Hendrick Motorsports’ Jimmie Johnson satisfied with second-place run at Martinsville
Hendrick Motorsports' Jimmie Johnson added to his NASCAR Sprint Cup points lead with his second-place finish at Martinsville Speedway. // Mark Sluder, NASCAR Scene
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MARTINSVILLE, Va. – It's not often that one hears Jimmie Johnson talking about a chance to take the lead that slipped away, but such was the case following his runner-up finish in Sunday's race at Martinsville Speedway.
Johnson felt like he had one good shot at leader Denny Hamlin in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Tums Fast Relief 500, but he wasn't able to capitalize on that. Despite several late restarts, including one that pushed the race to a green-white-checkered finish, Johnson settled for second. Not bad since that helped him increase his points lead to 118 over teammate Mark Martin with four races remaining in the championship run.
But could it have been one position better?
"I had one chance," Johnson said. "He caught the curb with about 40 to go and lost some drive off of [Turn] 2, and I got inside of him, and I thought, 'Man, I've seen this movie before.' I got inside of him and he came to block the position like he did in the spring, and I thought, 'Man, I didn't try to hit him last time here, and that time he was coming again.' I wasn't in there far enough to stay in there like I did in the spring, so I backed out of it, and I think I actually hit the curb and screwed up my line and all that kind of thing. That was my one chance.
"After that I could match his laps, but he would just start inching away from me and had the best car there at the end. If I had a chance to pass him and to get to his bumper and work him over, I would have. But I wasn't just going to come in with the second place car and take a cheap shot and pass him that way. If I felt like I had a car to win the race, I would have been up there leaning on him some."
At times, he clearly had the best car on the track. Johnson led 164 laps, second only to Hamlin, during the 500-lap race.
Crew chief Chad Knaus said that the team was pleased to finish second, especially considering how many incidents there were in the short-track race that saw 15 caution periods for 77 laps.
"We had a good car," he said. "We had a great car in practice and thought we had a car that was capable of winning the race and we did. We didn’t get it just right at the end of the race. There were points in that race where we were by far the fastest car. You just can’t win them at all, as much I would like to beat the person that had to have said that.
"You can win them all, for sure. But it’s very difficult to do. For us to come home second, another top-five, I’m really pleased."
In the opening six Chase races, Johnson has a worst finish of ninth and three wins. Clearly, the three-time defending championship team is on track.
But as well as they are running, Knaus and Johnson are still learning week to week and trying to focus on continuing to find ways to gain even more ground, something that could be a source of concern for those trying to catch them in the final four races.
"We were up front most of the day," Knaus said. "The pit crew did a decent job. We’ve got some stuff we’ve got to work on there. These guys have caught us just a little bit here, but we didn’t want to deviate a whole lot from what we’ve run in the past because our past record here has been pretty good. We’ve got to get to work just a little bit."
