Shortly after beginning his two-day test in Las Vegas, Hendrick Motorsports’ Jimmie Johnson stopped by to fill in some details about his off-season exploits and his hopes for the 2006 racing season.
THE MODERATOR:
Jimmie first off, out here for the test, this is your first day on the track, just talk about how the morning has gone so far.
JIMMIE JOHNSON:
The morning has been fun.
Daytona everybody always talks about. It's really about the teams and the driver, doesn't have a chance to challenge himself out there. Today it's been fun to get out in the car and get that racing feeling back. We're working on some things, and today is about getting a lot of things out of the way for the start of the season, and I had my first spin. Thankfully we didn't hit anything. I don't know, there's just something relieving about spinning, definitely not hitting anything, but when you spin out and drive off, like, all right, now that's behind me, now I can go forward. I feel very accomplished this morning.
THE MODERATOR:
Jimmie is also the defending champion, Jeff Burton and Matt Kenseth both have gone back to back here; talk about your chances of going back to back here in Vegas.
JIMMIE JOHNSON:
I would hate to screw that up to be honest with you. Hopefully we can do that. Obviously there's a lot to be learned from the start of the season. All of the teams have worked hard over the off-season. Our Daytona tests went well, look to make are a lot stronger. So hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to close the gap and get a little advantage on those guys. But for the first day, first morning really back in the car with new team members, just kind of trying to get everything going again, we're on par.
Q.
The new noses and back ends on the 2006 Chevrolet, how long will it take to get those just the way you want them, or might they be a handicap in the Daytona 500 instead of a plus?
JIMMIE JOHNSON:
There really is actually more to it than just the nose and the tail on the car. We actually have just as many changes to our car as Ford has for theirs. We just don't have a new name on it. So there's really changes from bumper to bumper. All 13 templates that sit on the car have been adjusted some this year. So we virtually have a new car that we are trying to work through. Everything we saw in the wind tunnel for our downforce stuff was really strong. Typically your downforce stuff carried over to Daytona and slowed the car down. One thing I believe we have a lot of horsepower under the hood and put up some strong numbers in the Daytona test, and then I think our guys have been creative to try to do the right things for the Speedway car to take some drag out of it.
