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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Then the race strategy from the box, Darian's looking a little more in depth at everything because Chad has so many things to look at on top of the box. Darian and Chad communicated about calling the race and what needed to take place there. So really to put Darian in was, in my eyes, the best thing to do for this team because the communication has already been started. We've been working together for three, almost four years. We know each other. Darian has a lot of respect inside the 48 team. So it really was the best decision.

We have some other great crew chiefs at Hendrick Motorsports that could have stepped up, been involved, helped the 48 team out, but we just felt that it would be easier and better for the race team to have Darian step up without this experience as being a crew chief because we already know each other and have that working relationship.

Q.
Jimmie and Darian, sort of related to that, can you talk specifically about you've been with Chad for a long time, you get used to hearing a certain voice in your ear, can you talk specifically about how different that is? Does that affect you?

JIMMIE JOHNSON:
Yeah, believe me, it was a much different week. The great thing about Speedweeks, we had quite a few practice sessions, and then the duel to break ourselves in and get used to one another.

All of that really helped out and helped us, you know, break the ice and get things rolling with the team. If we just went into the race, I think it would have been more difficult.

But, again, we had such a great working relationship beforehand that I wasn't worried about it, but the duels and the other practice sessions we had really helped out.

Q.
Mr. Hendrick, six Daytona 500s, you've won them at different times in your career. In '86, with Geoffrey Bodine, you didn't know what you were doing. '97 you had the one, two, three finish, you were going through the illness. Then you have this one this year with all the different things that attend to it. Do they all feel the same or is there really a big difference?

RICK HENDRICK:
You know, I think the first one is always really special. Each one of them has been special. You know, I said it earlier, the Daytona 500 is such a special race, and each one of them have been, it's been a nail-biter with Darrell and Schrader down here, when it looked like we might run one, two. I was home sick. They ran one, two, three.