Sharpie 500 - Jimmie Johnson Notes

Team 48 Bristol Preview

Lowe’s Monte Carlo driver Jimmie Johnson and Team 48 visit Bristol Motor Speedway for the NASCAR Nextel Cup race on the half-mile track Saturday night. For the first time in his career, Johnson has endured a streak of consecutive DNFs in three races - Indianapolis, Watkins Glen, and Michigan. However, he has finished every Bristol race in his career. Johnson is second in the 2004 points race just 68 points behind leader Jeff Gordon. The “Chase For The Championship” begins at Richmond in just three races.

JIMMIE JOHNSON:

BRISTOL - “There are so many things that you don’t want to have happen to you in order to win at Bristol. It’s kind of like a plate race there where you’ve got to miss all the wrecks and all the problems. There are so many things you have to miss and not have happen to you in order to win there.”

ON HOW CRAZY BRISTOL COULD TURN OUT TO BE - “As far as making the cut, Bristol is going to be the crazy one, and then Talladega and Martinsville are going to be the wild ones – the two crapshoots in the final 10. There will be a lot of sleepless nights for a lot of people during those three weekends. For Bristol, teams that are well inside the top 10, you can almost points-race and not worry about taking any risks.”

WILL DRIVERS RACE ANY DIFFERENTLY AT BRISTOL BECAUSE OF THE CHASE FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP? - “Maybe….but, I don’t see guys in our sport taking cheap shots at anyone trying to make the cut or trying for the championship in the final 10 or looking after their teammates. We haven’t seen it yet, and hopefully we won’t see it this year. There’s a bigger carrot this year than any other year to do those things. I just don’t see it. We all race against one another every week. We see each other way too often for that stuff to take place. I hope we don’t see anything like that.”

CREW CHIEF CHAD KNAUS:

ON MAINTAINING MOMENTUM AFTER LAST THREE RACES: "It's not an issue. We come to the race with the same focus and determination every single week. This is a top-notch team. This is the best team in Cup racing right now and I feel like we can go up to Bristol and get a good top five finish and then we'll start spanking them from there on out."

THOUGHTS ON NASCAR’S NEW GEAR RULE in 2005: “They’re saying they want to limit the amount of RPM that we turn. I feel like they’re about three years too late because 75 percent of the garage area is in the 9500-plus rpm bracket anyway. A couple of owners are tugging on their ear pretty hard telling them it’s going to cost a lot of money to develop the rpm package that’s necessary to get their engines up to that range. I think they need to look at the money spent by the other teams to get them there already. This is going to be wasted when they change that. There are safety issues they’re somewhat concerned about. I know they’re talking about driveshafts and stuff like that. But it’s an evolution that there are other measures that could be taken to allow us to turn that RPM. I feel like turning the rpm that we do right now actually provides for better racing because when your car goes into the corner and it’s not handling perfectly, you have the rpm and the gear to help you recover from that. When you start to pull the rpm away, I’m afraid you’re going to lose a little bit of that. But there are some really smart people in the NASCAR regime who get this stuff done and they’ve been doing it a lot longer than I have.” RACE NOTES

CHASSIS INFORMATION
Team Lowe’s Racing will bring car No. 4850 to Bristol this weekend. Johnson has driven this car in four of his five Bristol races in his career and finished 16th there in March. This car swept both Dover races in 2002.

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