NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
GEICO 500
TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUALIFYING TRANSCRIPT
OCTOBER 18, 2014
JIMMIE JOHNSON GIVES CHEVROLET FRONT-ROW STARTING POSITION AT TALLADEGA
AJ Allmendinger qualifies third as pairing leads Team Chevy contingent
TALLADEGA, Ala. (Oct. 18, 2014) – Jimmie Johnson and AJ Allmendinger led Team Chevy’s efforts Saturday in qualifying for the GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. Johnson, in the No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet SS will start second in the final round of the ‘Contender’ segment of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
Johnson’s lap of 48.924 (195.732 mph) was just 0.099 seconds off the pole-winning time in the final round of Saturday’s knock-out qualifying format, which featured three stages of time trials. Allmendinger, driving the No. 47 Scott Products Chevrolet SS, will start third following his best lap of 48.983 (195.496 mph) in the final five-minute period.
Six-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Johnson, is 11th in the Chase standings and needs a victory Sunday to advance to the ‘Eliminator’ round, keeping his quest for a seventh series title alive. He has won twice at Talladega – 2006 and 2011.
Five other Chevrolet SS drivers earned top-12 starting positions: Travis Kvapil, No. 33 Little Joe’s Autos Chevrolet SS (seventh), Kasey Kahne, No. 5 Farmer’s Insurance Chevrolet SS (eighth), Michael Annett, No. 7 Golden Corral Chevrolet SS (10th), Ryan Newman, No. 31 Caterpillar Chevrolet SS (11th) and Martin Truex Jr., No. 78 Furniture Row Chevrolet SS (12th).
Newman is currently fourth in the Chase, and Kahne sits eighth.
Three other Team Chevy Chase contenders did not make it past the first round of qualifying. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. will take the green flag from the 28th starting position in the No. 88 Diet Mountain Dew Chevrolet SS. Kevin Harvick in the No. 4 Budweiser Chevrolet SS will start 39th. With his win last weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Harvick is the only Team Chevy Chase contender assured a spot in the next round of the playoffs.
Four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon, No. 24 Axalta Chevrolet SS, mistimed his qualifying run and will start in the 43rd position.
Brian Vickers (Toyota) was the pole winner; Ryan Blaney (Ford) and Brad Keselowski (Ford) round out the top-five starters.
The GEICO 500 is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. on Sunday October 19th. Live coverage will be available on ESPN, MRN, Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 90 and NASCAR.com.
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 2ND
AJ ALLMENDINGER, NO. 47 SCOTT PRODUCTS CHEVROLET SS – QUALIFIED 3RD
POST-QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
TALK ABOUT THE QUALIFYING AND HOW IT WENT FOR YOU AND YOUR OUTLOOK FOR TOMORROW’S RACE
ALLMENDINGER: “What do you say about this qualifying?”
JOHNSON: “I thought I missed the opportunity in the draft and it wasn’t going to be any good.”
ALLMENDINGER: “It’s strange. I’m not sure if it’s exciting or really what it is. The whole goal is that you just try to be the guy who times it right at the back so you get the big run. And if you get the big run, you’re lucky. If you don’t, you don’t. It’s really strange. It’s really about luck. You hope you get the right gap and the right time. In the first group I think I crossed the line with two seconds to go and everybody else behind me didn’t make it. So, it’s just strange. It’s a weird format. I’m not sure it’s any better than single car qualifying. It’s hard to say. But, it is what it is. You’ve got to try to make your plan for what works out. I thought I had a shot at the pole. I came to the line, I thought, with the right amount of gap, but we kind of got held up as we went through (Turn) 2 and allowed Brian (Vickers) to get a run on me and close the gap. So, we’ll just try to avoid the big one tomorrow and hopefully get a good finish.”
YOU’LL BE OUT FRONT TOMORROW, WHICH WAS CERTAINLY THE GOAL COMING OUT OF TODAY’S QUALIFYING. TALK ABOUT YOUR EFFORT AND YOUR OUTLOOK FOR TOMORROW
JOHNSON: “Yeah I’m definitely thrilled with the results although it was confusing, and I wasn’t sure that it was going to be any better than 11th or 12th. And I ended up second. So there was just a lot of jockeying going on those two laps and trying to set-up your fun and against the clock and confusion inside of my car and how many laps were left or where the clock was. I didn’t see the lights. My spotter spotting a group of cars going by and Chad (Knaus, crew chief) was trying to give me info. And finally they stopped talking and got in the gas off of (Turn) 4 and I realized I still had another lap to go and was able to pull back up to the group of cars in front of me, somehow; and I ended up second.
“If it is exciting and the fans do enjoy it and viewership on television was up, I think we’re all willing to go out there and roll the dice each time for this. But, inside the car, it was just a totally different experience. But pit road pick is very important, I think, because we’ll do lots of fuel-only and lots of two-tire stops and it’s easy to get in harm’s way here leaving your pit box as others are coming in, so I’m happy about that. And having track position is great to start the race. It’s just not that easy to hang onto it here. But we’ll start up there and see what we can do.”
HOW SHOULD WE QUALIFY HERE?
ALLMENDINGER: “I kind of agree with what Jimmie said. If the fans like, it and it gets more viewers on TV, and if our sponsors get more recognition on a Friday or Saturday or whenever we do this, then to me it is worth it. If not, then to me there is no reason to go out there and take another chance to wreck a race car. I guess that would be up to what TV and what radio and what kind of viewership we actually get for it.”
JOHNSON: “I definitely agree. You could actually turn it into a race. I know there were a few guys bumped out that were kind of a surprise that you wouldn’t expect the No. 17 (Ricky Stenhouse) or the No. 51 (Justin Allgaier). So, maybe a race like you have in Daytona for the 500 would be more fair. But at the same time, what the competitors want versus everybody else is usually different, as we all know (laughs). And the best way to go about it from a competition side is the single car runs. The fastest car is on the pole and on down through the field. It’s that fine balance I think we’re trying to find in today’s world of balancing eyeballs watching versus what the competition is in the garage area and what the garage wants to see.”
WITH FIVE MINUTES IN A ROUND, WHAT ARE YOU GUYS WAITING ON? WHEN THE CLOCK STARTS AND THEY SAY THE TRACK IS GREEN, WHY ARE TEAMS NOT HEADING OUT ON THE TRACK?
ALLMENDINGER: “To me, you’re just waiting on the first guy who gets an itchy trigger finger and decides to go because he’s going to run out of time. You don’t want to be the first car out there.”
WHY?
ALLMENDINGER: “Because you’re going to be the slowest car. If you’re the first one out there, the pack is going to run you down; and the whole goal is to that you want to be one of the lead cars in the second group that gets that big run; and you try to time it. That’s the whole goal. I think you all saw. It’s kind of split up between do we go and make sure we get a lap in, or do we try to play it to the last second and hopefully we get that big run because everybody else went before us. It’s interesting.”
JOHNSON: “I agree. It’s just a numbers game. The more cars in front of you, the faster you go. The guy in the back is going to be the fastest one. What was interesting in that final session is that we were going along and I was fortunate to be the last car on the track, essentially; and the groups ahead of us checked-up and our group checked-up. And at that point, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how much time was left on the clock and were my laps complete and it really scrambled things then. And then it turned into a bit more of a cat and mouse game. Strategy-wise, the more cars in front of you, the faster you went.”
YOU HAD TEAMMATES OUT THERE THE FIRST SEGMENT. WHAT HAPPENED? DID YOU GUYS NOT HAVE A GAME PLAN THAT YOU WANTED TO TRY TO WORK TOGETHER?
JOHNSON: “It’s kind of a catch 22 for the bigger teams, because if all four Hendrick (Motorsports) cars sat there in a line, everybody would be like ‘oh okay I’m just going to get in behind these guys.’ Then we are pulling that whole train and everybody behind us is faster. We felt as a group we were better off kind of doing our own thing and not being such an easy target. It looked like the RCR guys had a plan and I picked up on that and jumped on their train with them and thank them greatly for it. That is really what it boils down to. We felt that we would be better off independently trying to put ourselves in position as one of the last cars to start your lap before the flags fall. (Jeff) Gordon was playing the waiting game in the first one and missed it. (Dale Earnhardt) Junior unfortunately had a bunch – he went to the end of pit road and a bunch of cars stacked up behind him.”
HE (DALE EARNHARDT, JR.) HAD RADIO PROBLEMS:
JOHNSON: “Oh they did? That is not good. You need a lot of radio conversation today to kind of figure out what was going on.”
THE NEW QUALIFYING FORMAT SENT TWO FULL TIME TEAMS HOME RICKY STENHOUSE, JR. AND JUSTIN ALLGAIER. IS THIS NEW QUALIFYING FORMAT FAIR TO THOSE GUYS?
ALLMENDINGER: “I mean I don’t know. I guess racing is not really fair most of the time, unless you are Jimmie (Johnson) and you win all the time, other than that no.”
JOHNSON: “Not the last few months (laughs).”
ALLMENDINGER: “I don’t know what is right or wrong. It’s the format that we race in. It’s the format that you have to qualify in. I mean heck I missed I think at least nine or 10 races my first year on the past champions provisional. I didn’t think it was fair something that happened in 1988 was affecting my life in 2007. It is what it is. It’s the rules you live by and everybody has got the same opportunity to go out there and get a lap in and time it right. It’s not like Jimmie or somebody else had a better opportunity than anybody else. I mean it’s just the way it is. It’s surprising, because I was shocked. I asked even on the radio ‘are those the three guys going home?’ So, I mean it’s a little bit shocking, but it’s not always fair.”
JOHNSON: “I agree 100 percent. He nailed it. Racing isn’t fair, it’s not always fair. Shocked, if I was them I would be upset, but we all knew what the rules were coming into it and what could happen.”
WHY NOT THE 23 DRIVERS IN YOUR GROUP JUST LINE UP AND GO IN ONE SINGLE FILE LINE?
ALLMENDINGER: “Because who is going to lead it? Are we going to rock/paper/scissors to lead it?”
WOULDN’T ALL 23 BE FASTER THAN THE OTHER 23 THAT DIDN’T DO THAT?
JOHNSON: “Do you really think 23 drivers can get on the same page? (Laughs) That is the bottom line.”
ALLMENDINGER: “It still comes down to who is going to pick the short straw and lead it.”
JOHNSON: “Yeah, somebody has got to fall on the sword. The first three to five cars are going to be the slowest ones. Nobody wants to be there. Looking back right now, you could say, ‘yeah’. In a laps time the 23 cars in a draft would have probably worked out or at least probably 15 or 16 would have transferred. But that is the thing. One, we can’t get organized and two you don’t know how it’s going to play out. But theoretically, yes, you are right. You are on the right page; we just can’t get on the same page.”
SO IT’S YOUR GUYS FAULT?
ALLMENDINGER: “Usually.”
JOHNSON: “Of course. Then we blame somebody below us. It usually trickles all the way down to the tire guy. It’s always the tire guys fault.”
ALLMENDINGER: “Is that why my tire guy is so angry all the time?”
JOHNSON: “That’s it. All that stuff runs downhill and he is at the bottom.”
NORMALLY YOU ONLY HAVE TWO GOOD LAPS OUT HERE BASED ON THE WAY YOU SET-UP FOR QUALIFYING. YOU MADE THREE TODAY. HOW CLOSE WERE YOU TO JUST LOSING THE ENGINE BASED ON THE EFFORT?
JOHNSON: “No, with the draft and I’m sure you want to run as much tape as you can. But everybody was pretty open with the grille tape to be in the draft and to run multiple laps, come down pit road if you need to leave the car running in case everybody took off in front of you and stuff like that. I mean the car was hot for sure, but it wasn’t in a bad situation.”
AFTER THE FIRST TWO SESSIONS WHILE THEY WERE STILL TRYING TO FIGURE OUT IF THE 22 AND THE 18 HAD MADE IT TO THE LINE IN TIME DID YOU THINK YOU WERE OUT FOR A WHILE THERE?
JOHNSON: “When there was maybe a minute and thirty seconds to go and the guys weren’t at speed and I think they were going into turns one and two. The way the whole thing was playing out it might have been even a little less time than that; I started putting my helmet and Hans device on. I really felt like they weren’t going to get a fast lap in. I was climbing in the car when the session ended. I felt like I had a chance at least.”
Connect with Team Chevy on social media. Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TeamChevy, follow us on Twitter @TeamChevy, and add +TeamChevy into your Google+ circles.
Team Chevy racing photos are available at:
About Chevrolet
Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Chevrolet is now one of the world’s largest car brands, doing business in more than 140 countries and selling more than 4.9 million cars and trucks a year. Chevrolet provides customers with fuel-efficient vehicles that feature spirited performance, expressive design, and high quality. More information on Chevrolet models can be found at www.chevrolet.com.
