Jimmy Johnson Track Quotations

We're on a great roll here with another 1.5-mile track coming up. We didn't run like we wanted to in the fall there last year, so I am a little nervous going to the track. But I believe we understand what took place last time. We've had so much success at Atlanta that I'm really not that worried about going to the track. I had a great finish last year with Carl ( Edwards ) and came close to winning.

The air temperature dropping and the track cooling down helps. Also the air that runs through the engine is a lot cooler so it builds more power and more speed. There definitely was some advantage to going later. It's hard to really tell how much. We were 8th or 9th on the board during practice, and then qualified 3rd. So I think it helped some.

I think sometimes we hit short tracks and everybody feels that they can be really aggressive and slide the car around. Jeff, he's sharp and knows what to do and how to make the car last.

It's going to be quite a loss not to have Chad here, but he's done a great job of training us all and hopefully we can be out on the track and perform as if he were here.

We lost last year by eight points, and we had some troubles at the start of the Chase, ... This year, hopefully, we'll make the right decisions and not have any weird things happen to us, and I won't make any mistakes on the racetrack and stay clean throughout.

The old track was so abrasive, it wore the tires out within a few laps, and you'd have multiple grooves. The way it is now, it's like a new paving job. It's so fast and there's no drop-off.

I think that it's going to be like that, single-file. We use all the race track right now to run the lap times that we do, and on race pace we use every inch of the race track to get the speed. ... It was easier to run side-by-side because you didn't need that extra track. Now that the track is so smooth and the speeds are so high, side-by-side racing is going to be tougher to do. And we just won't see as much of it.

It really is a tough track for us. The entries to the corner have really given me some problems. We just can't get our car into the corner right. The transition is pretty abrupt.

But the track is so big and so fast that the way you run fast and competitive is having the gas pedal down, and down as early as possible. So it's a tough place to save fuel.

I have to admit, I was a little timid with it up there. I knew it was there and it was softer, but I am really trying not to bump draft. I've gotten myself into more trouble at plate tracks than I care to, so I'm just going to keep my bumper to myself.

Martinsville is a place where contact is going to come into play, and tempers will be high, ... It's a track where you can never get away from a lapped car or the cars you're racing, so the potential is there to have contact.