Johnson handles tire pressure
He praises crew after 2d Indy win
INDIANAPOLIS - All day long, NASCAR Sprint Cup teams waged a monumental struggle to get the rubber Goodyear submitted for yesterday's Brickyard 400 to adhere to the abrasive racing surface at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As much as everyone tried, the fabled Brickyard was not going to cooperate.
Until, that is, Jimmie Johnson showed everyone how it was done.
After he won at Indy for the second time in the last three years, Johnson cruised around the 2 1/2-mile rectangular oval in his No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet and brought it to stop on the frontstretch near the yard of bricks at the start-finish line. Johnson simultaneously mashed the gas and the brakes, smoked his tires, and laid down a patch of burned rubber before, fittingly, his right rear tire blew out.
It was one of two right-side tires Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus, had changed in a six-second pit stop that enabled the driver to sprint off pit road first among the leaders after NASCAR unfurled the last of six competition cautions on Lap 150.
"Across the board, this team is awesome," said Johnson, the two-time defending Sprint Cup champion who joined Kevin Harvick (2003) as the only drivers to win from the pole position. He finished ahead of runner-up Carl Edwards and third-place finisher Denny Hamlin.
"All weekend long, we've just been on the money and fast in qualifying and fast in the race," Johnson said. "Chad had a great strategy to keep four tires on the car, keep those left sides as fresh as possible. We had an awesome pit stop, got us out, [and] off we went."
Because of concerns about uneven tire wear, evidence of which cropped up after a pair of practice sessions Saturday alarmingly revealed rapid degradation of tread compound into a fine dust of rubber particles, NASCAR officials implemented mandatory competition cautions to monitor tire wear.
As a result, the last half of the 160-lap race was run in 10-lap segments after NASCAR called for six competition cautions, including five in the last 83 laps.
"Nobody wanted to be in this situation, but it was the situation we had [to deal with]," Johnson said. "I have to commend NASCAR, because NASCAR called a great race and they kept us from tearing up race cars."
The decision to take the cautious route turned this 400-mile race, the second biggest on NASCAR's schedule, into the second slowest (average speed: 115.117 miles per hour) in Brickyard history. Worse yet, fans were left disappointed by the stop-and-start nature of the race.
"We had a solid run," said Hamlin, who led twice for 26 laps. "I mean, I don't think anyone really could push their car as hard as what they would like throughout the day."
Goodyear conducted a three-car test at Indy in April with the new generation car. Although there was some evidence of the problems that persisted yesterday, Goodyear officials believed 43 cars running 400 miles would eventually lay down enough rubber on the track. No one, however, figured on the effect the perfect storm confluence of abrasive track and new generation car would have on the tires.
"I think the car itself is really hard on them," Hamlin explained. "And this track don't take rubber very good anyway. So for only three cars to come here and tire test, it's going to be extremely hard for [Goodyear] to get the data they need to produce a good race tire.
"I mean, unfortunately, that was the circumstances of what we were given. But I applaud NASCAR in the same respect for not putting anybody else in danger by putting these [competition] cautions out."
Earlier in the day, NASCAR, Goodyear, and track officials announced a plan to provide teams with extra $1,700 sets of race tires imported the night before from Pocono, Pa., if teams ran through their 10-set allotment of Indy tires. Those tires weren't needed.
Johnson and his team clearly understood that they were going to have to take four tires at every stop in an attempt to get to the end of the race and go for the win.
"Every lap I was concerned about it, every corner, in fact," Johnson said. "You could almost feel the life of the tire being taken out of it if you leaned too hard."
But Johnson conserved his tires by dialing down the pace.
"At the start of the race, everyone was running 54-second laps," he said. "Everybody was just taking care of their stuff. At the end, we were running 51s. As a group, we all knew that, hey, we can't push the envelope. As the runs went on, I kept hearing on the radio that our lap times kept coming down. The last three or four runs, we were running as hard as we could. Just after the 10 laps, I would have my right rear gone. I knew at least at the end of a seven-lap shootout I could blast it off and be OK."
And still have enough rubber left to scorch the Brickyard with a celebratory burnout.
