But we ended up putting the consistency see together and going on a tear after that and took care of the problem ourselves. I was nervous. I just knew somebody sooner or later somebody was going to be on that consistent tear and I was just hoping it was us.
Q:
Rick, could you comment on that too, please?
RH:
You know, I can't say much to what these guys said. Talladega as they recall was a nightmare, that you have a guy in the Chase and one of your other cars takes them out intentionally or unintentionally; in that case it was unintentionally. What I was concerned about, if we could put it behind us immediately and give Jimmie credit, he went to the 25 shop two days later and congratulated the crews and we got that behind us in a hurry. You know, several times during this Chase, we've said, hey, let's just go out there and win races and let it take care of itself because it looked like we were down for the count a couple of times. Just credit to these two guys, just never give up. I think that that attitude and not getting rattled is just maybe the two years that we came close and didn't get it. I think that was our whole attitude.
Q:
Mr Hendrick, over the last decade a lot of things have happened in NASCAR that have tightened up competition, made the cars run closer and sort of taken things out of the teams' hands a little bit. Is it more frustrating as a team owner or tougher to know that you simply ?? that there's less in control than there used to be in?
RH:
Yeah, definitely, I think in the past, if you had an advantage, you could probably keep that advantage through the year or maybe at least four or five, six races. Today the competition is so, so fierce. If you take a car to the track that you just won the race and dominated with four, five, six, eight weeks ago, even back to the same track, you may be a couple of tenths off. I mean, everybody in that garage area, there's 25 teams that they are capable of winning a race. And when you see guys like Tony that didn't make the Chase, or the #12 and the #2 and Greg Biffle, the #16. Look how he ran today... You've got to be on your game every single week. And NASCAR is going to make sure that box stays tight and the Chase just even adds to it even more. So you just can't count anything until it's over.
Q:
A couple of years ago, you talked about that when you were a boy dreaming of a racing career, you really didn't think about NASCAR. You said even your dreams were based a little bit in reality and that seemed to be way out there. Could I get you just to comment a little bit on this path that you've come from, so far away from a NASCAR background to where you are today?
JJ:
Yeah, I look back and I remember as a kid, I was racing dirt bikes and I wanted to be like Rick Johnson and Bob Hannah was big at the time and Jeff Ward and those guys, and that was my goal, to race motorcycles. I did that for awhile and through all the broken bones, got off the bikes and found my way into the off?road buggies through a lot of work for my dad, he gave me that initial start. Once that got going, I really had to reform to get my next break and keep things moving on. It just seemed like such a long road ahead of me.
![Jimmie Johnson's 2006 championship winning team. [Pic Credit image.net]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/281326.jpg)
