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HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL
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Jimmie Johnson
POINTS: Champ
2006 WINS: 5
2006 TOP 10S: 24
| Green Flag
News and Notes
Montoya’s past success
yet to help him in Cup
Juan I'ablo Montoya won the
Indianapolis 500. He’s also been a win
ner in Formula One. Hut in NASCAR,
that means nothing.
Montoya’s Nextel Cup Series debut
ended in flames last Sunday at Ibe
Uoinestead-Miami Speedway. It was the
result of two run-ins with Ryan Newman
in a span of six laps.
“1 did accomplish what 1 was looking
for," Montoya said. “I got experience and
got to know the guys and it was good.
I'm racing against great drivers, and it
was awesome racing against them today.
I think it’s been getting better and better
race by race.”
Montoya will race full-time in Nextel
Cup next year, replacing Casey Mears in
the No. 42 Dodge. Mears said lie tried to
help Montoya, but the open-wheeled
driver seemed above it.
"I've tried,” Means said. “I've given
him all the advice 1 can when 1 can. I've
let him know that he can ask me any
thing he wants at any time. 1 think he’s
used to being the guy. and f don’t think
he’s used to asking other people for
advice much."
Biffle: Minimize Cup
influence n Busch Series
(ireg Biffle has an idea regarding the
wave of Nextel Cup Series drivers doing
double-duty in the Busch Series: Make
all of them qualify on speed.
Biffle was one of eight drivers moon
lighting in the junior circuit this year
Cup drivers accounted for 34 of the
series’ 35 wins, prompting complaints
throughout the garage area.
“If! were in charge. I'd make the Cup
guys have to race their way into the line
up,” he said. "That way there wouldn’t be
more than 13 in any race.”
NASCAR locks the top 30 drivers into
each starting lineup. The other 1.3 spots
are given to the fastest drivers in time tri
als.
Championship crew chief sounds off on season
Knaus credits crew
for persevering
through rough start
to 2006 Cup season
Crew chief Chad Knaus started the season
with a four-race suspension for cheating before
the Daytona 500, but his team never skipped a
beat.
Jimmie Johnson gave Knaus and car owner
Rick Hendrick the Nextel Cup Series champi
onship last Sunday.
Knaus talked about that accomplishment and
everything that went into it during a post-race
press conference. Here are excerpts of that inter
view:
Question: Jimmie quickly gave you the
credit for the championship. How does that
make you feel-
Knaus: We were in a very fortunate situation
obviously leading up to the Chase because we
were so high up in points. So we were able to
start our developmental work for the final 10
races very early in the season. A lot of wind-tun
nel testing, a lot of testing and a lot of things of
that nature and we were able to get our bullets
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Matt Kenseth
POINTS: -56
2006 WINS: 4
2006 TOP 10S: 21
Denny Hamlin
POINTS -68
2006 WINS: 2
2006 TOP 10S: 20
Hendrick has winning formula
By Don Coble
Morris News Service
HOMESTEAD, Fla. Kick Hendrick has an easy for
mula for success: Assemble an all-star east, give them a lim
itless budget and challenge them every day to over
achieve.
It’s the way he lives is life. It's the way he wins NASCAR
championships.
The car owner was diagnosed with leukemia 10 years
ago. He beat the odds and survived.
Two years ago, an airplane carrying 10 of his friends
and family, including his son, brother and two nieces,
slammed info a mountain while flying to a race.
The disease taught him that with unwavering confi
dence and complete confidence in those around him, any
thing is possible.
The tragedy taught him about priorities.
As he took his place at the podium at the Homestead-
Miami Speedway last Sunday as the championship car
owner for Jimmie Johnson, Hendrick was torn between
personal and professional satisfaction.
Johnson’s victory was Hendrick’s sixth as a car owner
in the Nextel Cup Series, and it made him the first owner in
NASCAR history to do it with three different drivers.
“Well, you know, yesterday the 18th was the 10-year
anniversary of the day 1 was diagnosed with leukemia, and
1 talked to Jimmie and Chad (Saturday night before the sea
GHASE FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP: Johnson wins
Jimmie Johnson held on for his first career Cup championship Sunday at Homestead. He is the
fourth different champ in the last four years and the first Hendrick driver to win the title since 2001.
Kevin Harvick
POINTS: -78
2006 WINS: 5
2006 TOP 10S: 20
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lined up the last 10 races. We were prepared and
more prepared than what we had ever been. We
were rested and \rru®M i irvi)
fresh and we were riVibMA «V& 11
really looking for
ward to it. It got
kind of to the point
where it was a bit
of a lull in the sea
son as you go
through those first
26 races just
because we were
leading the points.
So everybody was
really jazzed up and ready to go racing. Every
race track we had a plan for and stuck by our
guns o. We had great race cars and that's some
thing I'm proud of. We were able to plan ahead
and that worked out well and we would not have
been in that situation if we were not leading the
points in the summer stretch.
Question: Rick Hendrick decided in the off
season to divide your responsibilities. Did
that transition go smoother than you expect
ed?
Knaus: Yeah, it did, because, you know, I
think it would be hard for somebody that did not
want to get better; that did not want this. And this
is the only thing that I've ever dreamed of my
whole life. I remember laying in bed when I was a
SPORTS
Dale Earnhardt Jr.
POINTS: 147
2006 WINS: 1
2006 TOP 10S: 16
son-finale Ford 400)," Hendrick said. ‘T said. You know,
one of the things we say, I say a lot is, ‘it’s not life-threaten
ing.' If we don’t win this, we want to be in a position to come
back and compete next year and keep your chins up if we
don’t, if something happens out of our control and we don’t
win.’"
Johnson has been in the Nextel Cup Series for five
years. He’s never finished worse than fifth in the rankings
He's won more races in the past three years than anyone
else, but it wasn't until he finished eighth last Sunday that
he was able to transform that success into a championship.
He crashed in two of the first four races in the Chase for
the Championship, but be dosed out the playoffs with a
win. four second-place finishes and an eighth to win the
title by 56 points.
"We got a slow start to the Chase, but we still fell back
on the fact that we were fast in all of those races and we
were not on our heels,” Knaus said. "We were putting pres
sure like we needed to and we were racing like we needed
to. That’s what kept us motivated and kept us going
because we knew we were playing everything out right.”
Hendrick won a championship with Terry I-abonte and
four with Jeff Gordon. He said titles are getting tougher to
win because the competition gets better every week. He
gives bis race teams all the resources they need, but every
one else isn’t far behind.
“1 think in the past, if you had an advantage, you could
—“282?
Chad Knaus
Jr
■
Jell Burton
POINTS: -247
2006 WINS: 1
2006 TOP 10S: 20
Jell Gordon
POINTS: -219
2006 WINS: 2
2006 TOP 10S: 17
teenager watching Dale Earnhardt winning the
championship thinking one day I want to be crew
chief of what was then the Winston Cup, the
champion crew chief of Winston Cup. I wanted it
so bad that I knew that I needed to make some
adjustments to make the team feel like they were
more a part of it. If we had won a championship
in the first four years, the team would not have
felt as large of a part of it as what they do this
year. And I'm happy about that because those
guys have worked hard for it and they have done
a good job. They all bought into it and there's
blood, sweat and tears by every party.
Question: Looking back, are you surprised
by the way your team responded to your sus
pension at Daytona?
Knaus: What I really think it did is it helped
the guys on the team realize they were capable
of doing what was needed to be done. It was
tough when we won Daytona. It was real tough,
but it was probably the proudest moment of my
life leading up to that point, above and beyond
winning Fontana for our first event, the 600 s,
whatever it was. Because I was so proud of the
group of guys that they were able to go out there
and carry out their jobs and win an event without
me. That was really neat. That was very, very
cool for those guys to be able to do that, because
they took it upon themselves and they all had to
buy stock in that deal. It was a total team effort.
For those guys to win those races, it was not
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2006 ♦
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Mark Martin
POINTS: 307
2006 WINS: 0
2006 TOPI OS: 15
Kasey Katina
POINTS: 273
2006 WINS: 6
2006 TOP 10S: 19
probably keep that advantage through the year or maybe at
least four or five, six races,” he said. ‘Today the competi
tion is so, so fierce. If you take a car to the track that you
just won the race and dominated with four, five, six, eight
weeks ago, even back to the same track, you may be a cou
ple of tenths (of a second) off. 1 mean, everybody in that
garage area, there’s 25 teams that they are capable of win
ning a race.
“So you just can’t count anything until it’s over.”
There was celebration following Johnson’s champi
onship, but there was a greater sens** of relief. Johnson had
been compared to football’s Peyton Manning because of
his ability to dominate the regular season, be the favorite
during the playoffs and not close the deal during the cham
pionship.
“People thought and expected a lot out of us as a race
team from the beginning.” Johnson said. “We never felt a
burden. Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t want to miss an
opportunity when we were in the position to become a
champion. We’ve just been happy to win races and have the
season we had. We’re very proud of what we did, and I'm
not saying we wouldn't have been happy if we didn’t win the
championship, but after a couple days wen! by we would be
able to look back and be proud of what we’ve done.
"Now that we’ve won, that title can’t linger around any
longer.”
But the formula for success remains.
Jimmie winning the race; it was the whole team
winning the race and I think that was pretty cool.
Question: How stressful was fast Sunday’s
race?
Knaus: I could not even blink when there s a
TV camera in my face. It was bad. I didn't think it
was that bad. it was painful, but I tried to keep
my composure. Obviously, I didn't do a very good
job. The thing was, we were in a position that we
wanted the race to be over with because we were
solidly in the top-10 and that was the big thing I
wanted to do. I didn't want to back into this cham
pionship at all, and I wanted to go out there and
race for it. And that's what this team does best is
it races week in and week out and for us to be
able to go out there and run solidly in the top-10
all day long disregarding minor mishaps that
we had —that's how I wanted the race to end
and I didn't want us to get into a situation with a
bunch of laps down track or something like that to
where Jimmie was going to have to back out of it
and fall back to 15th or 20th and kind of ride. I
wanted to make sure that we ran it to the end.
That was my frustration more than anything,
because at that point we had identified with the
fact that basically all we had to do was be last car
on the lead lap and Matt not finish any better than
third and we would have been able to win the
championship, I think is what it was. So I just
wanted to get it done.
compiled by Don Coble
3B
Kyle Busch
POINTS: -448
2006 WINS. 1
2006 TOP 10S: 18