Welcome to Sprint Cup From CarFacts
"CALL HIM COMEBACK JIMMIE" The NASCAR Sprint Cup, Pennsylvania 500 race at Pocono was rained out Sunday and was run on Monday afternoon and was not a very sweet ride for Hendrick Motorsports #48 Jimmie Johnson. But as more often than not , the 3 time Sprint Cup Champion found a way to come back and make a fairly good day out of disaster. At one point in the race Jimmie found himself 3 laps down in the Pocono race. And with the lucky dog falling his way 3 times he got himself back on the lead lap. Jimmie stated, “We dealt with a lot today, I have to thank my guys for working so hard and troubleshooting some different things. We were three laps down and able to get some cautions there at the end. For a while there I thought we would get a top-10, but I pounded the wall off 2 and tore up the right side of the car and lost a couple of spots. Just a lot of fight in this race team. I’m very proud of them.” Johnson put the #48 Chevy in the lead for 22 laps and had one of the fastest cars, before pitting on an unscheduled stop a little after the half way point in the Sprint Cup 200 lap race. At first the Hendrick team thought that there may ba a bad/burnt spark plug wire, after changing the wires they still had the problem. The then made a carburetor change and a spark plug on more stops. Johnson lost a lot of time on these attempts to repair the car on pit road, all the time trying to diagnose the problem to no avail. They finaly replaced the spark plugs and this seemed to solve the problem as he begane advancing again. The spark plugs ultimately appeared to be the source of what ailed Johnson, as he immediately began moving forward again once some of those had been replaced. Johnson stated, “I assume it was a spark-plug issue, that's the last thing we started changing. The car started running better, so it’s just crazy how sometimes a little part like that can go wrong. I know our guys will look closely at it to make sure that something like that doesn't happen again. I'm just so proud of the fight this race team has. “For us to come back from three laps down and get back on the lead lap and salvage a 13th-place finish means a lot to me. I think we are going in the right direction, and it shows to me what my team is capable of and I know what I'm capable of going into the Sprint Cup Chase" After the 9th caution and under 30 laps remaining in the race Johnson got back on the lead lap, he started 25th on the final restart with 13 laps remaining. On the 1st lap under green he gained 8 positions. Even though he didn't make up many more positions before the race ended he still gave his team a lot of credit for making the most out of a very bad situation Jeff Gordon, Johnson's team mate at Hendrick Motorsports applauded the #48 teams effort under that kind of pressure. Gordon said, “These guys, you can never count them out and that's what makes them a championship-caliber team, and Jimmie's a great driver. So, it's unfortunate that they had a car that was probably capable of winning, or at least battling up there for the win, that it kind of took them out of it there. But they fought back and still had a pretty decent day out of it."
Click here for
Nationwide Series
|