "But my (NHRA) plans don't go beyond Pomona. I've got a real job here that is set to start up. We'll be thrashing and mashing all winter real soon."

I don't know what that means, but I'm guessing it has nothing to do with checking shock absorbers.

Ed Graney can be reached at 702-383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.