Allyson Johnson is not someone you would suspect to be a drag racer. In fact, she looks like your every day college student.

But talk with her for a few minutes about what she loves the most, and the subject of the sport she holds near and dear to her heart is likely to surface. In fact, you will probably walk away with the notion that Johnson was always meant to be involved in the sport of drag racing in the first place.

"My dad has always raced, so I grew up around it and I always wanted to race," she said.

"Every time I went to the race track with him I always saw the other kids who had junior dragsters and I always said I wanted to race too. So when I was seven my dad bought me a go kart to see if I would be interested in racing, since he didn’t want to waste a lot of money if it was not something I enjoyed.”

After receiving the go kart, Johnson immediately felt the urge to compete against other racers.

"The first time I raced my dad followed me behind on his moped and he said 'don’t go full throttle,' but I didn’t listen to him and went full throttle and said to him, 'It needs to go faster!' I didn’t win my first race, but my second race was the Arkansas State Championships, so I didn’t think I would do any good since it was my second time racing, but I actually got runner-up. After that I was hooked, so for Christmas that winter I got a junior dragster and raced that spring [of 1998].”

Johnson said she has only been involved in one serious accident, but it looked worse than it actually was.

"I had a really bad wreck when I was fourteen. It was in my junior dragster; it flipped three times at 84 miles per hour. It didn’t hurt me and it was in the semifinals after I crossed the finish line," she said.

"I won, but my car was really scratched up and my front tires were ruined, but we had extra front tires so I changed the front tires and I ran in the finals and won [that same day]. We had to get the chassis re-powder coated and fixed a few things that were bent, but nothing was destroyed other than my tires, and I didn’t get hurt at all.”

While most people know what drag racing is, Johnson does a different type of drag racing than most people are familiar with.

"I bracket race, which is way different. You have a set dial in that you think your car will run. If it runs faster, you lose. If you run slower then you’re probably going to lose. Your car has to be really consistent, which means that it has to run the same every time, and you have to be really good on the lights.”

When asked about what her favorite all time race was, Johnson said that she didn’t have a favorite racing experience, but rather a favorite location to race.

"When I was eight years old I raced at the NHRA Junior Drag Racing League National Championships in at Indianapolis Raceway Park in Indianapolis, Indiana. In 2004 and 2005 I raced at the Eastern Conference finals in Bristol, Tennessee. These races are the biggest races for junior dragsters, and they are always really fun because you’re there for almost two weeks.”

She now races more professional types of events.

"I travel all over the place racing, but I mostly race at Centerville. I always do pretty good there, I don’t win all the time but I do pretty good.”
Competing in a sport that is traditionally male dominated, many would assume that Johnson is always having to prove herself on the track against the men, but that just is not the case.

"The people I race with at Centerville I’ve known my whole life," she said.

"Most of the people I race against are older, around my dad’s age. My dad and I actually compete in the same category. Most of these guys have seen me grow up so they know I’m competative. But it’s mostly guys who don’t know me or much about drag racing that usually make comments like, 'Oh you’re a girl you can’t drive,' but the people that have been around and race with me a lot have probably been beat by a girl before so they know I’m serious about it.”

There are a number of things that go through Johnson’s mind before she races.

“When I’m about to race I’m always really nervous, sometimes it feels like don’t really know what I’m going to do. But I’ve done it thousands of times and know what I have to do on the track, so when I get out there it calms me down and I think, 'I can do this.' I look straight down the track and concentrate, I don’t even look at the other car around me, so I’m really calm but focused."
Johnson has had a few different dragsters over the years, all of which she fell in love with.

"I’ve had four different bracket cars, and when I was 15 I had an Outlaw 330 car in addition to my bracket car. It was used for more heads up racing. After racing junior dragsters, I then raced a ’75 Mustang for two years. This past Christmas I got a Super Comp Dragster. It’s a Racecraft Chassis dragster. They’re built here in Arkansas and are one of the best chassis’s you can get. It has a big block Chevy in it; it’s definitely my favorite.”
Since Johnson is in love with racing, it comes as no surprise that she is majoring in mechanical engineering.

"I want to race top fuel dragsters, that’s my ultimate goal in life. If not drive them, I’d like to be a crew chief or an engineer for them, but if I can’t race what I’d really like to do is design race car engines. The only thing I’ve ever done is racing, that’s all I’ve ever known, so mechanical engineering is something that brings me even closer to the sport,” she added.

"After college my plan is to move to Indiana and attend Purdue University for graduate school. Indianapolis is where most of the professional drag racers live, so while I’m there hopefully I can become closer with them and gain some experience from the inside of racing and hopefully obtain a driving job," she said.

"I’ve sent some resumes to team owners, and I’ve gotten some good responses, but it’s still a really hard sport to get into. So hopefully I’ll get some good connections [in Indianapolis], and it will allow me to further my drag racing career. I would like to move to a more populated area and race."

Johnson seems as if she is on her way to great things. She already has an impressive number of races under her belt, especially for her age. It’s not an understatement to say that racing is more or less a large portion of Johnson’s life, and she has the type of zeal for racing that will likely never leave her. While many people search their entire lives looking for something they can be passionate about, Johnson was lucky enough to find that passion at an early age in drag racing.