Johnson enjoys win, but speaks cautiously of Chase potential

Jimmie Johnson may be enjoying his return to the spotlight, but the Hendrick Motorsports driver isn't counting on winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship.
   
While he's shown signs of his traditional late-season strength, Johnson looks at the 10 races that make up the Chase For The NASCAR Sprint Cup and he sees a lot of 1.5-mile ovals. So far this season, those tracks haven't been the best for he and his Chad Knaus-led team.
   
"The weak spot for us has been the mile-and-a-half, 2-mile tracks, and the Chase is loaded full of those tracks," he says. "And our results at the start of the season and early summer, there were some flashes of hope in there, but we weren't where we needed to be.
   
"Just before Chicago there were a couple of races where we were competitive and running well. I think Michigan was really the first sign
that we were working in the right direction. We've been getting better each week, and this car is still so finicky. The second Michigan we got a little more aggressive with the setup of the car thinking we could get away from it, and it turned away from us and was loose and got into [a] bad position there."
   
That made winning on one of those tracks, the 2-mile Auto Club Speedway in California, that much more special to him Sunday night.
   
With three wins this season, and sitting third in the standings with one race to go before the Chase starts, Johnson is in potential to play spoiler to the men who have been the top two contenders this season. Joe Gibbs Racing's Kyle Busch has eight wins and Roush Fenway Racing's Carl Edwards has six. The only other driver that has multiple Cup wins this season is Kasey Kahne, and he is in jeopardy of missing the Chase.
   
Of the 10 races that will determine the champion, five are held at 1.5-mile ovals. Two, Kansas Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway, have never hosted Cup races with NASCAR's new car. Of the others, Johnson was 39th with an engine failure at Lowe's Motor Speedway, 13th at Atlanta and second at Texas.
   
Did the team learn things at California that will aid it in those races?
   
"Every track is a little bit different, especially with this race car, more so than the cars we had last year with the [old car]; we were able
to run a basic package and tune it from week in to week out," Knaus says. "With this car, we are changing quite a bit from every race track, so we'll just have to wait and see. Stay tuned."
   
"That's the million-dollar question we are hoping for the answer for," Johnson adds. "I guess the purse, it's like, what, an $8 million question?"
   
What the team did learn, though, was how it handles the pressure of the Chase. Johnson has one more chance to gain some bonus points with a win, then it's on to the pressure of the 10-race championship run. Last year the group showed the ability to adapt well to the format and won three consecutive races in it to essentially lock up the title.
   
Sunday night, Johnson said the team had that kind of pressure on it once more.
   
"Being up there with a lot to lose, I think had our guys under a different form of pressure than what they felt in a while," he says. "And
to win this Chase, you're going to have to fight for wins every week, and every pit stop is going to count, because you're going to have at least the 18 [of Busch] and the 99 [of Edwards] to have to deal with, and I would expect a few others to have their stuff in order.
   
"I think [the California race] was a really good night for our guys to feel that pressure and to go through that. And for myself inside the car, it's been a while since I've been in a situation to blow it or throw away and to really work on that mental toughness in those situations is important. We have been working on the other side of the line in finding speed and putting in the hours and dealing with those emotions and not being where we want, but it's hard to maintain when you have your stuff right. And I think that speaks to how impressive the 18 season has been and the 99 and in a way, what we have done over the past few years and it's tough to stay on top of this thing."
   
Still, the team has going for it in the Chase what it has always had as its greatest asset - the working relationship of Johnson and Knaus.
   
When he looks at the car that has leveled the playing field in so many ways, Knaus says there is one thing it has shown - that chemistry can be the way to wins. Now he'll find out if it can pave the path to the team's third consecutive championship.
   
"It's going to sound kind of contradictory saying this, but I think the driver/crew chief relationship is one of the things that sets the car apart right now," he says. "And Kyle and [crew chief] Steve [Addington] hit it off well right out of the box and their communication level was high and Kyle explained to Steve what the car was doing … I think we saw when Bob [Osborne] left the 99 car [of Edwards], the 99 car's performance dropped dramatically. I think when you look at what's going on, it's the driver/crew chief communication level and confidence in one another that carries that thing up a little bit higher."
   
So does the confidence created by the team's recent run - and its trio of victories. That doesn't mean that the team is counting anyone out of contention just yet, though.
   
"I think if you're going to try to count out the 24 [of Jeff Gordon] or the 20 [of Tony Stewart] and the 17 [of Matt Kenseth], any of those guys, the 9 [of Kasey Kahne], going into this Chase, I think you are just fooling yourselves," Knaus says. "The 99, the 18 and us, we could walk in there with our shoulders back and thinking we were going to whip everybody's butt, but I think that's pretty cocky to even think that."

• Mentioned Drivers:
• Jimmie Johnson