FT. WORTH, TX - Jimmie Johnson, No. 48 Lowe's/Kobalt Monte Carlo SS, came to Texas Motor Speedway (TMS) with two goals - to capture his career-first victory at the track and take the lead in the Chase for the Nextel Cup standings. He accomplished both in the Dickies 500 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series (NNCS) race with a dramatic late-race, side-by-side battle with Matt Kenseth to claim in his ninth win of the 2007 season.
Johnson's victory was the 25th win of the season for Chevrolet, tying the all-time record set for the Bowtie Brand back in 1958.
"This has been an incredible and exciting year for Chevrolet in NASCAR Nextel Cup competition," said Alba Colon, NNCS program manager for GM Racing. "To score 25 wins in one season is a mark that we at GM Racing and Chevrolet could only have hoped to achieve.
"We are proud of each of our teams and drivers for their efforts this season to achieve this monumental feat. Competition in the NNCS is at an all-time high and we know the bar will continue to rise.
"Hendrick Motorsports is having an awesome year with 17 wins to date. Congratulations to Jimmie, Chad and everyone associated with the No. 48 team for their victory at Texas, and for the nine wins they have scored so far this season."
Johnson's win was his ninth of the season, third consecutive victory and 32nd of his NNCS career. In addition to the wins, he has an amazing 2007 record of three poles, 19 top-five and 22 top-10s finishes.
Johnson now sits atop the standings with two races remaining in the season holding a 30-point advantage over his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Jeff Gordon, No. 24 DuPont Monte Carlo SS, who battled to finish seventh in the Dickies 500.
"This is amazing," said Johnson from TMS victory lane. "Wow what a car race car. We didn't have a great race car at the start of the race. We just kept working away at it and working at it until we got what we needed there at the end. Chad's (Knaus, crew chief) four-tire call really worked out well for us.
"I was really disappointed that Matt (Kenseth) was able to hang on so long with two tires. But we were able to battle him for the win and put on a hell of a show for the fans, just great hard racing. When I got close to him the first time and he pulled out ahead of me, I knew I had to drop back and regroup and start again, a get momentum because he had the advantage on the bottom. He let me go and drop back behind him, then got a run on him and got him cleared off of (turn) two.
"I don't want this groove we are in right now to go anywhere. So hopefully we can keep things together and be the champion again this year. Regardless of what happens, Hendrick Motorsports is such a great organization and has given us this opportunity. There are two races to go, 30 points can come and go pretty easily. Not a big margin by any means but better than being second."
Martin Truex, Jr., No. 1 Bass Pro Shops/Tracker Boats Monte Carlo SS, started the race from the pole, his career-first and took the checkered flag in third place. The Dale Earnhardt, Inc. driver is 12th in the standings, 524 points down to Johnson.
Kyle Busch's fourth place finish in the No. 5 Kellogg's/CARQUEST Monte Carlo SS moved him to fourth in the standings.
Jeff Burton, No. 31 AT&T Monte Carlo SS, was the highest finisher of he three Richard Childress Racing drivers, crossing the finish line in sixth place. Burton moved up to seventh in the standings, 431 points down to the leader.
Kevin Harvick, No 29 Shell-Pennzoil Monte Carlo SS, finished 10th to score his 14th top-10 of the season. He is eighth in the standings in a tight battle with Burton for the coveted points positions.
Tony Stewart, No. 20 Home Depot Monte Carlo SS, finished 11th and dropped to sixth in the Chase standings.
Clint Bowyer, No. 07 Jack Daniel's Monte Carlo SS, finished a disappointing 19th after being forced to pit under green for a loose wheel. Bowyer remains third in the standings but now is 181 points down to the leader.
Denny Hamlin, No. 11 FedEx Kinko's Monte Carlo SS, finished 29th and dropped to 11th in the standings with two races remaining in the season."
The 35th round of the season and next-to-last race in the Chase will be November 11, 2007 at Phoenix International Raceway.
JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DUPONT MONTE CARLO SS , Started 2nd, Finished 7th: YOU CAME HOME SEVENTH. IT WAS A DIFFICULT NIGHT BUT A GOOD FINISH: "Yeah, that's a hard-fought seventh. I couldn't be more proud of this team and the effort they're putting out there and with good communication. We're not getting close enough. And we're getting beat. It was a pretty disappointing day right there. We want to be fighting that hard for wins and up there battling in the top three. You've got to take your hat off to Jimmie (Johnson, race winner) and those guys. They did an excellent job. They won the race and their pit strategy and car and all those things were right where they needed to be. We got the car really good there at the end, but it was too late by then."
YOU ARE 30 POINTS DOWN IN THE CHASE WITH TWO RACES TO GO. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS? "Thirty isn't much. The biggest thing right now is that we're just getting beat and those guys are winning races. We've got to go put some pressure back on them and out perform them. We thought our qualifying run we had there was going to get us the track position we needed but we just couldn't maintain it. And Phoenix is a good track for us and we'll go there and fight hard just like we did tonight. Hopefully we can get those points back."
ON STRUGGLING WITH THE CAR: "The car was good there at the end. We just couldn't ever get it right earlier in the night. I'm disappointed with that. But we gave it everything we had and came home seventh. That's all you can do."
THIRTY POINTS IS STILL CLOSE: "Yeah, it's still close, but they're spanking us. They're putting it to us. I don't like it. We're very competitive and we're just getting beat. We've got to go to work. We've got to get it back. Those guys have done an excellent job coming from behind there a little bit when we won those couple of races, and now here they are with three in-a-row and they're on a great roll. We've got to answer back. That's all there is to it."
YOU'VE GOT ONE MORE RACE IN THIS TYPE OF CAR. THE LAST TWO RACES YOU'RE REALLY STRUGGLED THROUGH. LOOKING AHEAD TO HOMESTEAD, WHAT DO YOU NEED? "Yeah, that's a good question. We were great at Charlotte and we were great at times in Atlanta. This is really probably one of my worst tracks. This place is just so finicky. I have a real hard time trying to judge what we need to go fast here. And I'm glad to get out of here with a seventh place finish, to be honest with you. There were several times I thought I was going to be backed into the wall. Homestead, we've been great there and we've been terrible there. So I don't really know. I think the car is capable of doing it. We've just got to get the right set-up that makes me comfortable."
HOW IMPORTANT IS A STRONG FINISH OR EVEN A WIN NEXT WEEK AT PHOENIX, JUST FOR MOMENTUM'S SAKE? "You know what? All we can do is go out there and perform the best we possibly can just like we did tonight and hope that it's enough to be ahead of the guys we are racing like Jimmie. We can't control when they're doing what they're doing. They're doing a great job. And you can't take anything away from that. It's hard for anybody right now to step up and beat them, let alone us. If it comes down to that then, I don't know. It's going to be tough to beat them.
"I think we might be able to beat them next week (Phoenix) if we're just talking sheer performance. But he's pretty tough there too. I don't know. If it comes down to that, I think we've just got to keep playing it smart and being consistent and keep doing the things that we've been doing all year long."
HOW SIGNIFICANT COULD HAVE BEEN HIS PASS JUST IN THE LAST COUPLE LAPS IN THAT BATTLE WITH MATT KENSETH? THAT'S 15 EXTRA POINTS "Yeah, that's a lot of points. I don't know what happened there. I knew Jimmie had fresher tires and when I saw that on the restart I pretty much thought he was probably going to be able to pull it off."
THE REAR END ISSUES ON THE CAR YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT ON THE RADIO, IS THIS THE SAME THING YOU WERE FIGHTING IN PRACTICE YESTERDAY? "Yeah, we never hit it right from the time we started race practice. We were awesome on Friday. We just never hit it the rest of the way. There at the end (today) we were pretty good. So we've got to look at it and evaluate some things. Once you get back in traffic here, it's almost impossible to read what the car is doing. This is a very aero-dependent track and the aero push and turbulent air back there is terrible. Once we couldn't maintain that good track position up front, we had to go to work on it and it was a fight. But I'm pretty proud of the fact that we came back to finish seventh. It could have been a lot worse than that."
WHEN YOU SAY YOU'RE GOING TO LOOK AT SOME THINGS, DO YOU MEAN NEXT WEEK FOR PHOENIX? ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE A LOOK AT WHAT WENT WRONG THIS WEEKEND AT TEXAS? "Oh no, no, no. Nothing applies to anywhere else other than right here in Texas. It might apply a little bit to Homestead, but I mean where we could have been better here and what we could have done differently. And even with that said, we've got the Car of Tomorrow here next year so it won't matter because it'll be so much different."
IT WAS A HARD RACE BETWEEN JIMMIE JOHNSON AND MATT KENSETH. SOMEBODY COULD HAVE LOST IT. IS THAT AN INDICATION OF HOW IT'S GOING TO BE TO THE END? "No, there is not enough of a point deficit happening right now for anybody to race other than to race for a win. Nobody is trying to protect points. But you've got to be smart at the same time. Jimmie is an excellent driver but he's smart and knows what he's doing. I saw him get it sideways a couple of times and just moments like that could have been devastating. But we all deal with that every weekend and you've got to manage that and when you get yourself in position to win, you've got to pull it off."
IT SEEMED LIKE THERE WERE A COUPLE OF TIMES THERE WHEN JIMMIE DID GET LOOSE AND TOOK A STEP BACK. ON TV, THEY WERE SAYING HE WAS COOLING HIS TIRES TO SET UP THE NEXT RUN. WHAT DID THAT MEAN? "His car just started off really loose on new tires. So he just couldn't push it but that's what made him so strong on the long runs. Once they started getting the track position and he got to where he could figure out how to maintain it at the beginning, because I watched him a couple of times, it looked like he was going to lose a lot of positions. But then two laps later, boom, he was going right back to the front. That was the exact opposite of what we had. We could run pretty good for a couple of laps and then we just struggled from there."
YOU'VE BEEN LEADING THE POINTS AND ALSO CHASING THE LEADER: "It's no different. We've been battling as hard as we can to get the best finishes we can. It's disappointing we've gotten beat the last three weeks. All we can do is go to the next race and hope that we can turn it around and get some momentum back on our side. There is really no other way to put it other than they've been performing excellent. And we haven't stepped up where we need to. If this thing comes down to performance, they've out-performed us. If it comes down to staying out of trouble and being smart, I still think we've got a great shot at it."
PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SAYING IT'S GOING TO COME DOWN TO JIMMIE AND JEFF WITH CLINT BOWYER KIND OF HANGING IN THERE. HE HAD A BAD NIGHT. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT IT COMING DOWN TO YOU AND YOUR TEAMMATE?"Even with Bowyer there, one of us was going to have to have trouble because with Jimmie running as good as he's running, we're always solid with top five's and top 10's and it's hard to gain over 100 points on either one of us, so you're pretty much looking at both of us having to have trouble for those guys to have been a factor. I think now that he had trouble tonight, it really is going to come down to one of the two of us."
AND YOU HATE GETTING BEAT "I'm just mad that we sucked tonight, that's all."
WHAT DO YOU DO NOW? DO YOU PUT IT IN THE HANDS OF STEVIE (LETARTE) OR WHAT? "I'm going to celebrate my anniversary of being married for one year, and my wife's birthday, and go to Phoenix."
MARTIN TRUEX, JR., NO. 1 BASS PRO SHOPS/TRACKER BOATS MONTE CARLO SS, STARTED 1ST, FINISHED 3RD: "It was a great day for us, we finally got to finish one off. I have to thank all the guys on the crew of my Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet; they really did a great job. Our car wasn't as good as it could have been all day but they never gave up and we got a decent finish. We have had good cars every race and we just haven't been able to finish where we have ran, so it feels good."
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE'S/KOBALT MONTE CARLO SS, STARTED 8TH; FINISHED 1ST: "This is amazing. Wow what a car race car. We didn't have a great race car at the start of the race. We just kept working away at it and working at it until we got what we needed there at the end. Chad's (Knaus, crew chief) four-tire call really worked out well for us.
"I was really disappointed that Matt (Kenseth) was able to hang on so long with two tires. But we were able to battle him for the win and put on a hell of a show for the fans, just great hard racing. When I got close to him the first time and he pulled out ahead of me, I knew I had to drop back and regroup and start again, a get momentum because he had the advantage on the bottom. He let me go and drop back behind him, then got a run on him and got him cleared off of two.
"I don't want this groove we are in right now to go anywhere. So hopefully we can keep things together and be the champion again this year. Regardless of what happens, Hendrick Motorsports is such a great organization and give us this opportunity. There are two races to go, 30 points can come and go pretty easily. Not a big margin by any means but better than being second."
From Judy Kouba Dominick and Nancy Wager, for GM
