There was a day when you’d head to Charlotte Motor Speedway and automatically, Jimmie Johnson’s name would come to mind as the winner. That still happens, but not as much as it did in the first half of Johnson’s career. The time in his career where he won five straight races and seemed as though he could do no wrong on the 1.5 mile oval located in NASCAR’s hub.
Johnson’s drive at Charlotte hasn’t rang the same tune over the last couple of years with only four top-fives (one victory) in his last nine starts at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Performance has been of question, though a crash and an engine failure certainly have hurt that average.
Perhaps this is a year where Johnson finds the magic once again as he has been getting quicker with each weekend over the course of this season, beginning to lead more laps and post finishes that we’re used to seeing from the No. 48 Lowe’s team.
He is off to a good start, notably, as Johnson will lead the field to the green flag after picking up the Coors Light Pole Award. However, being fast for one lap isn’t the secret. Being fast over the course of the race is the secret, especially when you have a 600 race that starts in the daylight and ends under the lights.
“You’ve got a lot of opportunities to work on your car and that’s what I’ll tell myself all night long,” Johnson commented. “If things don’t go our way, if we’re caught in the pits when a caution comes out, or something doesn’t work in our favor, you’ve got 100 more miles to sort things out. A 500-mile race is already long. And now you’ve got 100 more to work on it. You’ve just got to keep your head in the game and focus on being in the game longer.”
The challenge now is for Johnson and Chad Knaus to find that set-up, which Knaus admits has been a struggle this year with the new rules package.
“We develop a balance of a car in practice by ourselves in single car runs; and then in traffic situations, find that balance is just too uncomfortable to drive. So, we’re trying to trade off single car speed versus how the car handles in traffic has been kind of our goal,” Johnson noted. “I do like a loose race car and as we get in traffic, the car typically gets looser. So, if you start with a loose car and you end up deep in traffic, you’re not really going anywhere; you’re kind of stuck. And yes, I’m not the best driver of a tight race car.”
A win for Johnson would be huge as it would silence the critics and virtually lock him into the Chase. However, if he does come up short of winning on Sunday night, Johnson is maintaining the same thought process as he had since the discussion started – he will make the Chase one way or another.
“There are 16 drivers that make it into the Chase, where last year there were 12 and two of those were wild cards. So, the window is a lot bigger to get into the Chase for the first segment and I feel very confident that we’ll be in there,” Johnson commented. “And I really don’t think there’s going to be 16 different winners. So, as long as we work to make our cars faster, of course we want to win, but as long as we keep a smart mind on points and have good finishes and keep ourselves up in points, we’ll keep our post-season hopes alive. And in the post-season, we have amazing race tracks for us. And I know by then we’ll have things where we need to have them.”
