Q&A: Jimmie Johnson, Chad Knaus and Rick Hendrick.

Monday, 20th November 2006

After completing his comeback from the bottom of the Chase for the Championship standings ten weeks ago by taking his first Nextel Cup title, Jimmie Johnson joined crew chief Chad Knaus and team owner Rick Hendrick in a jubilant press conference at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

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RH:
Well, you know, yesterday the 18th was the ten-year anniversary of the day I was diagnosed with leukaemia, and I talked to Jimmie and Chad that night. I said, you know, one of the things we say, I say a lot is 'it's not life-threatening'. If we don't win this, we want to be in a position to come back and compete next year and keep your chins up if we don't, if something happens out of our control and we don't win.

I think this one is really special. Everything was very emotional after the crash and in 2004 and losing my son and my family members and brother and Randy who was such a big part, Jeff Turner, everyone on that plane and organization; to give Jimmie and Chad, just give the whole organization credit for pulling together and stronger and more determined to honour those that are not here by working hard and giving me the strength to keep doing it.

And Linda is here, my wife, and we went to (Hendrick) Motorsports I think a week after the accident and when you walked in, you knew that we had to go on. It's been a rough couple of years, but I appreciate all the support from the whole racing community and tonight is a special day for the organisation to show that the strength of the ones that are here that can carry on and carry the torch. And I'm real proud of them and I appreciate what they have done.

Q:
Chad, a technical detail about what appeared to be a near miss in the pits for y'all, can you just talk about the way things unfolded when Jimmie nearly pulled out that signal when apparently one lug nut was still loose; could you talk about how you sensed it or spotted it and whether if he had gotten out of there, if it could have been extremely costly?

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CK:
Yeah, that would.

JJ:
Yeah, we would have lost even more track position than what we had but that's something that happens probably 50 times during the event with various teams, and it was just our front tire changer missed a lug nut and the jack was dropped. Jimmie was about to take off. As he was taking off, I was watching the guy trying to get the lug nut on before the car pulled off and he had "go, go, go, stop, stop, stop," so he had to stop real quick.