Jimmie Johnson has won races in a variety of ways, but his win last Sunday at Sonoma, Calif., was a first. He inherited the lead, and the eventual victory, when NASCAR moved Marcos Ambrose from first to seventh after he didn't stay behind the pace car during a caution.
Johnson talked about that win after the race and how it got his campaign to win a fifth consecutive championship back on track. Here are excerpts of that interview:
Question: The final 20 laps of the race were crazy with cars hitting each other and running off course. Who cutthroat was it out there?
Johnson: When you get to the closing laps and you're deep in the field, it's just nasty. You hope you can be on the inside and you don't care if you get close to your braking marks. You just go in and make 16 tires better than four. I heard eight are better than four. You just go in there and blast people. I think there was some of that going on.
Question: Was it more important for you to get your first road course win or to get 10 bonus points for the Chase for the Championship?
Johnson: You know, we want the bonus points. But there are times, I look at Charlotte, trying to really hustle the car when the car was loose, thinking I want bonus points, I want bonus points, then I'm wrecked and finished 38th. Those 10 points don't mean a damn thing now because I just lost a hundred something points. So when you can take advantage of things, you need to. At the beginning of year, we were clicking them off. Right now Denny (Hamlin) has been clicking them off. All that said, it's a long time until September. And, yes, right now we're 10 points behind him now. And 10 points is leading a lap, leading the most laps. So it's a good carrot out there. But I can't chase that. I can't chase that and make mistakes and lose hundreds of points in the process. So I think in May, I was just not on the wheel and trying a little too hard worrying about bonus points. I've kind of recalibrated now and doing a better job with that and got the 10 points.
Question: Joe Gibbs Racing had seven wins in the last 10 races heading into Sunday's race. Is this a momentum swing back in the direction of your race team and Hendrick Motorsports?
Johnson: I think this win is important and good for us as a team. But, you know, it's not what it's going to take to win the Chase. Totally different racetracks. You can't deny the fact that the Gibbs cars are quick on short tracks, big tracks. They have their package refined and working really well right now. We've been competitive. We're a top-five car. We're not where we want to be yet. The good thing is that we have time. We feel we have a lot of time to get our stuff right. On the flip of that, we want to believe there's a lot of time for them to lose their way. We know that we haven't been as dominant as we'd like to be. I think the mistakes that I made and just some bad luck that we had in May made things look a lot worse than they were. Look at the last two weeks. We've been in the top five, running well, running good. Maybe not dominant, but we're not as bad as it appears. So we just need to work a little bit. Luckily we have some time on our side to get things right for the Chase.
Question: In 2007, it appeared Greg Biffle ran out of gas during a caution period on the final lap. You passed him because he wasn't staying behind the pace car, but NASCAR gave him the win. Why was it different with Ambrose?
Johnson: Yeah, you know, you've got to maintain a reasonable speed. I thought it was pace car speed. So when you look at him coming to a stop, I think it really eliminates the gray area or the discussion of, "What is a reasonable speed?" NASCAR, if you look at Kansas, they didn't want to take the win away from a guy in that fashion. So, you know, he maintained a reasonable speed and that was it. But when you come to a dead stop on the racetrack, I think that changes things, makes it black and white, very easy to read the rule at that point.
Question: Why was it so important for you to win on a road course?
Johnson: I'd say the bottom line to it is I love road course racing. I always have. I grew up racing off-road trucks, they were on road courses with jumps. I've made a name for myself in that style of racing. To come into the Cup Series and not have success early irritated me. Chad (Knaus, crew chief) in general, if there's a track on the schedule, doesn't matter what design it is, if that's our weak spot, he's going to make it better. So we kind of got in this routine of road course, road course, road course. That's why (the race) is so special to us, why it has meant so much. I just truly enjoy road course racing, doesn't matter if it's our stock cars, the Grand-Am Series I run in. I'd love to run in an Indy-cars someday, F1. The test that Jeff did was insane. Hopefully somebody watching can set that up for me. |
