Q&A: Johnson, Grubb, Hendrick

Tuesday, 21st February 2006

After winning NASCAR’s biggest race. Jimmie Johnson, his team boss Rick Hendrick and stand-in crew-chief Darian Grubb sat down to talk about their greatest triumph together to date.

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Today I just really, you know, slowed down the pace of the race, in my eyes, from what I was doing, made sure that I made smart moves that wouldn't have me hung out of the draft. In some ways, I just didn't try to lead the race as much. I didn't try as hard to be the guy that led the most laps, made the most aggressive moves. I stayed committed to the bottom, worked with a few cars throughout the day, worked on the handling of our race car, so at the end of the race we had the best driving car. I think we did.

I was able to get by two or three cars just on the green flag lap after a caution because my car had so much speed on the inside and I could hold the yellow line. I just focused on different things and didn't focus so much on being aggressive and leading laps. That's hard to do as a driver. That's what we're trained to do. On normal tracks, you can go out there and push as hard as you want and pass somebody on your own. These tracks, it's completely different.

Q.
Jimmie, how big a role did patience play in today's victory? Obviously I think it did. Would the Jimmie Johnson of three or four years ago have been able to exhibit that patience? Is that something you've added as you've progressed?

JIMMIE JOHNSON:
No, I've been trying to learn from my mistakes and learn from the experiences in different races. Today I really felt like I drove a much different plate race than I've driven before. You know, everything worked out.

You know, I did take a different approach to today's race, even the practice sessions, after we got out of the duels. I didn't worry about speed in the car, I just worried about how it drove. That's a different thing for what I've looked for before. I wanted a car that really sucked up good, had a lot of straight-line speed. The car that Darian and I worked on that's sitting in Victory Lane, we just really focused on making it handle and turn and stay on the bottom to protect the bottom, hoping that at the end of the race, we'd be in a position up front to defend the bottom.