Team 48 Atlanta Preview

Lowe’s Monte Carlo driver Jimmie Johnson and Team 48 travel to Atlanta Motor Speedway this weekend for the 500-mile NASCAR Nextel Cup race. Johnson earned his first Daytona 500 victory at the first race of the season, finished second at California Speedway and won at Las Vegas last weekend. Johnson leads the Nextel Cup points standings by 52 points over Matt Kenseth.

DRIVER JIMMIE JOHNSON QUOTES:

ON ATLANTA: “I’m looking forward to it. We’re on a great roll here with another 1.5-mile track coming up. We didn’t run like we wanted to in the fall there last year, so I am a little nervous going to the race track. But I believe we understand what took place last time. In general, we’ve had so much success at Atlanta that I’m really not that worried about going to the track. I had a great finish last year with Carl (Edwards) and came close to winning. Qualifying is going to be fast. I’m going to talk to myself all week long and remind myself how fast it’s going to be and how brave I need to be on Friday in qualifying.”

DO YOU FEEL INVINCIBLE RIGHT NOW? “Oh no. Oh no. I feel very good and I’m very happy with the race team. We’ve all been doing our jobs and having fun in the process, but it’s a long season. We’re only three races into it. I know our cars can be better. They can be faster, they can drive a little better. And I’m really excited for the whole year. We’ve got a lot of growth in this race team still ahead of us and, hopefully, we can get everything done when the year is over.”

ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT HOW LONG THIS HOT STREAK CAN CONTINUE? ”In some ways, I do think like that. But we have started the season with a very calm and relaxed pace and we’ve had this type of success out of the gate. We’ve worked hard over the off-season building cars and stepped up the horsepower and reliability like we’ve always had at Hendrick Motorsports. So all-in-all, we’re pleased to be in this situation and our season has just started out this way.”

ON THE WIN AT LAS VEGAS AND WHAT IT MEANT TO THE TEAM: “It was just another great weekend. We’ve been off to a great start. The race unfolded for us. With the caution at the end, it really put us in position. We had been making great adjustments on the car and during the last two or three stops, we were one of the fastest cars on the track and putting ourselves in contention to win the race. I was catching Matt (Kenseth) slowly, but don’t think I had enough time to get to him or pass him until the caution came out. At that point, I just pulled the belts tight and got aggressive and got stuff done.”

RACE NOTES

Chassis