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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I had a small piece of that, trying to be at practice as early as possible, around as much as I could be, to build confidence in the guys, tell them they're doing a great job. When the driver's around, the crew guys really just feed off that, take things a little more seriously.

Just being around, trying to be there for those guys, support them, talk to them, make them realize, "Hey, we're going to be okay. We've got a great team. Let's just do our jobs and do what we need to do and we'll be okay."

From there, really Darian, Ron, those guys really stepped up. Darian had a whole new set of responsibilities. Ron already had a lot of responsibilities, took on some more. It was really just a great team effort.

Q.
Darian, first you were interviewed near the end of the race about what you thought your chances were, and you didn't seem overly nervous at all. A, were you? B, do you ever get that way? You don't seem like you barely have a pulse. C, if you could expound on what you said a moment ago about Randy Dorton batting a thousand?

DARIAN GRUBB:
If you think I'm that calm, you must not have seen me out in the grass when they started interviewing me there (smiling). I honestly really wasn't that nervous up until the chequered flag fell. I just sat there and I just knew I had faith in all the rest of the team, the team that Chad built, this Hendrick Motorsports Lowe's team. Everybody did their job. The pit stops were absolutely incredible. When they interviewed me on TV, I told them we had the best car and best driver out there and he was in first, why would I be nervous?

Q.
Can you talk about how the chemistry and communication was over the radio between you guys today? Was there ever any instances where you weren't on the same page just because you don't have a lot of experience working in this role together?

JIMMIE JOHNSON:
No, the great thing about the decision we made with Darian to come in and crew chief this was his involvement with the team for so many years. He's worked alongside Chad as our race engineer, and was involved in all the conversations when Chad and I would talk about. You know, the handling of the car, the different things that I communicate to Chad, Darian is right there in the window with him documenting things and a part of that conversation.