JIMMIE JOHNSON AND JEFF GORDON LEAD TEAM CHEVY TO TWO TOP-THREE FINISHES
JOHNSON AND EARNHARDT LOCK UP CHASE SPOTS
BRISTOL, TN – August 25, 2012 – Team Chevy driver Jimmie Johnson had a long way to go, but methodically raced his way through the field to score a second place finish in the Irwin Tools Night Race in his No. 48 Lowe’s Dover White Chevrolet. Johnson started way back in 37th after qualifying was rained out on Friday, but locked up a spot in the 2012 Chase for the Championship with his runner-up finish. Johnson’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon, No. 24 Farm Ville/Drive to End Hunger Chevrolet, was looking for his sixth win at the “World’s Fastest Half Mile”, but came up just short with a solid third-place finish. Gordon resides in 14th-place in the point standings as he pursues a much-needed victory to move into Chase contention.
Kasey Kahne led 42 laps early in the race, but made contact with the outside wall on lap 147 after running through oil when another competitor’s engine expired. The team was able to repair the damage to his No. 5 Hendrickcars.com Chevrolet that saw him fall a lap behind. The pilot of the No. 5 Chevrolet and his team preserved to come home with a ninth-place finish. Kahne is 11th in the standings with two races to go until the Chase, but currently holds the top “Wild Card” Chase spot.
Paul Menard, No. 27 Menards/Schrock Chevrolet, rounded out the top-ten with a tenth place finish while Dale Earnhardt Jr., No. 88 Diet Mountain Dew/National Guard Chevrolet rebounded from two pit road penalties to finish 12th. Earnhardt Jr. also locks up a spot in the Chase with two races to go before the regular season cutoff.
It was a disappointing day in particular for four Team Chevy drivers who were involved in incidents during the race. Tony Stewart, No. 14 Mobil 1/Office Depot Chevrolet was involved in an accident late in the race battling for the lead on lap 333 and finished 27th, Ryan Newman, No. 39 Outback Chevrolet spun into the inside wall after contact with another car on lap 191 and finished 39th and unfortunately Jeff Burton, No. 31 Caterpillar Chevrolet had nowhere to go and was collected in the same accident and finished 33rd. Danica Patrick was having a respectable run until lap 434 when contact from another car forced a spin and contact with the wall and she finished 29th in her first career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start at Bristol.
The next race on the tour will be held at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday, September 2nd, 2012.
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S DOVER WHITE CHEVROLET – FINISHED 2nd:
KERRY THARP: Jimmie Johnson has joined us, he’s our five-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion and he’s also clinched a spot in the 2012 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. And Jimmie, soul lied run out there tonight, I believe you started 37th in the field. You certainly had to navigate your way up through there, led some laps, and battled for the win and you’ve clinched a spot in the Chase, so I guess my first question will be, talk about tonight’s race on your behalf and also what it means to go ahead and clinch up a spot in the Chase with two to go.
JIMMIE JOHNSON: Tonight was intense. To start that deep in the field when they drop the green, you’re half a lap behind, if not more, the initial start. To get going was important for us, but then being back there, we had to get some track position somehow. So we pitted a few times and tried to get some fuel in the car and set up a strategy for us later in the race. That really ended up working out nice for us.
So credit to Chad and Greg for calling a great race strategy-wise. We had a fast car, and it, at times, I think maybe a race-winning car, but certainly a top-three car all night long. It was just a matter of getting to the front and surviving, because we were all (inaudible).
Q. (No microphone.)
JIMMIE JOHNSON: Too much about the seeding process, the championship seeded right at different places, but last year’s Chase, really put an emphasis on every point. So I look back at Pocono and regret that we — inaudible — and six more points than everybody. But now, I can’t do anything about that I, guess. But we’ll just have to see.
I know this year’s Chase is going to be ultra-competitive, and you know, it’s shaping up certainly to be that way.
Q. Jeff noted the intensity tonight, did you notice that maybe some of the intensity that made this place such a tough ticket for fans was back a little bit tonight, as compared to recent years?
JIMMIE JOHNSON: I think so. I’m not sure what played into the fans and to the spectators watching, but inside the car, to complete a pass, you had to set someone off and make a bonzai pass to slide up in front of them. But when you are around the top, the pace was so high up there. It was intense for us inside the car, but I don’t know if that crossed over for everyone else.
Q. (No microphone).
JIMMIE JOHNSON: Very difficult to pass on — inaudible — over the years and we had a period of time where it was easy to run side-by-side and now a big effort to get it back to a single-file lane again. So in some ways it’s the same, we are just racing on different parts of the racetrack.
Q. Were you to save any — on the racetrack?
JIMMIE JOHNSON: I was definitely saving under — exhaustion laps, caution laps helped, and then the first two thirds of that event, the last run, I should say, I was saving fuel.
We were in position and pitted before that pit stop you were speaking of, we thought we could go the distance prior to that and came to pit road, and I went out and ran, I don’t know, couldn’t have been 15, 20, to save fuel. I think, don’t make me fret about things now, and no, we didn’t have any issues.
Q. How long did it take you guys to actually figure out what was going on on the racetrack? Took us a couple of hours to figure out what the rhythm might be with the strategies everything.
JIMMIE JOHNSON: Strategy-wise, it was tough to know what was going on. But Chad did a great job of putting us in position, so the strategy we had worked really well. Although I would say the eye-opening experience for me was 50 laps in, Chad told me the 5 car got up on to the ground surface and was making up a ton of time there and I started playing with it and I could watch the progression on every spot of the track. And you could see every car flirting with it and off we went.
That was the big moment in the race. And then from there you just had to be very, very smart and strategic about when you tried to pass the car in front of you. If you had a good gap behind you, you had to work maybe on the bottom for a corner or two and have a hole to fall back into if it didn’t work out. And if not, you just had to wait and sit and wait.
And it was tough to be patient. I watched a lot of guys jump out of line being impatient and we just feel that spot and move our car forward and work our way up.
Q. With your finish, with what you guys have done running-wise here lately, what did you get accomplished here tonight that will help you for down the Chase, even though there is not another track like this in the schedule.
JIMMIE JOHNSON: Just get a confidence booster. It’s been tough on the 48 team over the years, and yesterday, to not go well with the rain, the way we were spending our time and our tire allotment in practice, we got burned yesterday. So frustration was high.
But we rallied back and had a great race tonight. So yes, you’re right, there is not another racetrack like this in the Chase, but momentum is key. Pit stops were strong tonight. It’s all more reps and very helpful moving forward, and locking is awesome. Takes a huge weight off our shoulders.
Q. Did you see Stewart’s toss?
JIMMIE JOHNSON: No, I didn’t. I saw him lingering, kind of waiting with his gear. I figured something was going to happen. I heard he had a good toss on it.
Q. It was full-blown Strasberg.
JIMMIE JOHNSON: I know he impressed our crew.
Q. What did they say?
JIMMIE JOHNSON: They said he had an arm on him; he hit a good throw and hit it dead center.
KERRY THARP: Congratulations on clinching the Chase and see you soon.
JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 FARM VILLE/DRIVE TO END HUNGER CHEVROLET – FINISHED THIRD
JEFF GORDON: Yeah, they were saying that we are hearing something about rubber up there, some more grip, and from that point on, it was all four tires up there on that new pavement, or the concrete that they ground. So I say they grind the whole place. Sounds awesome. I hope they do that next time.
But it was you know what I loved about the racing tonight, even though it was really tough to pass, is it just reminded me of old school Bristol. I can remember, I believe it was ’91, ’92 I think it was ’92, before they put concrete down, being up on top of the spotter’s stand watching the Cup race, and just enjoying the heck out of it. Because Darryl and I think maybe Davey, Ernie Irvan, those guys are just running right up against the wall, diamond in the racetrack. It was hard to pass. You did slide jobs on guys when you got runs and that’s what we had tonight.
So I think it was a success and I certainly had a lot of fun. I made one mistake that cost us, I think it possibly cost us the win. We had new tires on, and I was fighting pretty hard on that outside to try to maintain the position, gain some positions, and I got up high and pushed a little too hard. I thought I hit oil, but maybe I just got too loose. And I got up out of the groove, which was possible to do off of 4, and that put something on my tires down on 1 and 2 and got into the wall. And that cost us a bunch of positions and that changed our pit strategy and everything and that hurt us.
Q. You’ve made mention a couple of times of 1991, I think there were some mentions on it from some people on the radio and also people on TV. Was it because the line at that time, was it because more that it was asphalt and is that why people were running it that way?
JEFF GORDON: I raced here once in the Nationwide or Busch Series, when it was pavement, and I mean, back then, I think we may even have had just the way that the cars handle and the way the track was, and you can go back, you know, prior to even that race that I saw, and that was the way that you ran this racetrack. You went in kind of at the bottom and you went up to the top, and you know, guys are smoking the right rear tire and all those things.
So that’s what I’m referring to is the comparison; and because the rubber got laid down on that smoother concrete, that’s what allowed us to do that. It had a lot of grip up there.
Q. Just with the wildcard situation, the way it is, does it make even a solid third place run like this harder to accept just with how valuable wins have to be heading down the stretch here?
JEFF GORDON: Yeah, you know, it keeps us still in it, because one of the other guys in the wildcard didn’t win it. I don’t know what that’s going to do with Tony Stewart. I know he had trouble. You know, I mean, I think we have all been kind of watching where if Denny or Tony fall outside the Top 10 we have two more good opportunities, Atlanta and Richmond that we can definitely get wins at.
Q. Beyond just the 1991 comparison of how it felt more like the old Bristol in terms of the groove perspective, from the emotional and action perspective, it seems like guys were bumping each other more and you had Tony Stewart’s helmet toss, did it seem more like the old Bristol in terms of emotion?
JEFF GORDON: I think the combination of that rubber laid down up there which was a preferred groove and the left side tire that Goodyear brought here it seemed to each complement that more. This tire has less stagger and doesn’t allow you to roll around the bottom of the racetrack. The only way you could pass was to dive on in there and slide job the guy.
Sometimes you don’t complete that, but if you don’t complete that, it definitely will get you frustrated and lose positions and if you hit the guy, it’s going to fire him up. I don’t know what happened between him and Tony and Matt. I saw where Tony got into him and then after Tony got by him, Matt obviously got back into him. So you know, they are battling for the win and it was not easy to pass. I think that I guess that’s what they were trying to accomplish is make it harder to pass so you had to kind of bump the guy out of the way. There’s no more bump and run, but there’s definitely plenty of slide jobs and side by side action where guys are rubbing up on one another and maybe try to get in their fenders.
So, yeah, from that standpoint, it was pretty exciting.
Q. Following up, could you feel more intensity on the track than you maybe felt in the spring race, and recent races here?
JEFF GORDON: Yeah, I mean, the pace was fast. You could fly up around the top like that with all that rubber down, I don’t know what kind of lap times we were running, but I hit my rev limiter every single lap, we didn’t have it set right for that pace. It was fast, and it was intense, because it was so tough to pass. And any time you feel like you’re better than the guy ahead you and he’s holding you up and you look and the cars are lined up behind you, you’re like, man, if I make a move, I’d better be sure that I’ve got him.
You know, I made several slide jobs and I think I completed about 90 percent of them. But that ten percent that I didn’t complete, cost me quite a few positions. The restarts were intense because you’re out there in the bottom and the outside groove is the preferred lane and you’re sliding and pushing up hard and rubbing up on guys.
Yeah I think there’s a little more intensity tonight than normal.
KERRY THARP: Jeff, thank you very much and wish you a lot of luck the next two races.
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