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Pep Boys Auto 500 Post-Race Transcript
An interview with:
CARL EDWARDS
BOB OSBORNE
JACK ROUSH

KERRY THARP: Carl Edwards wins the 2008 Pep Boys Auto 500 here at Atlanta Motor Speedway, driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Ford, with crew chief Bob Osborne and team owner Jack Roush.
Carl, your thoughts about the race out there today. Obviously you knew you had a good car coming in. You really handled that racetrack extremely well.

CARL EDWARDS: Man, it was a lot of fun. This racetrack is a blast. I hope they never repave it, mess with it. It’s really fun to drive on. You can spin the tires halfway down each straightaway. Made it driving like on a dry slick dirt track. It was a lot of fun. Bob did a great job.

Middle of the race we weren’t as fast as we were at the beginning and the end, which I guess if you got to pick a spot in the race not to be fast, that would be it. Bob did a great job at the end. It all worked out. Just awesome. It’s been a great couple days for me. I can’t thank Jack enough for the opportunity. This is amazing.

KERRY THARP: Bob, your thoughts about some of the calls you had to make out on the pit box tonight.

BOB OSBORNE: We got behind relative to the racetrack and relative to some of the competitors. I think some of that had to do with some of the calls I made went a little bit too far on some of my adjustments, had to back pedal a little bit, go in a different direction late in the race to try to get caught back up.

KERRY THARP: Jack, your thoughts about the performance of the 99 team here today.

JACK ROUSH: They did really, really, really well obviously. To watch Bob and Carl work the car, work the racetrack, work the race, and a 500 mile race is an amazing thing to watch unfold. They’ve got the chemistry you need to have between a driver and a crew chief to be able to sort all those things out. They worked their way through it.

I knew that Bob was good, that the car was good early on. I knew they had lost their way or the competitors had gotten better in the middle. I was really, really relieved at the end when they made their last adjustment or Bob made his last adjustment and he got it where it needed to be.

The one thing I wanted to say is that days like this, for teams like ours that have the success we’ve had, we want to go back and think about 2008, think about our championship run, what it meant. Unfortunately I’m afraid it will come down to thinking about the broken engine parts, the ignition and the other frustrations we’ve had.

But it would be my suggestion as NASCAR looks at how to make this thing more exciting, if we had an opportunity, every team had an opportunity, to throw out one race and be able to just count nine of the 10, that means you could have a Mulligan and you could be able to come back from it.

Anyway, we’re going to remember this night. It was a wonderful evening to be in Atlanta here. We had soldiers from the 75th regiment, third brigade, Army Rangers, that came back from Iraq. One of their soldiers Patrick Rudd died over there. He was a friend of a friend. The racetrack extended an invitation to 200 of the soldiers to come out and join us today. It was a wonderful thing the racetrack did.

Anyway, I’m dedicating my part of the victory to Sergeant Patrick Rudd that lost his life in Iraq. He and his regiment of Rangers are one of the reasons we can have events like this with relative safety with all of the other things going on in the world.

KERRY THARP: We’ll take questions for the winning team.

Q. Carl, you began the race with Jimmie Johnson. Apparently much to your surprise you ended it with him behind you. Did you lose track of him in between? Did you have any idea where he was?

CARL EDWARDS: Yeah, I looked up there on the scoreboard, saw he was running seventh, eighth, ninth, somewhere in there most of the second half of the race. When Dave said, What do you think about Jimmie finishing second, I thought he was joking. I truly didn’t know until I looked at the scoreboard that Jimmie had made that back up. I got to see some video. They put on some tires and went for it. That’s pretty amazing.

He’s a heck of a competitor, just like I’ve said before. He’s the first guy to come and congratulate when you win, in a way that just makes him harder to beat. He’s just one of those guys that does it right.

We’ve got to hope that he has something happen like the things that we’ve had happen, lose a couple hundred points, and we just have to be able to capitalize because I believe that the way they’re running, it’s going to be really tough to beat them.

We can do it. I mean, we just have to go win. If we do everything we can, that’s all we can do.

Q. Carl, you took the lead 10 laps or so before the final. How difficult was it for you to stay patient? You said in the middle of the race you didn’t have the speed like in the beginning. Was there maybe a moment when you were under panic?

CARL EDWARDS: No, I didn’t panic or anything. Definitely got a little frustrated there in the middle of the race.

Like Bob said, we kind of adjusted ourselves away from being as fast as we were at the beginning. But, you know, you just got to keep working, you know, keep digging, never give up. That applies to every part of our race team. We try to always focus on what we have to do no matter what the circumstance. It worked out today. But definitely in the middle of the race

I didn’t believe we were going to win the thing.

The pass for the lead there, that was on the restart. All day everybody had been having trouble spinning the tires. Denny spun his tires a little bit. I spun mine. Then he spun them some more. I got to his bumper. All I could think about was the guys passing all of us. I pushed on his rear bumper a little bit. Then he went to block the inside and spun the tires again, I guess, or something. I think that was a smart move on his part to go to the inside. That’s where I was planning on going. That opened the door to the top. I thought, Well, I’ll try it. But I was really nervous the guys behind me were going to get to the bottom and get by us. But it worked out. The last adjustment Bob made made the car real fast on the top.

Q. Carl, when you got the lead and pulled away, obviously the clean air was the deal all day.

CARL EDWARDS: Yeah.

Q. But you managed to get the lead. When you got up there, did you think, Now it’s up to me not to make the same kind of mistake Denny made?

CARL EDWARDS: Oh, yeah. Bob came on the radio, on that last restart, he said, I think I saw what just happened with you and Denny. He said something like, Be careful, it’s your turn now (laughter). I thought, Man, you know, it’s so hard on those restarts. It’s really difficult. You get put in the lead there, and a lot of times you’re a sitting duck because all the hair on the back of your neck’s standing up and everything in your brain is screaming stand on the gas, stand on the gas. It’s really difficult not to spin the tires. Early in the race I did it a couple times real bad.

So, yeah, that was interesting. But once we got the lead, yeah, it was just don’t mess up, you know, focus, hit your marks. The car was really fast.

Q. What was going through your mind on that pit stop when you collided with the 88?

CARL EDWARDS: First of all, I didn’t know until somebody told me. I thought I hit the 2 car. There’s so much going on there. I didn’t know exactly what happened. Bob cleared me one out. I was stuck behind Jimmie a little bit. I got around Jimmie and the rear end slid out an extra foot or whatever. I hit somebody’s car there. I guess it was Dale.

I don’t know if they were two or three wide or what was going on there, but there just wasn’t a lot of room. I tried to keep it as tight as I could. You know, I’ve seen a lot of good races go bad on pit road, and that made me a little bit nervous when we got into them, those guys there. It just looked like a mess. I haven’t seen a replay yet. Felt like a mess.

Q. Carl, can you tell us about the good luck necklace that you got from the kid at the Children’s Hospital.

CARL EDWARDS: Yeah, it was really cool. I still got it on, this necklace here. Dalton, really cool kid. We went to the Aflac Cancer Center at the Children’s Hospital in downtown Atlanta. I mean, I’m sure, as everybody knows, there’s a lot of people that give a lot in this sport. I didn’t realize how much Aflac does for all these kids. They don’t turn one kid away. They treat everyone regardless of whether they can pay or not. They treat a lot of children. And they cure 70% of the kids that come in there with cancer so they can go on and live regular lives and succeed at whatever they want to do.

Dalton was really cool. We went to the hospital, David Gilliland and myself. We had a really good time. At the end, Dalton said, Hey, I got this courage necklace. I get beads every time I come to the hospital and visit or do something or surgery or something like that. He said, I want you to wear it. I think it will be good luck on Sunday. He definitely said he wants it back after this race, which is too bad, because I think it worked.

Q. Bob, I don’t want to put you on the spot. Did you not have it in your heart to tell Carl that Jimmie was second?

BOB OSBORNE: Honestly I didn’t realize he was second either until I got to Victory Circle. I figured the 11 had finished second. I did see he got to third, but I didn’t realize he made it to second till I was walking back there.

Q. Bob, is it an easy for Chad and Jimmie to take four tires there when they’re running eighth with 10, 11 laps to go? Does that decision change or is it made easier knowing they had a 150 point cushion on you guys and can take a chance for a few spots?

BOB OSBORNE: For sure, the point cushion allows them to do some things that ordinarily we wouldn’t do as crew chiefs. But they really didn’t have anything to lose. If no one came in front of ‘em, they were the first ones to come, they had a pretty good feeling that some of the cars behind ‘em would come, too. But with a single file restart, four tires go a long way obviously.

Q. Carl, you have seven wins. Obviously a great season. If you don’t win the championship, will you still be pleased with this season or will you be really disappointed that you didn’t get everything you wanted?

CARL EDWARDS: I mean, here’s the deal. We go out and do the best we can. If we win 10 races and the championship, that’s going to be a spectacular season. That’s what we’re focusing on doing right now.

I don’t know. We’ll just have to see what happens. But one thing I’ve learned in this sport, it’s really hard to come to grips with, you don’t always get the result you want. You just have to perform the best you can. If you do that, the result doesn’t matter. You can lay your head down at night and feel okay. I guess we’ll see after Homestead. I hope that’s not what happens.

Q. Could you talk about when you were coming off pit road with the 48, just what happened in that incident? Did you think it was dirty pool or fair game or circumstances on pit road?

CARL EDWARDS: Bob had a better look at it. A lot of people brought that up. I don’t know if they were making something about that in the coverage of the race. Jimmie’s job is not to make it easy on us. You know what I mean? If he was behind us on pit road, I might leave mine hanging out a little farther than normal. I thought he put it far enough in the box. I didn’t think he was purposely making it hard on us. But they’re not supposed to make it easy on us. I didn’t have any trouble with that. No hard feelings about that from me.

Q. Carl, so far no driver has been able to sweep races at a track this year. You have the chance to do that at Texas next week. I understand you’re doing some flight training tomorrow.

CARL EDWARDS: What am I doing tomorrow?

Q. Flight training.

CARL EDWARDS: Flight training. No, I got this aerobatic plane. I’ve been doing some flight training. I don’t have any scheduled for tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m just going to fly. I don’t know if I’m going to learn much. But we’re going to have a good time with it. Jack has me kind of screwed up with airplanes. It’s fun. Sure as hell is expensive. But it’s fun. We have a good time.

JACK ROUSH: A driver being somewhat in debt for a passion or another, it’s not a bad thing. Racehorses, airplanes…

CARL EDWARDS: I got this airplane. It’s an Extra 300. Something I’m excited about doing this week, going and flying that thing. It’s got the smoke system. It will do loops and barrel rolls. My girlfriend actually went with me the other day. Hung on it for most of the day.

JACK ROUSH: Fiancée.

CARL EDWARDS: She’s my fiancée. That’s crazy. Sorry, Kate. I’m terrible. She’ll forgive me. Texas is going to be fun. I like racing there. It’s a lot like this place. It’s fast. It’s fun. I’m sure Bob will have a great setup. He does a really good job at these tracks. I feel like he can almost read my mind as far as what I want. There wouldn’t be much better place to double up than Texas. That’s a really great race. Very important at this point in the season to run well there.

Q. Carl, Jimmie Johnson talked about how he didn’t think the tires were very much improved from the March race to this race now. You talked about how much you love the track, being like a dirt track. Two different perspectives. Do you think the tires improved at all?

CARL EDWARDS: I was glad they didn’t screw them up. I thought they were perfect in the spring. That’s just the way I feel. I know a lot of people don’t feel that way. But maybe it’s because I got these guys sitting next to me, we’ve got such great racecars.

But I enjoy when you got to push the pedals a lot, move the steering wheel a lot. It puts it back in the driver’s hands. It’s really like a 500 mile Saturday night dirt track race. You’re driving the whole time. That’s fun.

JACK ROUSH: From Bob and I’s point of view, when you have a tire that’s so good for a racetrack that you can run it, you can abuse it and run it for a full fuel run, not have any consequence of not having your setup right, it really doesn’t give you much to work with. The tire they had here, if you get off a little bit, if you overheat one tire, you’re going to have a consequence of really having a car slow down. That really lets the crew chiefs for the setup and the driver that gives their best input have the best chance.

We like to race the tires. We’d like for the tires not to be perfect. They were good tires even though they fell off quite a bit.

Q. Carl, if before the Chase someone told you you’d be 183 points back with three to go, do you think there would be any thought you’d be second in the standings?

CARL EDWARDS: Are we second right now?

KERRY THARP: Yes.

CARL EDWARDS: I didn’t know. No, I mean, listen, guys, anything can happen. If there’s one thing this season has shown me and all of us I guess here is that every time you think you got figured out who is going to be the guy to beat, you know, I think it can turned on its head quickly.

I’m telling you, as long as we’re within 130 points going to Homestead or whatever, we’re still going there to win the championship and it can happen.

It would have been hard for me to believe that there would be one guy that had that big of a lead right now. But if I had to pick a guy, I’d say it’s Jimmie Johnson. Those guys are really consistent. They do their jobs. But they can have the same luck that we’ve had, that’s for sure.

Q. I’ve got to believe Jack was serious when he talked about a Mulligan in the Chase. Taking yourselves away from your team, what you’ve encountered, Bob and Carl, do you believe the Chase should include the ability to throw one race out? Do you seriously believe that would be a good idea?

CARL EDWARDS: You got to be careful because next year we might have a 183 point lead. I think it depends. It would be good right now for sure (smiling). Maybe throw out two, that would be great.

JACK ROUSH: I raced for 20 years, 20 some years, before I started with NASCAR stock car racing back in ’88. I raced in a couple of series and had great championship runs with programs where they did throw out one or two races. They didn’t have a 10 race deal at the end of the season, but throughout the year. What that really meant was that until you’d used up your Mulligan, you raced as hard as you could go every lap. If you didn’t have a Mulligan, then you have to be somewhat more cautious. It’s more exciting if you’re able to go as hard as you can until you realize that it will really hurt you.

CARL EDWARDS: That’s a good point. It might make the racing there will be guys you can take bigger risks if you haven’t used your Mulligan. I think that’s part of what the Chase format has brought about, knowing that you’ve got 26 races. I know for us it was really fun about four to go before the Chase started, we knew we were in. I just drove as hard as I could. We tried a bunch of stuff. It made it a lot of fun.

BOB OSBORNE: I don’t see why not. I don’t think NASCAR wants to see their championship won by this many points, for sure. I don’t want to see it won by this many points. I don’t think anybody wants to see it won by this many points.

If they come up with a format that can adjust and make the Chase even that much more competitive, that would be wonderful.

Q. Carl, all the good things that happened today, is there some discouragement in the fact you came in here 199 points and you only gained 16 points?

CARL EDWARDS: Really there isn’t. We came here and did what we had to do. We won the race. Man, that’s all we can do. I’d be a fool to go home and be discouraged by that. You’ve got to build on that, move on, and hopefully win at the next three of them.

Just amazement at how well Chad, Jimmie and those guys rebounded. I was telling somebody out there, I don’t know how many times I’ve been riding along third or fourth on a restart, there’s the 48 a lap down on the inside line. I think,

Man, their day’s ruined. By the end of the race, somehow they make it back up there. I think we can all learn from that.

Q. You’ve been extremely strong on these intermediate tracks. What do you credit your strong performance at these tracks with?

CARL EDWARDS: That’s a good question. I think it’s a lot of things. These guys sitting next to me. The guys at the shop building the engines. Robbie Reiser. All of my teammates sharing information. I think that these tracks tax every aspect of your team. You have to have good pit stops, good engine, good aero package, good communication with the crew chief. Then for me driving it, they feel a lot like a half mile dirt track or something like that, the way the momentum works, all that. I really just enjoy the feel of these places. Right off the bat we had really good cars in 2004, 2005 at these places. I really like ‘em.

Q. The last three winners here of this race went on to win the next week in Texas. Assess your chances of keeping that streak going.

CARL EDWARDS: Man, I didn’t realize that. I guess we did that in 2005. The tracks are a lot alike. I’m hoping that all the things we’ve been doing with Ford and all their support, the things we’ve been doing behind the scenes to kind of make sure that our data and everything matches up and we can run well at these tracks, I hope that it carries over.

Things change so fast. Really week to week it seems like early in the season Jimmie and those guys weren’t that fast at these places, then they figured something out. I just hope that it does carry over. That would be very cool.

Q. As much as you love this racetrack, would you consider having them widen pit road?

CARL EDWARDS: That’s a good question. I don’t know if it’s because of the size of pit road or just things are coming down to crunch time and people are getting every inch they can.

I think pit road seems to be wide enough. Honestly, they can do whatever they want with pit road; just don’t touch the racetrack, it’s perfect.

Q. Carl, you’re not only chasing the Sprint Cup title but you’re chasing the Nationwide Series title as well. How hard is it to focus on both right now?

CARL EDWARDS: I’m very fortunate to be driving both. We got fast Ford Fusions every week in both of ‘em. In a way I think that it’s a nice little escape from each of them. The run yesterday at Memphis was just a blast. I had a really good time. Kind of allowed me to relax a little bit. I think in a way that feeling of accomplishing something on Saturday can sometimes transfer over, had a little spring in my step today.

I don’t think they take away at all. I think they kind of help one another.

KERRY THARP: Congratulations.

An interview with:
JIMMIE JOHNSON
DENNY HAMLIN

KERRY THARP: We’re pleased to be joined by our race runner up and our points leader this week. He increases that points margin up to 183 points, Jimmie Johnson.

Jimmie, you got that pit road speeding penalty early on. You certainly made up a lot of ground. Boy, you were coming on strong there at the end. Your thoughts.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Man, I felt like I went 12 rounds with Tyson today. That was a long, long race for us. I made that mistake getting onto pit road I guess. I’ve heard it was in and off pit road. I’m not sure where. But somewhere I was speeding, had to do that pass through on green flag stop conditions.

It just killed us. It just killed us. We just fought back from that all day long. We could make up some ground, but we could only get to seventh, sixth, something like that. The cars were all pretty equal in front of us on speed. We just kind of hung there and couldn’t go anywhere.

Chad’s calls for tires at the end really paid off. We were able to make up a lot of ground, get a good finish out of today.

KERRY THARP: Thank you, Jimmie. We have our third place finisher, as well, Denny Hamlin. Denny, you had a strong run out there, led a lot of laps. Your thoughts about how things shook out today?

DENNY HAMLIN: It was good. Our car was good. We worked it into a top seven car early. Worked it into a top five car around halfway. Then after that, just every pit stop we got a little better, a little better, starting making up positions. We knew if we could get past the 17 in the pits that we were going to check out. Once we got around him, our car was just awesome. It was really, really good.

You know, we looked good with 30 to go there. After the last pit stop, that was the best my car had been all day. We had that debris caution. That just completely changed the complexity of the race. It seems like it glazed over my rear tires because after that I had no rear grip whatsoever. That’s part of it.

KERRY THARP: We’ll take questions now.

Q. Denny, can you talk about the restart with Carl, when he maybe made a little contact with you. Also the last lap with Jimmie, when you got loose in four.

DENNY HAMLIN: Yeah, you know, we struggled to get going on the restarts, which is fine. We were still OK. But, you know, the 99 was coming. I was probably I think I was in the middle of the track. Versus going high or low, he hit us. When he did, it knocked us down the racetrack. He chose what lane he wanted to be in when he hit us. Once you get the guy on the outside on the restart, it’s over.

That second groove is really, really good for a few laps. Once he knocked us down to the bottom right there, it was over with. We knew, we conceded that. The only way to do it was to do it back to him. But our car would not take off. It would not take off at all.

The last lap with Jimmie, he just had position on the outside. Our car was really loose to begin with. With him beside us, I mean, we almost took him and myself out.

Q. Jimmie, when you were flying past people after that last restart, did you even have visions of maybe even catching Carl? Was it to the point you almost ran out of laps to win the race or missed a ‘green white checkered’ to win the race?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Well, I think that the circumstances really played into us finishing as good as we could. Carl was gone. I don’t think I could have caught him. I missed the chance to pit with 16 to go or something. A lot of guys pitted.

Then we had a couple more quick cautions. Then it was a single file restart with lead lap cars only. In that situation, that worked out perfectly. We were the first car back out on four after that.

So I don’t think I could have got Carl. Maybe a ‘green white checkered’ would have given us a chance. But he was so far ahead, I couldn’t have got to him.

I have to commend Denny on his slide through turn three and not getting into us. Got real close to him down the backstretch, poked down around the outside to get into three. Got him sideways. I could hear him pedalling the car. Did a great job of saving it.

I made it through all the other guys on the outside, but once I got to Denny, just caught him on the back straightaway at the wrong time and got almost sideways.

Q. Denny, is the one thing about this car that you can get it in a slide and save it like you were able to today? There were cars sliding around out there all day today.

DENNY HAMLIN: Yeah, the pace was slow. I told my crew chief during the course of the day that the pace was so slow, I thought NASCAR was just going to black flag us all for not making minimum speed. We were running 34 something, mid-34s, something. That’s just a horrid pace around this racetrack.

But, yeah, I like it when you got to slide around. I like it when the driver’s got to make up a difference. This is a racetrack where you can do that. But, you know, it’s just a product of we have a hard tire, so you’re gonna have a natural slide anyway. This track is very, very coarse. The whole tire’s not on the racetrack anyway. You’re running on top of the rocks. So this track, it’s very hard. But the car does make it easier. It has so much side force. It’s almost like a truck. If you do get it sideways, you can kind of control it a little bit easier.

Q. Jimmie, on the post race TV interview, Carl was basically in disbelief, he didn’t know you finished behind him. He called you “magic.” What does that mean to you?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: I’m just as shocked as he is. I thought we were finish probably ninth or tenth today. That last caution came out, I have to give Knaus the credit for making the call, playing the strategy right. It worked out well for us.

Like I said, I really thought that I was from a seventh to tenth place car. With the guys behind me, I was in seventh, three or four of them were right behind me on fresh tires. I thought I was in big trouble. That last caution put us back in play.

It just worked out.

Q. Denny, this is easily your best finish here at Atlanta. Obviously you kind of wanted a little bit more.

DENNY HAMLIN: Yeah, it’s frustrating. This has not been my best racetrack by far. We’ve run well here. We’ve run third to fifth here before. Had a car capable of running third to fifth, but had issues. Had a power steering failure in the spring where we had a good car.

You know, by the stats, this is a terrible track for us. So obviously that gets you excited. With 60 to go, I was thinking, Man, this is a track, if we’re going to win, we definitely did not put this on our calendar to go out and feel like we had a really good shot at winning. We knew we could run well. It takes a really, really good car to win here. You really got to have a great car.

We had it today. Just let it slip.

Q. Jimmie, you were talking about thinking you had a seventh to tenth place car and you finished second. You’re 30th after the penalty. At that point what is your goal? You already said you can’t believe you finished where you finished. A seventh place car finishing second seems to be what a champion is.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Yeah, I mean, we did our part today. I had fresh tires. Got to the topside, drove the crap out of the car today. Chad made a good decision to put four tires on it there at the end. We had things working for us there that paid off.

You know, it was so tough at the start of the race when we got that penalty. I did a good job of keeping my cool. Chad did, as well. We just set our sites on the first goal we had to overcome to get back to a good finish, and that was getting in position to be the first car one lap down so we could get the Lucky Dog. So I’m running, running. Come to pit road. I think I was the ninth or 10th car on pit road. My guys killed the stop. I came out in the lead and had that.

Then we caught the caution. From that point on, it was just about staying on the lead lap because we were starting so far in traffic, it was tough to get going, fighting all the lap cars, all that stuff. Then we got about halfway up through the field. It was really trying to get a top five. At that point we kind of stalled out at seventh, just kind of riding there. Then everything went crazy at the end. We had the right strategy at the end.

Q. Jimmie, you get asked after every race what your outlook of the points is, whether you were leading or not. A lot of people speculated that Carl Edwards was going to be good here. You managed to bounce back from being a lap down, potentially losing a good part of your points lead, to hardly losing any ground at all. Do you feel with Texas remaining, a mile and a half, he’s strong, you have a bit more of a sigh of relief with the troubles of Burton and Biffle that you can cruise just a little bit? Slicing and dicing on the last lap, you weren’t playing possum at all.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: No, you got to race. That’s what we’re here for. You have no clue what’s going to take place next week or the final two races. You got to go. You just can’t sit still and be content with sixth, seventh, fifth, wherever you’re at. You’ve got to go. You just don’t know what’s gonna happen, what kind of luck we’re gonna have. You just got to do it.

My outlook is better. There’s three races left. Our points margin is bigger than it’s been yet. So that’s a step in the right direction. But until I have that trophy in my mind, I can’t loosen up on things. I just got to keep my head down and keep working for this.

Q. Jimmie, when you’re in 30th, are you looking at the pylon, looking where the 99 or the 16 is? Are you cognizant at all of the guys you’re racing in the Chase?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: At first I was. I really expected Carl to be gone, his car was so fast at the beginning of the race. 17 led for a while. Denny led a lot late. I was wondering if it was just track position killed the 99 or what had happened.

But then those last couple restarts, he got up there and got going. I had a feeling Carl was controlling the race up there in the top three. Once I got my lap back, I’m running along, there’s the 31 and 16 right in front of me. We ran a full fuel run all with each other. So my mind was thinking, At least we’re all together, if we get lapped again, we’re all in the same boat together. I was able to get by them and get away and stuff. At different points I did pay attention to that. I could say at the end, I was just really worried about getting every single point I could and wasn’t really paying attention to where the 31 and 16 were.

Q. Jimmie, you’ve said in the past in so many words that you like to stay confident but worried. Are you going to carry that mindset all the way through the last lap in Homestead?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: I’m gonna try. We’re just going to show up each week and do what we can. We got a good race team. Everybody’s doing their part. We have a lot of reasons to be confident. I think we’d be foolish to be cocky. But we’re definitely confident in what we are, who we are as a team. Show up next week and try again.

Q. Unless my math is wrong, Jimmie, you can clinch next week. It would be a longshot, but you could do it. More than likely if you do, did it will probably be Phoenix. Your thoughts about that?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Man, sure would make the week of Homestead a lot easier for me.

You know, it would be great if it happened. That’s certainly a goal. If it’s in our realm of accomplishing, that is something we want to do. But truthfully it’s about beating now I guess the 99. He’s second in points. I have to worry about still the 99, 16, 31. Those are the guys I’m racing at this point. The problem with that is one of those three guys is going to be leading the race. It means I’ve got to race for the win. Head down, keep diggin’.

Q. You said this place has become a lot like a bigger oversized Darlington. Knowing that, were you surprised more guys didn’t come for tires that last pit call? Talk about the tactic by Chad, how it worked out.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: The guys behind me came. We really had the perfect storm come together. You had the leaders, there’s no way they’re going to pit. A group of three or four guys that just got tires a couple laps to go. They don’t want to give up any track position. They feel pretty good about the tires they have on their car. And then myself. Tires make such a difference here that I was able just to get smoking around the outside and go.

But this track is Darlington, it is what Darlington used to be. Only problem is we’re going about twice the speed and it’s even more hairy than what we had at Darlington. This track has aged a lot in my seven or eight years of driving in the Cup Series. It’s lost a ton of grip. It’s really rough. It is a tough, tough track. They need to come up with a nickname or something for this place, like Darlington has had. This baby’s tough.

Q. How challenging were those last few laps? Obviously the tires helped. Was it as easy as it looked, difficult? How does it compare to anything you’ve done in races where you made runs at the end? Was it that big of a deal?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: No, I mean, I had a lot of speed. That’s the hardest I’ve been able to drive my car throughout the race. We had tire pressures up, made some adjustments to kind of treat it like eight laps of qualifying. That’s really what I did.

The first few laps the tire was so good that I was pretty confident in what I could do, how far I could go. Each lap went by, it started losing a little grip, slipping and sliding. The last two laps, I had my hands full. I couldn’t just mat the gas when I got back on the throttle, hold on to it. I was fighting it up off the turn pretty bad. I got to fourth and took a deep breath, said, Okay, this is good. Then something in the back of my mind said, Wait a second, there’s still two more up there you can easily get. I again put my head down, got going. Real close with Denny.

I’m glad that worked out like it did. Glad he hung onto it, stayed off me. (Indiscernible) to go. I wanted to get every one I could.

Q. There’s been times in the past where people have said you don’t have a fiery personality. But watching out there on the track today, obviously you must show that fire from your driving ability. Talk about that. Are you getting tired of people saying your personality isn’t one that a lot of people tend to invoke passion one way or the other?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: There’s a couple times I climbed out of the car and been a smart ass about things. It just doesn’t work for me. I can’t get out like Stewart and create a hurricane and be okay with that. I just don’t do good at that stuff. Certain guys do.

Carl will probably admit, if you ask him when he comes in, he started a hurricane with Harvick, that crash, all the stuff that went on, and he didn’t like it. It wasn’t what works for him.

I’ve known that my entire career. I’ve always raced people with respect. I’ve always tried to settle it on the track, settle it in a way that it’s racing, but I’m pushover by any means out there. That’s just my style, the way I’ve always raced. I think it’s why guys work with me so well on track over the years. There’s just a lot that spins off of it.

If you get out there and race hard but you don’t screw with people, things work out a lot better.

Q. Talk about the tire a little bit. How did it feel today, especially compared to the spring race? Looked like a lot of guys used up the right side of their car.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: It’s really tough for me to say that I could feel a difference with the tire. It’s so long ago, I can’t remember if we had blown tires or not. I thought we had a couple. I think the tires lasted longer. To me, I’m not sure what the change was, I should, but it felt like maybe a little softer compound.

KERRY THARP: Softer right sides.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: But the construction is still not matched up for what the car needs and wants here. This track is so different than any other mile and a half that we run on. I can’t explain to you how rough it is in this car. I think the old car with the more travel that we had, a little more forgiving. In this car, with the splitter hitting the ground,

it being solid like it is, the bump stops, this place is a monster, man. It’s got its own characteristics.

You know, I commend Goodyear for taking a shot at making the fire better. I think we saw some improvements. But from a driver standpoint, I can’t say that I felt a lot different this time versus last time. I had my hands full both races.

Q. Since you’re talking about just the characteristics in the car, since I’m not in the car, what did it feel like? How tough is it? What is your body feeling like at this point? Any different from any other places?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Yeah, I mean, I could tell you mentally I’m wore out. I think tomorrow morning I’ll wake up and certainly have some sore spots. Shoulders will be sore from trying to saw on the wheel all day long. If you think about it, when you’re comfortable in the car, you can relax into the seat and restraint systems. When you’re uncomfortable, you’re just like in a clenched position the whole time and you’ve got to be really delicate with the gas pedal. For whatever reason, I push real hard on the steering wheel, you’re fighting the resistance of the wheel, wrestling the car around.

There was a lot of that today out on the track. I don’t think anybody was ever comfortable where they could just relax into the seat and do their jobs.

Does that help? Need more? Something else (smiling)?

Q. Put me in the seat.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: (Laughter).

KERRY THARP: Jimmie, great job out there today. Good luck next week.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Thank you.

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October 26th, 2008 | Category: 1-Sprint Cup Series, NASCAR | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL