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NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES: FOLDS OF HONOR QUIKTRIP 500February 28, 2016Rick HendrickChad KnausHampton, Georgia THE MODERATOR: Hard‑fought win, a lot of strategy. Obviously a big call there on that pit stop, but talk about just the fact that the 48 car has won 76 times now in the Sprint Cup Series. That's almost mindboggling. But just talk about this win here today and the significance of it. CHAD KNAUS: Wow, I mean, on so many levels it's pretty amazing. I never‑‑ when we started this thing back in 2002, I never would have thought that we'd be here today with 76 victories as a team. It's pretty impressive, and it's an honor to have been able to do it. We've done it with a lot of great people, obviously, with various team members, some still with us, some not. Obviously an amazing owner and a great group at Hendrick Motorsports, but probably one of the biggest ones is Lowe's hanging with us and contributing to our efforts year in and year out. God, it's amazing. Jimmie is pretty awesome, isn't he? Let's be honest, he's just a heck of a race car driver. He's a lot of fun for me to work with. Today was great. We were able to get out there and race and race our way to the top four or five I think it was, and just kind of manage that position all day long, waiting until the end. I don't think we necessarily had anything for the 4 and the 78. We were a little bit better than the 78 in one corner and a little bit better than the 4 in another corner, but we weren't better than either of them in both corners, so we were really just kind of stuck in third, so we needed to try to figure out a way to get to the front and get the lead, obviously, through those pit cycles, through the middle portion of the race we were really monitoring what everybody was doing, our tire wear, what everybody else's tire wear was, and what people were thinking about doing, and you could just see it. Around 40 laps, everybody wanted to pit and everybody was getting nervous about their tires. As we were going through the race ours was getting better, so we were like, shoot, let's go ahead and throw it out there and see what happens. It gave everybody an opportunity to come down pit road with us at that point. It would have been kind of a moot point, but they were all nervous I think, obviously, and didn't want to get tires on that early, and it worked out. After the pit cycle I think we had a 10‑second lead, maybe an 11‑second lead and we just needed to try and manage that throughout the rest of the race. Unfortunately that dang caution came out, but the guys had a great pit stop, we got out there and Jimmie get a heck of a restart and was able to bring it home. Q. Chad, you told Jimmie no burnout. What was the reason for that? CHAD KNAUS: Man, did you see what happened to the 18 on Friday? I'm not taking any chances right now. I don't want anything bent or broken or anything to warrant any type of problem right there. So until we understand exactly what's going on with all the post‑race measuring, which it's a pretty big deal, we don't know how all this‑‑ we don't know what these cars do during a race, especially at a racetrack like this where there's a bunch of bouncing and moving and so on and so forth, that pit stops, there's a lot of wear and tear on these race cars throughout the course of an event and I just didn't want to take a chance on him tearing something up doing a burnout and not passing post‑race LIS. Yeah, that's why. Q. Rick, I know you told us before the race that everybody is being gentlemen about the news this week with Stewart‑Haas and everybody understands the dynamics, but you outwitted a Stewart‑Haas car today for the victory. Does that mean anything more? RICK HENDRICK: Want to beat them every week, not just since they made the announcement. You know, I still like to see our stuff run well for the rest of this year, and I think, what did we have, four or five in the top six with our motors and chassis? I like to beat them every week. But we've been buddies for a long time, and like I told you earlier, life goes on, and we'll focus on our stuff, and we still have a relationship with them with equipment, so they're still a sponsor, and I'll pull for them until they put that oval on the hood. Q. Rick, obviously a big day with the 76 wins for Jimmie, tying Dale Sr. When did you think that 76 wins would be possible for Jimmie Johnson? RICK HENDRICK: You know, I never thought when I got in the sport I'd win 76 wins with anybody altogether, and to have Jeff do it and now Jimmie tie him, I really wasn't aware of that today until the end of the race, and I think when you look at Jimmie's career and you look at how quick he's gotten to 76 and he's got six championships, I think you've got to say that he's one of the best that's ever been in the sport. You know, it means a lot to him and a lot to all of us. We're all big Earnhardt fans, but it's going to be interesting to see how many races and championships Jimmie and Chad can win. Q. Rick, we're all familiar with the story of you seeing Jeff Gordon for the first time or taking notice of him for the first time here in Atlanta hanging the car out in the Busch Series race. Do you remember your first impression, the first time you saw Jimmie Johnson race and what your first impression was? RICK HENDRICK: The first time I saw Jimmie ways was in the stadium trucks, and Herb Fishel told me about Jimmie when he was 15 and then I helped him get in a late model car when he was 16 and then watched him‑‑ I think the most impressive thing about Jimmie, a lot like what I saw Chase do at Darlington, my son was racing at Darlington and Jimmie was top of the board in the then Busch Series, so Jeff Gordon and I walked over to Jimmie and said, can Ricky come over here and talk to you, and Jimmie said, this is the first time I've ever been here. So he was very impressive when I saw him in that situation, and I've known him so long, it was just his character, the kind of guy he was, watching him drive stuff out of control. You know, I think just watching him at Darlington that day really impressed me. I happened to be there for the practice. And Chase impressed me today about as much as I've ever seen a young driver drive in a race with a low downforce car that he's never been able to experience in a race before when he's having to race Kyle Busch and the guys he was racing, Brad, all day long, never make a mistake, just as cool on the radio as any seasoned driver, getting great feedback. I am really excited about that young man in the future. Q. Rick, you were not always an Earnhardt fan, particularly during the Bodine years. Did your impressions of what he was doing for the sport change over time? RICK HENDRICK: He used to use me for a raise every time his contract was coming up. He would come talk to me and Childress would give him more money. I always told him to pay me a part of the increase. We were really good friends, but man, I told Bodine one day, I told him, if you see a snake on the ground, you either step on his head, you don't pick him up and shake him and turn him loose because the movie Days of Thunder was a real deal. Richard and I were in that deal with Bill France, because they wrecked each other about every week and I always got the short end of the stick. No, back in those days it was a fierce battle, but after that we‑‑ before and after, it was good. Q. Chad, when we hit 100 laps with no caution and then 200 laps with no caution, what was going through your mind and did that play any effect strategy‑wise or cause y'all any issues? CHAD KNAUS: You know, this is the type of racetrack honestly that you see a lot of long green‑flag runs because the tire wear is so high that the drivers, they're just trying to stay away from everybody and just stay in control. I wasn't really shocked that we came out of the gate with a couple long green‑flag runs at that point. I was a little surprised how quickly people were willing to short pit and not wait for a failure. That showed a lot of maturity, I think, throughout the whole garage area. Nobody wanted to take a risk and have a situation where they created a big caution or had a tire come apart, which is different than what we've seen in the past. Typically people go and go and go until they do have a tire failure and then it just becomes habitual after that, right? It wasn't unexpected by any stretch. Q. Chad, you talked about making the choice to pit. Were you pretty confident of the win at that point? Are you like, I've got Jimmie Johnson and he's going to wheel it and win this thing and take care of the tires, or did you feel it was a pretty big gamble? CHAD KNAUS: It was a gamble for sure. We hadn't gone that far yet on a set of tires. We wanted to‑‑ we were trying to figure out what to do. We were chatting about it, myself and my engineers who do a great job, and we could have easily just hung out and finished third, but we weren't going to pass those guys, so we had to do something. So it was just a matter of how early to pit because if we didn't pit early enough, if we only pitted just a couple laps earlier than everybody else, it would have pulled the rest of them down with us, so we had to make it to where we did it to where it would make them uncomfortable and not willing maybe to take that risk. Yeah, we felt confident that once we got out there and once the 4 started to get into some traffic and we were monitoring his lap times that we kind of had it at that point, if it went green, which it didn't. Q. Rick, this is for you. A lot of young race fans nowadays don't understand the challenges of a race like this and how exciting it truly is. What would you say to a fan who said, what was it that was exciting about that race all day long? RICK HENDRICK: Think the real fans that understand strategy and guys short pitting and guys getting new tires and running to the front and then falling off, I think if we'd had some cautions, the fans would have gotten a heck of a show. But we didn't get a lot of cautions. You could see at the restarts, you can run three abreast here, three wide, and if we'd had our normal caution deal, I think it would have been more exciting, but still, I love this type of racing because it's kind of putting it back in the hands of the drivers. You know, guys have got to manage their tires. They've got to be smart. Crew chief has got to make the right call. I think it's going to be‑‑ I think this will be the best racing we've seen in a long time. Q. Chad, how soon before you guys made the call to come down with 49 to go, how soon did you know that you were going to short pit and make the call you did to try to win the race? CHAD KNAUS: About a lap before that, honestly. Yeah, really. We were chatting about it, one of my engineers said, I think it was Julian Pena, I think he said, if we're going to go for the win we need to try to do it now. I looked down at the monitors, saw where they were at, saw the lap counts, saw that we had 49 laps to go, knew that everybody was pitting at 40 laps and I was like, well, we're going to see how crazy these guys are and if they're comfortable making this type of call. And they weren't, so it worked out. But yeah, it happens that quick, man. It happens really, really quick. Like I say, we were right there behind those guys, but we weren't going to pass them, so I think we saw that it was just difficult to pass those guys. They were super fast. Q. Rick, you got to see Dale Sr. race and you've gotten to see the last 13, 14 years Jimmie Johnson become the driver he is. What similarities or how do you compare the way the two of them drove in the Cup Series over the course of their careers? RICK HENDRICK: You know, I think Dale was more aggressive. He got that‑‑ he didn't get that Intimidator title by being nice to everybody. If he got to you, he'd move you, and that was‑‑ and I think he intimidated a lot of people, and he was a heck of a race car driver. He could do things that I didn't see a lot of people do. The one thing about Jimmie Johnson, he doesn't put a fender on anybody. He does it clean, and he races‑‑ he gives people‑‑ they're fast or he lets them go, and he treats everybody with a lot of respect. They're two different style drivers, but both of them were awesome. Dale won seven championships, so that speaks for itself. But I think Jimmie does it in a very‑‑ I'd say very professional way‑‑ not professional maybe, that's not the right word. He's not as aggressive, and he will race you extremely clean. I'm not saying that Dale didn't do‑‑ if he got to you and it was for the win, he was going to move you, and that's his job. I think that's the difference in the two. THE MODERATOR: Rick, Chad, congratulations on this win today, and guys, thanks for helping put on a great race out here today for the fans. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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