Catchfence

Team Chevy - GM Racing

THE MODERATOR: We’re also joined by tonight’s second-place finisher, driver of the #48 Lowe’s Kobalt Tools Chevrolet, Jimmie Johnson. Tell us about your run.

JIMMIE JOHNSON: Great run for us. I feel bad for sliding through the pits maybe two or three stops from the end. That mistake — the front four cars were the 14, 18, 11 and us, seemed like we could just pull away from everybody, and our cars were extremely close on speed. So it was really who came out wearing — in a four-car draft there’s only so much energy created and you just kind of ride and follow.

My mistake kept us from hopefully being in the lead, second, somewhere in there, on the restart. And I was real content riding in fourth. I had a feeling something would take place coming to the finish and I might be able to improve my position. Everybody was content to stay in line, and you’re just waiting for the second place car to make a move on the leader, and those guys started racing and passing each other, and an opportunity came along and I was in the right lane, and off I went.

Just a strong performance. We have really struggled with the COT at Daytona, the 48 car. My teammates have done well at times. But very proud of the hard work Chad put into some setups. We started practice a couple days ago and were terrible, and he had two or three different packages to try, and finally the last package we put under it really worked well for us and got me a good driving car, so we’re happy.

Q. For both drivers, this is the second plate race in a row where we’ve seen a big crash at the finish with one car trying to move over to block another. How do we stop this? Or is this something that the drivers are going to have to figure out?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: There is nothing to do to stop it. If you think about the position that the sport is in, one race, it’s boring, there’s no racing, there’s no excitement. And then a couple races there’s an exciting finish and we’re worried about the exciting finish. You know, it’s plate racing. We’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

These cars punch a big hole of air, and the second place guy can sometimes get a run. It’s not strong enough to where the leader knows, I can’t block it, it’s just a slow run that they get, so the leader — over time we’ve all understood that you can be really aggressive blocking. And that time it just — it didn’t just work for the 18.

The guys are racing. Tony didn’t mean to dump him. Same thing with Talladega. It’s just the product of restrictor plate racing. Every time we use the restrictor plate tracks there’s questions about how we can keep from having the big wreck and things like that, and you just can’t. When you run plates and we run wide open all the way around the track, situations like this come around.

Q. Jimmie, you said you were just riding around toward the end kind of expecting something. In these situations, obviously you talk about plate racing, is that what you expect? What were you kind of expecting?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: You know, I’ve made plenty of mistakes in the closing laps where there’s a lot of energy because the leader is trying to drag the brake and keep everybody stacked up, and the further back in the pack, there’s just so much energy and your car is ready to make a move.

So just kind of waiting for something to happen, waiting for somebody to take that kind of bait in a sense and pull out and try to make an outside lane work. And I just felt like the inside was so strong, especially with our four cars, that if you’re on the outside guys were going to take the bottom. I didn’t anticipate there being a wreck, but I felt like somebody would probably get shuffled up down off the bottom and I could improve by a spot or something like that.

Q. Did Kyle get too far out front there?

JIMMIE JOHNSON: I couldn’t tell, either. I was so worried about what was going on in my mirror and following the tire tracks in front of me. I couldn’t really see where the 18 was. But yes, in some cases if you get too far out, and I remember that I did get pretty close to the 14 and pushed him away, and if the 18 was too far out it would let him run up in that gap.

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- GM Racing Communications, Press Release