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News and Results | Point Standings | 2007 Schedule | 2007 Teams | 2006 Schedule and Results | 2005 Schedule and Results Subway 500 - Chevrolet Post-Race Quotes Jimmie Johnson Wins Subway 500 at Martinsville to Claim 23rd Win of Season for Team Chevy and 12th Victory for R07 Engine and Impala SS Johnson Remains Second in the Chase Standings; Pulls Within 53 Points of Leader Jeff Gordon; Team Chevy Drivers Snare Three of Top-Five and Six of Top-10 Finishers in Caution-Filled Race Martinsville, VA - Jimmie Johnson, No. 48 Lowe's Impala SS, scored his seventh victory of the 2007 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series (NNCS) season in the Subway 500 at Martinsville Speedway. Today's win at the famed Virginia short track was the defending NNCS champion's third consecutive win and fourth overall in 12 starts at Martinsville. In claiming his 30th career victory, Johnson scored the 23rd win of 2007 for Team Chevy, tying the 2006 scorecard, and the 12th victory for both the Impala SS and the Chevy R07 engine. Johnson led four times during the afternoon for a total of 147 laps in the caution-mired race. The 21 yellow flags for a total of 127 laps were records for a Martinsville NNCS race. Johnson and his Hendrick Motorsports (HMS) teammate, Jeff Gordon, No. 24 DuPont Impala SS, continue a fierce battle for the championship. Gordon's lead is now 53 points over Johnson after his third place run at Martinsville. Gordon led two times during the 506-lap race that finished under caution for a total of 168 laps. The third Team Chevy driver in the top-five finishers of the Subway 500 was HMS driver Kyle Busch, No. 5 Kellogg's/CARQUEST Impala SS who came home in fourth. Busch remains sixth in the standings, 290 points down to the leader. Denny Hamlin, No. 11 FedEx Freight Impala SS, finished sixth at Martinsville. Hamlin moved up one spot to eighth in the standings, 374 points out of the lead with four races remaining in the season. Clint Bowyer, No. 07 Jack Daniel's Impala SS, remains third in the standings after rallying from 21st starting position and a day that kept him mired deep in the running order to finish ninth. The Richard Childress Racing (RCR) driver is 115 points behind the leader. Kevin Harvick, No. 29 Shell-Pennzoil Impala SS, finished 10th at Martinsville and moved up one position in the standings to seventh, 369 points down to Gordon. Harvick and his RCR team also fought track position throughout the day and rallied back to a top-10. Virginia native, Jeff Burton, No. 31 AT&T Impala SS and the third RCR driver in the Chase, finished12th in today's race. The solid finish moved him up one spot in the Chase order to ninth, 406 out of the lead. Tony Stewart, No. 20 Home Depot Impala SS and Hamlin's Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, finished 13th in the Subway 500 to remain fourth in the Chase, 249 points behind Gordon. The NNCS moves to Atlanta Motor Speedway on October 28 for the 33rd race of the season and round seven of the Chase for the Nextel Cup.
YOU HAD A PROBLEM WITH YOUR LEFT REAR AND A FEW STOP, BUT STILL PULLED OFF A DECENT FINISH: “Yeah, that’s how this team has done it all year long. Even when we make mistakes we fight through them and we came back with a top five. It was a great day nonetheless. It was a great car. Jimmie (Johnson) had a little bit better car on the short runs. We had a little better car on the long runs. The race just didn’t fall our way.” HOW PLEASED ARE YOU WITH YOUR PIT CREW TO DEAL WITH ADVERSITY? ”Well there is no doubt. They are definitely an experienced team. They make great pit stops all year long. They got us out there in the lead on the last pit stop. We can’t keep getting lucky and come from behind. We’ve got to work on mistakes. But you know, I’m proud of the car and proud of the effort and think we have a 50-some-odd point lead and I’m excited for the last four races.”
ON THE RACE: “It was a good day for the Kellogg’s Chevrolet. It was a lot of fun out there. We led some laps and got up front there for a while. We had a good car. We just got off track position a little bit there on pit stop sequence and we were able to get back up through there passing some guys and whatnot. So it was a good, solid day for us; and a good solid day in the points. If we didn’t have two wrecks I think we’d be right there challenging for this thing. But we’re not making much up to the guys in front of us, but that’s all right. We’ll get what we can and finish out the year strong.”
ON BEATING AND BANGING WITH RYAN NEWMAN AT THE END: “I wasn’t very good on short runs there and I just couldn’t get down into the corners; and Ryan (Newman) looked like he was pretty good there on the shorter runs. I kind of held him up. He got me up the race track and then I gave him room and we slammed pretty good there. I wasn’t real happy about it. But it’s no big deal. He didn’t mean to do that and he understands why we were upset and that’s all good. It was a great race for us. We had some trouble on pit road and to be able to rebound from that and come back and get a top five finish, we’ve got to be real happy about that. I think Jimmie (Johnson) had the car to beat really for most of the day if not all the day. And he certainly had it there at the end on those short runs and we just didn’t need those short runs. We needed longer runs. I felt with about 100 (laps) to go we were going to see green all the way. But that wasn’t the case.”
"We had a real fast car and ran in the top-five all day long. We broke a valve spring somewhere in the first 50 laps and were running on seven cylinders all day. We were just so good anyhow, that we were still better than most of the field with seven cylinders. It finally broke there right at the end. Too many cautions and restarts in the last 50 laps and the valve springs kept breaking and broke the motor even worse and finally blew up. "When you break an inner valve it comes and goes. It will run halfway decent sometimes, then it will run real bad sometimes. "It was very rough out there today. You had to dish it back out, though. I mean every time I got ran in to, I ran right back in to them or they are just going to keep doing it to you. I ain't going to get pushed around out there. You get angry but you get back to racing and get back to what your job is. A bunch of them drove it to my door and I would put it back in them in the next corner, we drove right back in to them. It was pretty fun. "I am not upset at all. We had a great day. I had a lot of fun. We ran really good, even on seven cylinders we had a popping and spitting motor down the straight away. I put those tail pipes in those other boys ears so they could hear we were on seven cylinders and still driving by them. It was pretty fun. I am proud of my team, the car they built and gave me to race. It was really good, it drove great and we were competitive so I am not sad. I am sad for Tony Gibson and the whole team because they deserve better finishes than this. But I can deal with it." ON IF THIS WAS ONE OF THE ROUGHEST MARTINSVILLE RACES ON THE TRACK? "It was very rough for me. I saw a lot of roughness, I was part of a lot of roughness, I was a cause of some of it. But my crew chief said I wasn't sticking out like a sore thumb, that I was not different than anyone else when it came to being rough. These new cars are pretty tough and they can handle. "You can drive right in there with these Impala SS cars, you don't even worry about it. You just drive right in the side of them if they make you made. This thing won't knock the tow out of or anything, I beat mine off the wall, off other cars and it still drove great."
"It was definitely a fight for us. We struggled getting track position. Every time we would come in the pits, we would lose 10 or 15 spots, a lot of those because of the body damage we had. It was a struggle to get track position. I feel like we passed more cars than anyone out there, it was a real fight to get to sixth. “We had some body damage from contact with someone out there and it prevented us from getting our left front on during pit stops. Every time we came in, I had to turn the wheel one way. It just made out pit stops, I don't think we had anything less than about a 20 second stop all day. But when you have body damage out on the track, that is what happens. We just kept doing things to get track position, taking less tires than the guys in front of us, so we could never really size up the guys in front of us, the No. 24 and No. 48. “I feel good about our finish today. We definitely have to take steps in this whole Chase deal and top-10 is a good step for us to try to get back to the top-five in points. That is the real feasible goal we have right now."
TALK ABOUT RESTARTS AND CAUTION FLAGS: “Yeah, those last restarts were tough on me. I’m not the best for cutting a fast lap here, I’m better on long runs. And I think our cars were set-up that way too. It’s just our style here. So I was nervous with the No. 24 (Jeff Gordon) behind us and I was able to hold him off; and then the No. 12 (Ryan Newman) got in there and I knew he was going to be real tough on a short run too. But things worked out for us. I just can’t thank these guys for working as hard as they do to put us in position to wins race and fight for a championship.” HOW CONCERNED WERE YOU ABOUT RYAN NEWMAN WHEN HE GOT AROUND JEFF GORDON? “I know he’s hungry. He’s been working real hard to get back to victory lane. So I knew he wasn’t going to cut me any slack. He was just doing his job. So it was good, clean, hard racing.” IT TOOK YOU A LONG TIME TO TAKE THE LEAD. HOW WAS THE HANDLING EARLY ON AND WHAT CHANGES DID YOU AND CHAD KNAUS MAKE? “I really think the car was right on the short runs. But there is something about my technique and the way I drive this track that the longer the run, the slicker the track gets, the better I am. And at the start, some guys were running really fast and I just couldn’t go that fast yet – not until the track got really slick and you had to get creative with lines. That’s also what kind of hurt me at the end in the shootout is that the No. 12 and No. 24 and even the No. 20 (Tony Stewart) in the past are really good on the short runs and the green-white-checkered finish.” WAS THERE ANY DISCUSSION FROM MR. HENDRICK WITH YOU AND JEFF GORDON AND HOW YOU WERE GOING TO RACE EACH OTHER TOWARD THE END? “No, not at all. I know that Jeff is going to do everything that he can to win and I’m going to do the same. We have a great deal of respect for one another and we’re just not going to wreck each other. It was just good hard racing. I had to give him a shot in the bumper to get by and he was putting some pressure back on me at the end but then the No.12 got him.”
"This race has a lot of emotion for me. It is hard to come up here, but it is better to be here than to be at home. This race is the first Cup race my Dad every brought me too. I got Richard Petty's autograph in turn four I believe it was on the grass. "I am real proud of our organization, this has been a good track for us. We have four more to go and hopefully don't have any bad races. I told everybody this morning, there are just as many races left, as we have run so we could be just like some of the other guys if luck isn't on our side. We don't need any good luck right now, we just don't need any bad luck." ON KEEPING TEAM UNITY AND MORALE ON NO. 24/48 TEAM: "About 60% of the guys in the No. 24/48 shop work on the cars together, the road crew is the only difference. They are in there together all the time. They are proud, sure everybody wants to beat the other guy; they see us all getting better and better and better. I have told them this year, last year, year before that, you won't get beat from the outside in this business once you get the momentum, it is going to happen from the inside, so big challenge here the next four races, hopefully it is down to the two of us, I hope it is. But whether it is one of our cars or two of them, we just have to stay focused and do what we do every week and not panic, not change any thing. Just like our motor guys before Talladega, they worked the weekend before Talladega, they tore down every engine we had because we found one oil ring that didn't look right, so we went back to something that we knew was safe. We gave up six horsepower, nobody complained, everything made it. “The whole group is focused on finishing the races, trying to be there at the end. I have been here before when Jeff and Terry (Labonte) went down to the last race. I got the guys all together the week before and told the guys, I tell you what I am going to do first, I am to the loser first then after that I am going to go to the winner. Know it before you see it, and don't think I am playing favorites going to the guy that didn't win, I just want you to know what I am going to do. “I think it helps the guys to know I feel I am real proud of them because the No. 24 guys came over and congratulated me after today's race. Casey (Mears) came to victory lane, Kyle (Busch) came to victory lane in Charlotte, they see what is special about our crowd so I hope we can keep it." ON HIS FEELINGS WHEN THE 24 AND 48 WERE RUNNING HARD TOGETHER: "You don't want to see them wreck each other. We want to see them race clean. I think you saw that, Jeff didn't try to hold Jimmie up, when Jimmie got there and he was quicker and got to the inside, Jeff didn't try to muscle him or anything like that. They are racing for a championship and they have to narrow it down to just one or two more cars, then that is to Jeff's advantage. People are going to remember who won the '07 championship, they might not remember who won the race or who finished third here when we are in New York. You want to win, that is why we are here, but you have to think big picture all the time. It is gut-wrenching deal. I would rather be here than out of it and just trying to get to the end." ON SUCCESS HERE MAKING IT EASIER TO COME HERE: "I stayed home I think it was last year, I came back the first year. Actually, sitting at home is tougher than being here with the guys because that is what Ricky (Hendrick), John (Hendrick), Randy (Dorton) and all of them would want me to do. It is hard to do, but as soon as I walk in here and get with the guys, they are my family too, all the fans, the media-I am with people who care about us. We can't undo what was done. This week we dedicated a children's hospital in Ricky's name, did that Thursday night and cut the ribbon on Saturday morning. It has been a hard week, but every week is a hard week. We miss all those folks. Just being with these guys and supporting them is real important to me. I want to be here. This track has been unbelievable. Geoff Bodine won our first race here our first year. We have won a ton of races here, I don't know how many but it has been a bunch. I grew up 60-miles from here and watched the modified run here with Ray Hendrick. My Dad had cars here, pulled for Rex White in a convertible. That is really telling you how old I am now."
Jeff Gordon, Third Place Finisher Transcript at Martinsville Audio File Jeff Gordon, No. 24 DuPont Impala SS met with media after the race and talked about his third place finish, racing with Ryan Newman at the end, how he knew his car was good on long runs based on the frequent cautions, Jimmie Johnson’s success at Martinsville, on green-white-checkered finishes, did he think it would come down to a final race with Jimmie Johnson, how the team reacts every time it returns to Martinsville and the tragedy of the Hendrick Motorsports plane accident, on David Regan and when NASCAR should throw the yellow in certain situations, on losing some points, but holding the lead, on what makes him successful at Martinsville, on running with Dale Earnhardt Jr as a teammate next year, on if Tony Stewart is out of the Chase, and battling with his teammate and friend, Jimmie Johnson. Select quotes from driver press conference: UNOFFICIALLY, YOU ARE 53 POINTS AHEAD OF JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S IMPALA SS AND 115 OVER CLINT BOWYER, NO. 07 JACK DANIELS IMPALA SS, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THE RACE TODAY? “Oh man, it was all over the place for us. Obviously it started out great. We were just up front really cruising and the car was fantastic. We were just trying to fine-tune on it. And then we had one problem in the pits and had to come back again and that pretty much made us play catch up all day long. I was also trying to be careful because we were just in a lot of traffic trying not to get ourselves caught up in anything. So that worked out really well. And then (crew chief) Steve Letarte did another fantastic job of calling the pit strategy. We got the lead but couldn’t maintain it. I don’t think that affected whether we were going to win the race today or not because we had the lead. I was real good on the long runs but just not that good on the short runs so those cautions certainly didn’t play in our favor. But looking at what it could have been at one point, I’m very, very pleased to come out of here with a third place finish.” ON HIS RUN WITH RYAN NEWMAN, DO YOU THINK HE TREATED YOU UNFAIRLY OR HOW DO YOU THINK THAT WENT? “I understand he said got in there too hot and made a mistake, but that mistake almost cost us the race. And so I was pretty upset about it, obviously. He was faster than me and he basically told me by his front bumper hitting my rear bumper down in the middle of (Turns) 1 and 2 on one of those restarts. I basically had to give him the inside because I couldn’t afford to let him hit me any harder than that, and he was faster than me. So I gave him the inside and we raced down into Turn 1 and all I know is I gave him a lot of room; I was going to get in behind him and try to maintain third or go back after him because the longer we ran, the better we were. "And all of a sudden I felt him just slam into me. And it almost spun me out. And so I was pretty upset about that. I showed him my displeasure when the caution came out. Obviously that probably made him upset as well. But we talked about it when the race was over. I went over to him. We were both calm. I explained to him why I was upset and he explained to me why he was upset. And it’s a dropped issue and we move on.” GIVEN THE NUMBER OF CAUTIONS, HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY KNOW IF YOUR CAR WAS GOOD ON LONG RUNS? “Because the long runs that we did have, we were really good; like the one where we ran Jimmie down. I’m not sure how long of a run that was. But you can tell the handling of a car at the beginning of a run, whether it’s going to be good toward the middle or the end of the run or not. My car just really didn’t turn very good getting in and was real loose off on the short runs. And that’s how it was on every run, basically. But when we had the longer runs it came to us. With this car, once you set the car up, you can’t do anything to it. There is just hardly anything you can do to it, other than air pressure, that affects this car. So, you’re pretty much stuck with it. It’s not that we didn’t know it was like that. There just wasn’t anything we could do about it. We were just keeping our fingers crossed that we would have more green flag runs. “And the other thing is the way this track is, it builds up rubber. You could see sometimes how it builds up rubber in the middle of the grooves at both ends of the track and that changes your line. You can start running through the middle of the corner and diving in the corner getting a straight shot off, and that played to my set-up. And on the restarts, you don’t have that rubber that you can use to hook the middle of the corner and get the straight shot off.” SHOULD THE SYSTEM BE EXAMINED REGARDING GREEN-WHITE-CHECKERED FINISHES? “Yeah, I think we should just have more cautions and more spins and more wrecks and maybe they’ll like that. I mean, c’mon. Cautions breed cautions. And when you stack us up and you give us one to go, people are going to crash. And it’s rare that doesn’t happen. So if you stack us up and do it again, we’re probably going to do it again. I think that’s the reason why the rule is the way it is which is one green-white-checkered. But I thought it was still a great finish even if it came down to the white flag, you look at the runs prior to that and me and Newman were bumping and banging for second. I got inside Jimmie a couple of times prior to that and that was pretty exciting. So, I’m still not a fan of this car. If you put me back in 26th or whatever with one of the best cars and it’s everything I can do to pass the 25th place car. And to me, there’s a problem. And if we can’t pass at Martinsville, how are we going to pass at other tracks? I just think that either we’ve got to do something to the track or we still need to make some adjustments to this car. But the only thing that got me where I was, was the fact that we had a good car and we just got track position and pit strategy saved the day for us. But no, I don’t think they should change anything. I kind of like the way it is.”
Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus Winner's Transcript at Martinsville Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus Winner's Transcript at Martinsville Audio File Winners of the Subway 500 at Martinsville Speedway JIMMIE JOHNSON (JJ) AND CHAD KNAUS (CK), NO. 48 LOWE’S IMPALA SS, met with members of the media for a post-race press conference and discussed today's race, winning again at Martinsville Speedway, paying tribute to the members of the Hendrick Motorsports family who perished in the plane crash, difference in their car setups, relationship with Jeff Gordon and members of No. 48 team, Chase strategy, remaining four Chase races and other topics: Select quotes from driver press conference:
JJ: “Yes, it is. That’s a big number. I can’t believe it only took six years to do that.” THIS IS YOUR SEVENTH WIN OF THE YEAR AND FOURTH WIN AT MARTINSVILLE AND YOU HAVE WON THREE STRAIGHT HERE, SWEEPING THIS YEAR AND LAST FALL’S RACE. YOU CUT INTO JEFF GORDON’S POINT LEAD A BIT. YOU’RE 53 POINTS BACK. TAKE US THROUGH THE RACE. YOU’VE GOT TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT HOW YOU RUN AT THIS TRACK: JJ: “The day was pretty good for us across the board. I probably wasn’t the best driver on the short runs. But as the run would go on and the track would get slick and line selection became important, I’d really start to come to life and we had the car set-up how I needed it to really take advantage of things. Throughout the day I feel like we had one of probably the top two or three cars. The No. 24 (Jeff Gordon) at times was really stout and it seemed like it was in control of the event, but there at the end it looked like things slipped on him a little bit and our car was really coming into it’s own. I was hopeful that it was going to stay green because over the long haul I was better. And we had so many cautions there at the end; I certainly was nervous and a little vulnerable I think, too. I was able to still hang onto it and get it done.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK WHEN YOU SAW JEFF GORDON ON YOUR BUMPER? AND WHAT DO YOU THINK OF HIS NEW NICKNAME FOR YOU, MR. MARTINSVILLE? JJ: “The circumstances were different. I was chasing him down at the end and was able to get by him. So I didn’t have the same set of emotions as I did in the spring race where he was actually a little better than us at reeling us in and I was just kind of up there hanging on and was able to. I really felt good. And there was a restart before, maybe it was the restart that (Ryan) Newman got by him, I was able to pull away from him and then I felt real good about the No. 24. And then the No.12 got by him and I was excited to see that because of the points that I would hopefully gain on the No. 24. But then I’m like, oh, Ryan’s hungry. He hasn’t won in a while and he’s going to be very aggressive if we have a caution. I had a great lead and then the caution came out a couple of more times and I was luckily able to keep him behind. But I was more worried about the No. 12 today than the No. 24 in the closing laps.” COMING INTO THIS RACE, EVERYBODY TALKED ABOUT YOU AND JEFF GORDON GETTING ALONG. WAS THAT A PROBLEM? DID YOU THINK ABOUT THAT TODAY? JJ: “No, I’m happy to see in these last few weeks, people have had more of an inside look at the respect and competitive nature that the No. 24 / 48 has for each other, not only drivers but teams and crew chiefs and everyone. There is no one that we want to beat more than the No. 24. We know what they have. We know how good they are. And they make us step up week after week. And I feel that we do the same for the No. 24. Being a competitor, I don’t want to lose. I don’t want to lose the championship. I want to win the championship. Maybe it’s our mindset as a team, but I don’t focus on the leader of a race or the leader of a championship and think I hate that guy and I hope he wrecks or this or that (laughs). I race people with respect. I have respect for what everybody does out there. And when it gets to my teammates and to Jeff Gordon who has mentored me through all these years, there is even more respect. And he has respect for me because I’m able to get to that line and race him hard. And I also have that respect for him. Today we raced hard. We leaned on each other from time to time, but in the end, he came over to victory lane. I can’t say how much that impressed me. The last two weeks he won. My bottom lip was dragging the ground so hard I couldn’t even make it to victory lane to congratulate him and then the guy comes over and congratulates me. So, he’s certainly a class act and a great leader for Hendrick Motorsports.” JEFF GORDON SAID YOU AND HE HAVE DIFFERENT DRIVING STYLES. CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT HE MEANT BY THAT? JJ: “Yesterday we got into a long discussion during our team debrief about technique and how we drive the track and people would think that we’d be holding back information and things like that, but we got into a long discussion about the differences in the way Jeff drives a car. If you look at our set-up sheets, they’re completely different. But we still end up with the same speed and end result. And the way we use the brake and the brake and the steering wheel on corner entry is much different between us. He has just a different style that suits his car and set-up from track to track and I have a different one. Today I think I want more his direction with my line and with my technique and it made it work at times; I also feel that based on our conversation there were times I saw Jeff running more of a No. 48 or Jimmie Johnson line that became helpful and useful for him. We bring the best out in each other. If we can learn that little bit from one another, we can ensure the company success. We can ensure to make our teams better and ideally if we drove the same and had the same set-ups, we could work closer together than we do now, which is hard to imagine, and make our stuff even better.” HOW DOES MR. HENDRICK HANDLE THIS? CK: “I can’t imagine how tough it is for Mr. H. He does everything he can to reassure what we’re doing on top of the pit box, whether it be calls or what have you. When something happens, like when the No. 24 had a problem on pit road and he scurried off down there and patted those guys on the back a little bit. So he’s busy; like a queen bee running back and forth making sure everything is all right. But it’s got to be tough for him because of the fierce, competitive nature of our organization. But he thrives on that. He loves it. He loves the fact that we’re battling amongst ourselves. And it’s got a lot of pride for him.”
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