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.

Previous Page

I had the pleasure of racing against Roger, his dad, and then Roger Jr., his brother, in the off-road ranks. Casey lied for a few years about his age. They kept having his 15th birthday for him. You had to be 15 to race in the series. Then I think after his third one, I'm like, "Casey, really, how old are you?" He's like, "Man, I'm really 15 now. I started off at 13." He was fast and winning races. We were teammates at a very young age in the super light division in the Mickey Thompson Stadium Series.

He pursued the open-wheel world. Had a lot of success there. Made it to the top, was driving in the Champ Car division. We'd see each other maybe once a year, maybe every other year. He called me one year and said, "I'm going to come and race in the Busch Series with the Cicci Welliver team at the time. Nice to have him back, to be around one another. Moved to the East Coast, into Charlotte. We've been very close through that and even closer since we're now living in the same area ever since. I was happy to see him back there.

Just at the end of these races, if you go to the outside, no one's going to take that bait, nobody is going to go out there. When Ryan pulled up, I knew to block the bottom. Ryan pulled up. I saw Casey just stay in line because he knew he could benefit from third to second. I felt very good about that, was happy to see him come around and finish second. I owe him a lot for staying in line and giving me a big push to the end.

Advertisement [Go Advertisement Free]

Q.
Rick, Tony Stewart was very vocal after the shootout about aggressive driving, bump-drafting, all that. Today he had a scrape with your 24 car, maybe hurt its chances for contending. Had a scrape with the 17 car. Do you feel his actions were somewhat hypocritical, considering how vocal he was last week after the shootout?

RICK HENDRICK:
I think the incident with Jeff I don't think was intentional. Jeff might have taken the air off the front of his car, I'm not sure. A lot of times you go in the corner like that, that could happen.