And a little quotage from Chad:
When Johnson had to start at the tail end of the grid after getting caught up in Wednesday's practice crash, it would have been easy for him to cruise around and play it conservatively. Instead, the four-time defending series champion simply drove the wheels off the No. 48 Chevy in the final few laps, impressing crew chief Chad Knaus enough to where he couldn't wait to see a replay.
"Anybody seen the car coming across? Was it sideways? I think it was awesome," Knaus said. "Jimmie did a fantastic job. Like I said, we put him out there at a disadvantage to try to win the race because it was really a situation where we didn't have a whole lot to lose. If we were going to sit around and run 15th or 12th, start 24th in the 500, hell, that's not any fun. We need to go for the win.
"That was our mindset going into it. We were going to go for the win. Whether that was him putting himself in a position to go for it or something we had to do to make it happen. I think he did a fantastic job of blocking those guys. He had two teammates behind him and a very aggressive Kyle Busch behind him, and he was able to hold them off. I think that speaks volumes about how good the car is and what a good restrictor-plate racer Jimmie is, and what a good spotter we have, for that matter."
And the fact that cars from the Hendrick stable are amazingly consistent, and teammates like Johnson and Knaus can take their data and transfer it quickly and efficiently from one to another.
"We do a really good job of documenting what the differences are in the race cars so we know how to adjust them," Knaus said. "We made some significant changes to our cars from the Shootout to the point we raced today. We were able to take exactly what we had in the car yesterday before we crashed and convert that over through some relatively simple math and put it in this racecar.
"As long as you have good documentation, know you have a good car, you can make it happen." (full story at NASCAR.com)
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