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[/media-credit]As the 20th driver to take time in qualifying on Friday afternoon – due in part to a practice time that was only 27th fastest on the board – Sprint Cup Series point leader Jimmie Johnson had to sit and wait to see where he would end up on the starting grid. And sit and wait he did, for more than a half hour inside the cockpit of his No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet, parked on pit road at the Texas Motor Speedway.
“No, not at all man. What would make you think that?” joked Johnson afterwards, upon immediately being asked if he was superstitious.
“I was ready to get out, and my engine tuner stuck his head in the car and said, ‘Hey man, you’re going to be sitting here a long time this week.’ And I went, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right. I’m not superstitious, but I’ll sit here.’ And I sat there. It doesn’t mean anything, but may as well. At this point in the season, you have to pull out the stops.”
It worked out well. Johnson was the fastest man in Texas after all 46 cars had taken time. He then emerged from the driver’s seat to bask in his second straight pole, having waited out qualifying from the same position last weekend in Martinsville, with the same result.
Now the point leader, who many thought would be in trouble based on practice as Brad Keselowski, his nearest competitor in the Chase, posted the third fastest lap, has shown everyone that he’s in firm control of the championship. Throwing down a lap in qualifying that leaves little doubt he’ll be looking for a second straight win to go with his second straight pole.
“It’s funny because when you run really well, you build confidence in your own head and around your team about how things went,” said Johnson. “And we’ll certainly do that in the 48. If we qualified 10th we would have went, ‘Hey, that met expectations of what we thought we’d get. Good job.’ Twenty fifth would be, ‘Hey, it’s just qualifying.’ So, every team will put a spin on it to help themselves and to help get over it.
“I don’t think the 2 [Keselowski] qualified all that bad. I think he’s in the top 10. Truthfully, if you’re in the top 10 each week you eliminate so many more issues on the racetrack.”
Keselowski will start behind Johnson, eighth. Except, Keselowski will need to do something he didn’t do in the spring if he wants to take back the point lead: finish better than 36th while Johnson finished second. Keselowski enters Sunday with two-point deficit and if there’s one thing that he knows – and has proven – it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish. But Johnson showed on Friday, it’s not about where you practice either.
“I really felt like top 10 was the goal. When I heard the lap time, I was way impressed,” he said. “I think the pole here in the spring was a .30 and it was probably cooler and to be down in the .20s, I was really pleased with that.
“We exceeded expectations in qualifying. A top 10 was really the goal going into it, especially with our seeding process, we felt like going out as early as we did, the guys later would have a bigger advantage and pick up some speed on us. We definitely exceeded expectations.”
Perhaps that’s why Johnson, who earned the 29th pole of his career on Friday and his first at Texas, knew that it really doesn’t mean much in the big picture. He’s happy to be up front with an opportunity to lock up an added bonus point early in the AAA 500. He’ll gladly take the clean air, the first pit stall and the beautiful rifle that TMS gives away as the pole award.
Johnson will gladly take another pole, being able to win one is always special and proof of how hard a team works to go fast. But in the end he recognized that it’s just a small step on the path to a bigger prize.
“As you get closer to the end of the year they [poles] feel like they mean a little bit more. But it’s just another pole,” believes the five-time champion. “Not saying that in a negative way, but the benefits that come with it are the same that you would have at any other track.
“We have 500 long, grueling miles on Sunday, so we won a battle today. But the larger battle is definitely on Sunday here at the track. Hopefully all these battles that we are winning right now will total up to winning the war at the end of the year.”
