Johnson says he doesn't click at Bristol
By Jared Turner - Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Rusty Jarrett / Getty Images for NASCAR
Jimmie Johnson isn’t castigating Goodyear for the tire problems that rendered Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Atlanta Motor Speedway little more than 3.5 hours of misery for many drivers.
“It’s a little difficult for me to say it’s just the tires’ fault,” the Hendrick Motorsports driver said Tuesday. “I can say that I was completely out of control. I saw cars spin out on straightaways. I saw a lot of things I never ever expected to see.
“ … I’m assuming a lot of it is the tire, but this car, I think the things that we’ve all been talking about and how the car drives, how it handles shows up more on a track like Atlanta than anywhere. The high speeds, the abrasive surface, I think it’s a collision of all the things that we don’t like about the car [that] came together and really made for a difficult race for everybody.”
Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were among the most outspoken critics of the tire Goodyear brought to Atlanta, complaining that it was too hard and provided too little grip for good racing.
Stewart lashed out against the manufacturer more than once over the weekend, even going as far as to suggest the company pull out of NASCAR if it can’t deliver a better product.
Johnson said he occasionally finds Stewart’s frequent rants comical but relates to him on the tire issue from a driver’s standpoint.
“Tony’s in this category where he feels like he’s done everything he can. He’s talked about the issues he’s had, but you don’t see change,” Johnson said. “And we all know that if you get on television – especially national television – and speak your mind, people are going to listen. In some respects, I think he feels like he’s up against the wall – that’s the only way his opinion’s going to be heard.”
Johnson hopes to make some noise of his own in Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. The two-time Cup champ is coming off a disappointing 13th-place finish at Atlanta a week after a dismal 29th-place outing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The reigning Cup champion said skipping last October’s test of the car of tomorrow at the 1.54-mile Atlanta track may have hurt his performance Sunday and may impact how he does on other intermediate tracks.
“Coming into this season, we didn’t spend any time testing on any of the big tracks, and we felt like that would be a weak point for us,” he said. “We’ve been on track, we’ve been learning, we’ve been making improvements. If you look at the improvements from Las Vegas to Atlanta, we still had a very, very loose race car. But we made up a lot of ground. We finished on the lead lap in 13th. So it wasn’t the day that we wanted, but we’re definitely going down the right road.”
Johnson needs a stout effort at Bristol to get back in the top-12 in the points standings. He is 13th, just one spot outside the cutoff for the 10-race title chase.
But the .533-mile high-banked Bristol track is not one of Johnson’s favorites. He has just two top-five finishes in 12 starts.
“I just don’t think that track works for me,” he said. “I was hopeful that the new surface would click and work, but it just hasn’t. … There’s just something that clicks on certain tracks, and Bristol’s one of those tracks where it does not click. I’ve been able to pull out a couple decent runs, but in general it’s just been a tough place for us.”
Johnson said while he is confident in his Hendrick Motorsports team’s package for upcoming short track races at Martinsville and Richmond, he isn’t content with mediocre performances in the meantime.
“We’re not sitting back relaxed and saying, ‘Ah, it’s OK. We’ll get it sorted out two months from now,’” he said. “We have urgency, we want to get it sorted out now, we want to win races now. And we have no clue how good luck or bad luck is going to come and go throughout the season for us. Every point counts. Every spot counts. We’re trying as hard as we can, and we’re racing as hard as we can to get every spot.”
