Q. Three to go in the Chase, what’s your outlook this weekend here at Texas?
JIMMIE JOHNSON: Man, I’m excited for the weekend. I really have enjoyed this racetrack. We’ve been very competitive the last two years basically here. Just showing up today, I mean, our goal is to try to sit on the pole. Come Sunday, we want to win the race. The way our mile-and-a-half program has been, we’ll be very competitive on Sunday. Finished second in the spring race to Jeff.
So I know the company is going to be strong. My teammates are going to have good cars. We’ll just get out there and race for it.
I think the track has aged a lot. The bumps are good. The asphalt is wearing out. We’re running higher and higher on the racetrack. One and two seem difficult to run on the top and make it work. But things are going well.
Certainly happy with where we are in the points. It’s not really going to change what we do over the next few weeks. In my opinion, the only way strategy would come into play in being concerned about finishing in a certain spot would be in Homestead.
So until then, we’re going for maximum points every time we’re on track.
Q. Are you bringing back the car that you finished second here in April or is this the car maybe you won at Charlotte? Is this a chassis you’ve had success with this year or did you bring a new car out?
JIMMIE JOHNSON: I don’t know for sure. After Charlotte, Chad and I had a conversation about bringing that car here. I’m not sure if it made it. Then with that in mind, I’m not sure if that’s the car we ran here in the spring or not (laughter).
The COT anymore, we do have a couple cars that we work through, but it’s not like the old cars where there’s specific tracks that we could take a body to and the body was designed for certain things.
Anymore, I really lose track of what car we take where (laughter).
Q. I want to ask you something that Jeff had talked about at Martinsville. He was asked about the relationship with you in the sense of he brought you long and you’ve denied him wins and championships. How does that not boil under the surface? His comment was, In 15, 20 years we’ll be better friends than what we are even now. He does say that it makes you hungrier, you want to push harder to do everything you can to go out there and beat him, so it’s affected our friendship. We’re competitors on the racetrack. I’m not going to pat him on the back and say how great he is when I really want to beat him, but at the end of the day I respect him. A lot of people look at the relationship between the two of you as the buddy type. To hear Jeff say that, does that surprise you? Is that an accurate description? How does winning affect a relationship in the garage?
JIMMIE JOHNSON: In some ways it surprises me; others it doesn’t. There’s no doubt that over the last few years competition has been more intense. We’ve been racing for championships. It was a lot easier when I was a rookie needing assistance and help. We spent a lot of time together then. I guess we were both single and not married at that point, too, having a lot of fun. So that certainly helped.
But, you know, I think we still have a very strong friendship. He’s probably right in the respect that as competitive as we are, what we’re racing for, what we’re both trying to accomplish in our professional careers, it does strain the friendship side.
I’m not sure if ‘strain’ is the correct word. There’s less focus on the personal side and the friendship side. It’s more of a working relationship.
I look to him and give him a lot of credit over the years, how the friendship and the working relationship has worked. As a young guy coming in, I think he being the veteran, the wiser one of the two of us, more experienced, depending on how he handled things would set up how I would react and act myself. I looked to him for so many things.
Through it all, there’s been a great deal of respect. It’s still there today. I guess at some point he’s probably right, I think our friendship will be closer when we’re both hanging the helmet up and retired and things like that.
But there isn’t any issues with our friendship. We’re still great friends. Our lives have changed a lot. He’s married. I’m married. He has a young daughter he’s raising, all that kind of thing, too. I don’t think that the competition has been responsible for all of it, you know.
There’s just been things change in life, you go different directions, all that. The respect is still there. I think that shows. That’s the most important thing.
Q. Could you imagine being a role reversal down the road, if you bring somebody on, he starts beating your tail?
JIMMIE JOHNSON: I really do look at those things. I’m well aware that things have gone great for the last three years. I’m obviously hoping for a fourth. But at some point I won’t be that guy. It will be somebody else. Somebody else will be doing it. I’ve always been aware of those things through my career. I’ve been very fortunate to race with and been mentored by other champions and guys that have been very successful. To watch how graceful they’ve been, Rick Johnson, Gary St. Amant, Jeff Gordon, there’s been a lot of guys through the years that have worked with me. I’ve been aware of that.
I’ve always in the back of my mind said, That’s how I want to kind of handle things, be and act. I do pay attention to that. I am aware of it.
When that day comes, I hope I can handle it as well as the guys I’ve respected growing up have, because it won’t be easy. Losing sucks. We all hate it.
