Jimmie Johnson Press Conference Transcript

Jimmie Johnson Media Teleconference Transcript

Tuesday, August 20, 2002

Jimmie Johnson, driver of the No. 48 Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse Chevrolet discusses his rookie season and outlook for the Sharpie 500 NASCAR Winston Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway.  

Johnson comes to Bristol as one of the hottest drivers in NASCAR.  For the 2002 season, Johnson is currently 3rd in points, just 60 points behind the leader, and 1st in the Raybestos Rookie of the Year standings, with a 2 point lead over the competition.  So far in 2002, Johnson has earned two NASCAR Winston Cup victories (California and Dover), three Bud Pole Awards (Daytona, Talladega and Charlotte) and recorded 14 top-10 finishes, including five top-5s (Atlanta, California, Dover, Pocono and Chicagoland).  His earnings this season are $2,022,270.  

(AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SEASON, DID YOU ENVISION YOURSELF RUNNING FOR ROOKIE OF THE YEAR?) "I thought we'd have a good shot at Rookie of the Year, but I didn't believe that the championship would be something we'd have a legitimate shot at. Our primary goal was to try and win Rookie of the Year and we've been in contention for that since the beginning of the season and have found ourselves in the middle of the points championship as well."  

(TO SUCCEED IN WINSTON CUP, HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO HAVE AN OVAL TRACK RACING BACKGROUND?) "Racing is racing to a point. The variety of different series and types of cars I raced in (growing up) taught me a lot. I think it's important to be in racecars at a young age or racing in general, but I don't think you have to start out on ovals to be able to succeed in Stock Car racing today."

(DO YOU THINK IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN EASIER FOR YOU AND WOULD YOU HAVE FOUND SOME ACCEPTANCE QUICKER IF YOUR ROOTS WERE IN OVAL TRACK?) "I didn't really have an acceptance problem with the drivers. There were four or five years of a lot of hard work that I had to put in at 19 years old to try to understand and learn Stock Cars. I guess if I had started earlier, I would have understood what chassis changes would have done at a much earlier age. But I've been real fortunate to move right along in my career."

(HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH RACING CHAMPIONS FOR MANUFACTURING YOUR DIECAST COLLECTIBLES?) "It's been good. We didn't know, as a whole, what to expect when the season started. We've surprised ourselves with the demand that the fans have had. It's been surprising to me. To out to the apparel rig and sign autographs for three or four hours and still have to turn fans away so I can go back and get some dinner and get ready for the Sunday race. I think they've done a good job and it's been a lot of fun."

(WITH THE SEASON BEING SUCH A TIGHT POINTS RACE, WHAT ADVANTAGES DO THE ROOKIES HAVE OVER THE VETERAN DRIVERS?) "I think it's more of a question of what the young drivers don't have over the veterans. These veterans have been in these situations and they understand how long the season is and everything that goes with it. I'm just making my way through it trying to learn it and understand it for the first time. In some respects, I guess it's been good that I don't know much and that I don't know any different about car set-ups and lines and maybe some old habits that I might carry along. To be honest, I would trade experience for my age any day."

(YOU HAVEN'T REALLY GOTTEN CAUGHT UP IN ALL THE TALK ABOUT THE YOUNG GUNS VS. THE VETERANS, HAVE YOU?) "No. Within the garage area and the drivers, there hasn't been a conflict. There's been a lot of hype and play on it because of some comments some veterans made. But if you race those guys clean and race them how you want to be raced, they're going to do the same back. I've got a lot of good relationships with a lot of the veterans that have been highlighted through all the hype. It's just how you race them. If you come in and disrespect them and you don't go out there and race them clean and earn their respect, you're going to have a hard time."

(HOW HAS JEFF GORDON HELD UP THROUGH ONE OF THE TOUGHER STRETCHES IN HIS CAREER?) "I didn't know him too many years prior. More than anything, I've gotten to know him this year. He seems great (with it). There are a lot of things in his personal life and his professional life isn't the so-called 'Jeff Gordon style', but he's working as hard as he can and so are all the guys on the DuPont team. They want to win. But at the same time, they're doing everything they can every week. They're just hoping that the wins are going to come soon."

(WHAT DID YOU LEARN AT THE LAST BRISTOL RACE THAT YOU CAN USE THIS WEEKEND, AND WILL GOING BACK THERE HELP YOU AT THIS POINT IN THE SEASON?) "It's nice to go back to short tracks, but I've actually struggled on short tracks coming out of the ASA cars into these heavier Busch and Winston Cup cars. But I've started to get a feel for the short tracks here this last season in a Winston Cup car a lot better than I did in a Busch car. So I'm looking forward to going there.

"But Bristol is such a unique racetrack. I struggled a little getting going there in the spring. I crashed a car right away in practice and we had to come out with a back-up car. It took me until the race for me to figure out the rhythm of the track in a Winston Cup car. I'm hoping to go back and fall into that rhythm relatively quick this time in practice and qualify strong and race strong again."

(SINCE POINTS ARE BECOMING SO IMPORTANT NOW, DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL GAME PLAN FOR THIS WEEKEND?) "There's not much you can do. If you change your racing and how you approach it and get a little conservative, you change everything around you. I usually find myself in more trouble then than if I would have stayed aggressive. At Bristol, and also at (upcoming) Talladega, you have so much to lose at those races as far as points are concerned. Something can happen on lap one. The craziest things happen at short tracks and at superspeedways just because of how tight things are and how hard everyone is racing. So Bristol is one of those races that you fear the points but that you're excited to go to and race there."

(WHEN THE SEASON STARTED, WHAT WERE YOUR REALISTIC GOALS?) "To qualify without needing to take a provisional and finish in the top 15."

(ARE YOU SURPRISED WITH YOUR PROGRESS AND THAT YOU'VE GOT A CHANCE TO BE THE CHAMPION?) "Of course (laughs). You've got to be realistic. I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd be in this situation."

(HAS IT DAWNED ON YOU THAT A ROOKIE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO WIN THE TITLE?) "You hear those phrases out there. And as the season's gone on, I've just tried to keep my focus on the Rookie of the Year battle. But this late in the season, we've got a legitimate shot at it. If we do our jobs right, and race like we did in the first half of the season, we'll be right there in the middle of it."

(IF YOU DON'T WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP, HOW DISAPPOINTED WILL YOU BE?) "It all depends on how it unfolds, but we can't take away all the success that we've had - three poles and two race wins so far. We've had a great season. Once we reflect back on it all, I'm sure they'll be a lot of great things to come out of it. But I'm sure that the racer in us would of course be disappointed when we're out there giving all we've got to win it. So we'll see what happens. You never know until you get there."

(ON THE ENGINE SITUATION REGARDING TIRES, GEAR, HORSEPOWER, THE ONE-ENGINE RULE, ETC.) "With the range in which a Winston Cup motor runs at almost all the tracks, the drop off in rpm's isn't very far. So the rpm range the motor is living in the whole time is upping the horsepower range. You don't ever fall low enough to end up in the torque range. Short track wise, you're looking for that combination of good torque and horsepower. At the majority of the tracks we run on, we don't drop really drop below 7000 rpm. So you're doing everything you can to squeeze horsepower out of the engine. And in order to gain horsepower, you put yourself in a risky situation at times. We've seen a lot of guys breaking from it. It's just kind of a toss up between how aggressive you want to be and how many chances you want to take. I don't know a lot about the topic, but I've heard a lot of comments based on the Chevrolet block not having the potential of the Ford blocks." (IN TERMS OF RPM?) "Well, just the potential of the components inside and what you can do with that. The Ford is stronger and has more potential - mainly in just the way it's designed. In the past year or so, I know GM has made a couple of passes at NASCAR to try to let us introduce a new block and to have us more competitive with the Fords. At the time, it was turned down and maybe that's something that needs to be revisited."

(AS A ROOKIE WHO SIGNS AUTOGRAPHS FOR THREE AND FOUR HOURS AT A TIME, ARE YOU TRYING TO BUILD A FAN BASE OR IS THAT JUST SOMETHING YOU PERSONALLY WANT TO DO?) "Well, you're trying to build a fan base, but at the same time we're real busy in the garage area running around and unfortunately you find yourself unable to sign many autographs. You're doing your job in there (garage area) and you're running crazy. So it makes me feel good that I'm able to go out there and spend some time with the fans and sign autographs for them. That's one thing about our sport. The fans are so involved because they can get those autographs and meet the drivers and stuff. I'm just trying to do my part and be out there and be accessible to the fans. The garage area is just not the best place for autographs. That's why I make myself so accessible at the (souvenir) trailer."

(WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT GETTING A 'RHYTHM' TO THE TRACK?) "Every place is obviously different, but there's a certain line and a way that you can enter the corners and how much brake you can use and how early you can pick the gas back up. There is just kind of a rhythm to it. At Bristol, you don't use a lot of brake getting into the turn. You let off relatively early, but you do everything you can to get back on the gas as soon as possible. Each place has it's own rhythm. You've got to remind yourself of and sometimes you can't find it - at least for myself -- I don't find it until the race. I don't have a lot of experience at some of these tracks so it takes a little bit longer for me at times. I usually seem to find it in the race."

(DOES THAT COMPARE TO FOOTBALL PLAYERS WHO SAY THAT EVERYTHING SLOWS DOWN AND IT SEEMS LIKE THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES GOING AT FULL SPEED?) "Yeah, it's close to the same thing. When you show up, there is so much pressure in those two hours of practice we have prior to qualifying. You don't ever slow down enough at times to feel what the car is doing - to have that sensitive feel for what is going on around you. That's what experience does for you. You know the rhythm for the racetrack and it's easier to find it faster and qualifying doesn't get to you as much. At some places, I hit it a lot earlier than others. I think it reflects in qualifying a little bit at times. But at race time, we always seem to get to where we need to be."

(ON BEING PENALIZED BY NASCAR FOR A RULE INFRACTION AT THE PEPSI 400 AT DAYTONA) "What we got in trouble with at Daytona only benefits you at a speedway race, and we got caught with it before we even made a lap on the racetrack so we don't know if it would have even worked. It's just the speedway - you know, one of those gray areas in the speedway races that you're trying to find some speed in. We found a touchy subject that we played with."

(ENTERING THE END OF THE SEASON, IS YOU PRIMARY GOAL JUST TO RACE THE BEST YOU CAN, OR ARE YOU RACING FOR POINTS NOW?) "There are a lot of different ways to look at it and theories to throw out there. If we stay focused and do the best that we can every week and get maximum points, it will take care of the big picture. At the same time though, we are paying attention to that big picture. We don't have that many races left. And we have a legitimate shot at winning the championship in our rookie season. That would just be such an accomplishment for us, obviously. But we've got to crawl before we walk and walk before we run. To start off, we need to do the best we can every weekend. That's our motto."

(SINCE YOU'VE HAD SUCH A GREAT ROOKIE YEAR, ARE YOU AT ALL WORRIED ABOUT NEXT YEAR?) "No. Within this season, we've had a lot of great success but we've also had a lot of hard times. There are cycles in Winston Cup racing that work in a lot of ways. There are cycles where manufacturers dominate. There are cycles where certain teams dominate. And there are cycles on the bad side as well. At the beginning of the season, we had an advantage and our team was working really well. But it looks like people have caught up now. For the past few races, it looks like the No. 9 car (Bill Elliott) has had the magic. The cycles come around. We're using these trying times as a character builder for the team and a way to make ourselves stronger and closer as a team so that when it hits - it happens to everyone - that we don't break ourselves down and that we can pick up the pieces and go on."

(BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY GUYS IN THE POINTS RACE, AND IT'S LATE IN THE SEASON, ARE THE GUYS RUNNING FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP GOING TO GET NERVOUS, RUN LESS GEAR, AND OPEN THE DOOR FOR DRIVERS THAT ARE SO FAR OUT OF THE HUNT TO TAKE BIGGER RISKS?) "At the beginning of the season, what put us in such a neat situation is that we didn't have anything to lose. Nobody knew - we didn't even know - what the heck we could do. We got really aggressive. When you're up there running for the points, you start changing the way things happen. You don't want to take any unneeded risks or do anything stupid. You just hope that everyone around you is doing the same and you are able to keep from getting your doors blown off. The way this is coming down, it might be a 10-car race for the championship before we know it.  It's at least a five or six-car race now. When you don't have anything to lose, you can race a lot differently. You usually do better because you're on the offense and not protecting things on the defense."

(ON THE RESULTS OF NOSE KICK-OUT AT MICHIGAN) "It's hard to know exactly what's going on without getting some wind tunnel data. In clean air, obviously the air will sit on that area of the car that's so low to the ground and you will get the benefits of it. In traffic, when you're right behind somebody, that car is cutting the air off that's on the ground. So you're not getting that help you need. You need adjustments further up on the car - up towards the hood area, up in the headlight area - to make use of dirty air in a better way than the kick-out on the nose. We found ourselves extremely loose in clean air, but when we got in traffic we were tighter. In a sense, at least for my car, it hurt us a little bit in clean air and we had to over-stiffen the front of the car to support the downforce. And then when we had the air taken away from us, there was too much spring in the front of the car and we were tight. Jeff Gordon actually had some different things going on. I'm going to leave that to the engineers. I don't know enough. This is my first year. I'm just hanging on and dealing with what I can. I know that all these questions will disappear next year with the new style cars that are coming out. This is just something we have to tolerate the rest of the year."

(AS A ROOKIE RUNNING FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP, HOW DO THE OTHER DRIVERS TREAT YOU?)  "It's come full circle in many respects. In the beginning of the season, nobody really knew what I was going to do. So they raced me real hard and didn't give me a lot of breaks. And when I proved myself (in that) I wasn't going to crash anyone and that I was going to race them clean and smart, they started cutting me some slack and giving me some breaks. And then when we started winning races and running for the championship, everybody started racing me real hard again. Track position is so important these days. Unless you absolutely run somebody down and are a lot faster then them, you don't want to give that position up because it might come back to haunt you later in the race and you'd miss out on a win or a top five. So I've actually seen it come full circle."

(IS THERE SOMEBODY THAT YOU LEAN ON TO KEEP YOU ON EVEN KEEL?) "The whole group on the No. 24 team (Jeff Gordon) are used to winning races and championships. By teaming up with them and being in the same shop with them, it's changed the mindset of our whole team since the beginning of the year. We are a race winning team. We are a championship caliber team. Instead of us having to go out and muster up those feelings on our own, we were pulled into it in the shop by being teamed-up and working with these guys. That's where I go for my guidance."

(ON HIS BUSINESS-LIKE APPROACH TO RACING?) "I guess that's just the way I do it. Racing is something that I've done since I was five years old. At 15, I found myself racing professionally. And I didn't have the means through my family for them to buy me racecars and for them to put me in situations. I had to go out and meet people and talk myself into an opportunity, and from the opportunity I had to go get the job done. Maybe that's programmed me for the way I handle things today."

(HAS THE KID IN YOU BEEN CHANGED BY THIS POINTS RACE?) "No, that kid in me is still there. I like to have a good time. I like to hang out with my guys (crew). I love racing. I like to have fun. At Hendrick Motorsports, they are about being who you are. Rick Hendrick wants me to be the guy that he hired a couple of years ago. He doesn't want me to change. I'm in an environment where I have a little bit of free time. I can get away from the grind at times. I can make time for myself and stay balanced."

(WHEN YOU TESTED AT RICHMOND, WHAT WERE YOUR IMPRESSIONS OF THE RACING SURFACE?) "It reminded me of Richmond races in the past where the bottom groove sealer is wearing down and the sealer is real tacky and in good shape in the outside groove. You can even see the distinct colors in the groove from the top to the bottom. I heard a lot of references that it wasn't a very good race in the spring. I think what was happening was that the sealer was rolling up on the bottom groove and was dirtying up the second groove and you couldn't run up there. After all summer, I think the track is back to what everyone is used to seeing. We were there for a tire test and the tires were so good, that there wasn't much drop off. After 75 laps, we only slowed down three-tenths of a second. I don't know how much racing that speed is going to promote, but I know the racetrack is back to the way I remember seeing it on television."

(DO YOU THINK THE SPEEDS WILL BE SLOWER THAN THEY WERE IN MAY?) "No. It's the same tire. They should be the same, if not faster."

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