HAVE YOU HAD TIME TO LOOK BACK AND SEE HOW THE SEASON WENT?
“Yeah, we’ve had time but honestly we don’t take time to really do that because we’re so focused on this year and at the same time if you spend time thinking about things we’ve accomplished I guess we’re not thinking about the things we can accomplish. With the U.S. Army I’m extremely proud and honored to represent them and look forward to 2010. We have had a really good year. If we’d win one race it would be a great year in my eyes but we have one more shot at that here in Homestead and I feel that we’ll have a competitive race car. It’s the same car we had at Texas and Kansas. Just kind of a catch 22, we look forward to this race but also look forward to the end of this season. You get to do some things and kind of regroup with the team because we didn’t know what to expect going into 2009. We’ve got a good group of guys with Tony Gibson leading them. I think we can come out of the box really strong in Daytona in 2010.”
WHEN YOU START NEXT YEAR HOW MUCH FURTHER ALONG DO YOU FEEL YOU’LL BE AS FAR AS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH TONY GIBSON AND WHAT YOU GUYS KNOW ABOUT EACH OTHER AND HOW YOU WILL WORK TOGETHER?
“Really it’s all the guys. Tony is the leader but all the guys have a huge impact. For instance, not many people know this, but going into basically this time or I guess it was December of last year or the first of January, we went to test at New Smyrna, our only off-season test and Tony Gibson had kidney stones so he didn’t even get to go to our first test together. It will be interesting to see how we can do a little bit of off-season testing to kind of sharpen our pencils up for 2010. Realistically just building on the relationships that we’ve got and working on the race cars. I think we have great relationships we just have to use those relationships to polish up the race cars and be ready for 2010.”
YOU SAID YOU DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT COMING INTO THIS YEAR, HAVE YOU HAD ANY PLEASANT SURPRISES OTHER THAN PERFORMANCE?
“Honestly just the teamwork, the friendships I’ve created, the relationship with Tony Stewart, all of the people parts of it has been a pleasant surprise because I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t take time to expect because if you expect high things then you can be disappointed very easily. So I went into it with the mindset of let’s just do my job, focus and work together and see what happens. We’ve created a lot of good chemistry. We’ve got our problems just like any other race team out there, except the No. 48 (laughter). Everybody has a little problem here or there but that’s part of life and that’s part of working as a team. Just what we can do to be better and work together better in 2010 is what we’re focused on. A good run here, not even a win but a good run here will do a lot of things for our team in the off-season.”
YOU HAD AN INTERESTING INTRODUCTION TO JUAN PABLO (MONTOYA) HERE A FEW YEARS AGO, TALK ABOUT THAT AND HOW YOU’VE SEEN HIM MATURE AS A DRIVER.
“Honestly that was a crazy race. I got inside of him in the middle of (turns) one and two and spun coming off of turn two and we both went back to the back. I think we were almost to the end of the lead lap at the time and we went down into turn one and he turned right across my nose to go down to the bottom line and basically dumped himself but it wasn’t looked upon as that way because of the previous incident that we had. He’s done a great job in my opinion of adapting to a stock car. Very few drivers have been successful at doing that. There’s drivers that have done it but have not been as successful from an open-wheel standpoint. I think he’s learned how to points race and he’s learned how to race with a bunch of guys that he struggled with at the start of his career here. I think he’s done a lot of great things. Obviously he’s very popular here in South Florida. The closer you get to the equator the more popular he is I think (laughter).”
WHEN YOU WERE OVER AT PENSKE YOU REALLY NEVER HAD A TEAMMATE TO WORK WITH, YOU ARE IN AN ORGANIZATION THAT HAS THRIVED WITH TEAMMATES WHETHER IT’S OVER AT HENDRICK OR THE INFORMATION THAT YOU GUYS GET AND YOU’RE ABLE TO SHARE AND BUILD UPON, CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE PROS AND CONS OF EACH?
“I did have a good teammate in Kurt Busch. We got along really well off the race track and on the race track and we were very respectful to each other and never didn’t get along. But I think now having Tony Stewart and the four Hendrick teams as information sharers we have a great backbone of teamwork and I think that definitely helps. Sometimes we catch ourselves reading too many notes instead of just working on our raced car and that’s a good thing to have but you have to control and filter that information in the right directions. I’m very grateful to be in a position that we are to have that information and to have Tony Stewart as a teammate and just look forward to expanding upon that next year.”
IS THERE A HUGE DIFFERENCE THOUGH?
“There is a huge difference in the way the teams work together therefore in the way the driver’s work together compared to my Rusty (Wallace) and Ryan day’s verses what I have now for sure. I mean 180 bend. I would say polar opposite but you might read into that too much.”
SO MUCH OF WHAT JIMMIE JOHNSON HAS ACCOMPLISHED FLIES IN THE FACE THAT EVERYTHING NASCAR HAS DONE FOR THE LAST 20 YEARS SUCH AS CHANGING RULES AND DESIGNS TO PROMOTE CLOSE COMPETITION, THE CHASE, THERE WOULD SEEM TO BE SO FEW OPPORTUNITIES TO DEVELOP THE KIND OF ADVANTAGE THAT JOHNSON, HENDRICK, CHEVROLET ALL HAVE DEVELOPED, HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?
“Just the same way. I feel it’s an evolution over time of them working together and creating every little advantage together that they possibly can. You look at Jimmie and Chad’s tenure together its one of the longest to my knowledge. Not the longest but one of the longest in the sport so that makes a big difference as well.
“So as much as you can create those advantages and keep those advantages together as the evolution of the sport happens the more things you have together the stronger you will be. We’ve seen especially with this car as the gap is narrowed between the competition levels of the cars that’s gotten tighter any kind of advantage seems to be a bigger advantage than it used to be and that’s a big part of it. We were talking about this a little yesterday that as technology has become involved in the sport it has gotten much more similar in competition levels because guys can build the exact same pieces and buy the exact pieces where it used to be more hand-made. It just seems like technology has changed the sport a lot. It’s not ruined it by any means but changed it a lot to the point that you have to create your advantages elsewhere. It seems to be more people related than it is part related.”
