Post race quotes - Jimmie Johnson, Chad Knaus.

Jimmie Johnson's eighth win of the 2004 season may well have been his sweetest as it not only kept his 2004 title hopes very much alive heading into the final round of the Championship next weekend, it also offered him a chance to finally celebrate in memory of his fallen friends and team members.

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 8 LOWE'S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO
"I can't believe it. Winning the Southern 500 and winning at Martinsville with what took place with the airplane and Hendrick Motorsports. Going to Atlanta and doing it. Fighting our way back in this championship. I just can't believe it.

"These guys here behind me won this race on pit road here today. There were a lot of race cars that were equal like the No. 6 (Martin) and the No. 24 (Gordon). I had to overcome some stuff with the No. 29 (Harvick). For some reason he's upset and trying to wreck me and stopping on the backstretch and all kinds of stuff there. But we'll get it sorted out. To overcome everything and to be in victory lane with this Lowe's Monte Carlo is awesome."
HOW TOUGH WAS IT OUT THERE ON THIS RACE TRACK TODAY?JJ
"It was tough. I think the cooler temperatures helped with the grip. But the hardest part was getting into Turn 3. The sun was setting all day long over there. You'd go in - I'd say for two-thirds of the race - and you'd have no idea if you were going to end up in the wall or next to it. So it was a very demanding day and this Lowe's team did everything right."

YOU'RE 18 POINTS OUT OF THE LEAD GOING TO HOMESTEAD. WHAT DOES IT SAY ON YOUR GLOVES TODAY?JJ
"It said a lot of things. On my mirror, I put 'don't scratch the right side', and I put a big neon sticker inside that says 'race your own race', and then my gloves said 'tame this'".

ON BATTLING WITH KASEY KAHNE AND JAMIE MCMURRAYJJ
"Yeah, both Kasey and Jamie stayed out and those guys were racing real hard. I knew I had to get everything I could on my new tires. I got by the No. 9 finally and then ran down the No. 42. He was doing a good job of trying to put his car where I wanted to be and I got into him a little bit off of Turn 4 and loosened him up and then finally set him up so I could get inside of him through Turns 1 and 2.

"But it was just good hard racing. This track is big enough, but there is such a loss in grip and so much banking that you can race like it's a short track, so it's a lot of fun. That pass was important, but for the last two pit stops, my guys got me off pit road first and that was the whole key."
WAS IT HARD TO BE PATIENT WHEN YOU CAME OUT 10TH OR 11TH THAT ONE TIME?JJ
"Well you really just have to race the race track. I've made enough mistakes here through my Busch career and last year as well to know that if you have a good car, you'll work your way to the front and maybe it takes 10 or 15 laps for everybody's tires to give up before you can make up some spots. So I just got comfortable and got going.

"We had a lug nut that got hung up in the wheel and kept the guys from pulling the wheel off. They put in a solid effort. We had a little bad luck sneak in there but we made the best of it."
ON WINNING THE LAST SOUTHERN 500JJ
"It means a lot to me to win here at this race track. It's such a tough track to race at. We have eight wins now in the season with everybody still healing from the loss of everybody on that Hendrick airplane. This is good medicine. We'll just keep rolling with it. From what I understand, we're right in the middle of this championship. So we'll just see what happens at Homestead."
YOU'RE 18 POINTS BEHIND BUSCH AND GORDON IS 21 POINTS BEHIND. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS GOING INTO THAT FINAL RACE?JJ
"It's going to be a heck of a shootout. NASCAR got what they wanted here."

ON HIS ROCKET RIDE TO THE TOP IN THESE PAST FEW RACESJJ
"It's been a great ride. It's hard to think too much on emotion with what happened with the airplane at the Martinsville event. I look back to Lowe's Motor Speedway and I enjoyed that one but it doesn't come up in my memory. Martinsville doesn't even seem like we were at the race track. There was a ton on Atlanta. But that void and hole inside of me just isn't filled. Winning helps. It's put us back in the points championship.

"This is the first time I've thought clearly in the last three or four weeks where we're back at the track and we've found some sort of normalcy. When I look back on this year and look at 8 eight - hopefully 9 after next week - I'll smile really big. But there will always be that emptiness with what happened on the airplane."
AFTER THE FIRST COUPLE OF RACES WITH THE CRASH AND THE ENGINE, DID YOU THINK YOU WERE OUT OF IT OR DID YOU BELIEVE YOU COULD RALLY LIKE THIS?JJ
"I have full faith in our race team and it's amazing how you can be so close to winning and not win. And then you get into a year where you can. Last year, our worst finish was a third in the final six races.

"We knocked on the door to win a lot of races. This year, late in the going, we've been able to pick it up that spot or two to have it work out for us and get it done. I can't explain it. I don't know how or why it happens. But I'm glad to see it. Before this run of races, I thought we were out of the championship. I didn't think that three guys would have problems. I figured one guy would go clean. But all three had problems and it brought us into it."
AT THE END, WAS IT HARD TO BE PATIENT IN GETTING BY KASEY KAHNE AND JAMIE MCMURRAY?JJ
"I really thought I would get by both of them quicker and I expected some pressure from behind from Carl Edwards and Mark Martin. It took me a while to get by the No. 9 because it's hard to have two lanes here. I should have set him up cleaner and I could have made quicker work of him than I did. I thought I'd rail by him on the bottom. When I got to the No. 42, I set him up and tried to find one of his weaknesses, I knew if I got trapped on the inside of him that I would have trouble with him like I did with the No. 9. And then if the No. 6 and the No. 99 were close, I'd have to fight one of them. I just waited and waited. I just set them up and got them and brought it home from there."
ON THE PIT MISTAKE WITH THE AIR HOSE FOR THE NO. 24 TEAMCHAD KNAUS
"I changed tires for a long time. Stuff like that happens and it's very difficult to prevent that. Stuff like an air hose getting caught under a tire can happen very easily. I think our fifth pit stop of the night we had a lug nut get caught. Stuff like that you can't foresee and you can't prevent. There is a bit of luck right there. Maybe that tire changer on the No. 24 had his hose just a little bit too long and it got caught up underneath the tire. It may not ever happen to him again for another 20 years or however long the guy changes tires. But it's something that does happen on occasion. It just really bit them today."
WHAT WAS YOUR STRATEGY IN YOUR NEXT TO THE LAST PIT STOPCK
"To go like hell. We did what we could to address the problems we had in the car at that time. We were a little bit too tight in the centre and a little free off at that point so we made some air pressure adjustments and it definitely helped the car. The biggest thing that helped us there was just track position.

"We were able to get out ahead of those guys. And it worked out. On that last pit stop actually, I told Jimmie to stay out. He took it upon himself to come down pit road because he saw those guys lined up behind him. So that was all Jimmie, otherwise we would have ended up probably fourth or something. That shows he was on his toes all night long watching those guys behind him."
YOU DIDN'T WANT TO HAVE THE LEAD UNTIL THE LAST RACE AND NOW YOU'VE GOT YOUR CHANCEJJ
"That's my perspective. I know it's easy to say and tough to follow through with it. But that's something I've felt in my heart that I knew. I need to be a leader and show the guys that's what our attitude needs to be. The reason I'm taking this upon myself is that our team works the best in those situations. When we've got to play defence, we have trouble. If we show up and you stack the odds against us, things happen for us. I don't know what it is, but we always do better. We don't have anything to lose at this point. They're letting us back into this and we're going to do all we can to win another race in Homestead."
ON THE SUN IN TURN 3JJ
"It was a huge problem. It was a good two-thirds of the race that we had trouble. The first 50 laps of the race were okay. At first, I thought the sun was going to set behind the grandstands and it would be fine. But it kept moving around. It was really tough. It was like Fontana to a point where I was thinking they need to throw a caution just to let the sun go down so we could see."
ON OTHER DRIVERS HAVING PROBLEMS DURING THE CHASEJJ
"I don't think if those guys had made it clean, with all the winning that we've been able to do, that we would still have a chance at the championship. We had two really bad races and it seemed like those guys would need two really bad races. I just didn't think it would happen. We're doing our part and I'm proud of that. But it they hadn't had problems we would have had a shot."
AFTER BEING CONCERNED WITH THE CHASE FORMAT, DO YOU THINK IT HAS WORKED OUT THAT YOU ARE WHERE YOU HAD EARNED BACK IN THE REGULAR SEASON?JJ
"I don't really say there's any justice coming back to us. In our sport you have to earn everything that you get. I'm just happy to see us on the role we're capable of. We had a down spot in the season. Every team is going to have it every single year. I think as time goes on and the system gets perfected on the team side and the competition side, people are going to work harder to do their experimenting before the final 10 and really favour the 26-race side of the season. We were in a great position where we could do that and we still had some difficulties. We're just doing our jobs and that's awesome."
HOW DO YOU KEEP BUSINESS AS USUAL FOR YOUR TEAM THIS WEEK?CK
"It's actually going to be pretty easy because we're going to take the same race car that we raced tonight to Homestead next weekend. There's not going to be a whole lot of time to sit back and think about it or even enjoy this victory because we're going to have to get that car turned around and prepared to go to Miami. It's not going to be real hard.

"The thing everybody needs to understand is that this isn't really new for us. We've been chasing the championship in these final races for the last two years. This year is the third. We've always been in positions where we've had to chase at the end of the season. The guys go back and put their heads down and work and we get riled up and ready to go down to Homestead."
WHAT ADJUSTMENTS WILL YOU MAKE ON THE CAR FOR HOMESTEAD?CK
"I haven't gotten past Darlington yet. I haven't put it on paper yet. We left Homestead (test session) with a good baseline. We have a great idea of where we need to be but this car also won at Charlotte and Atlanta. Obviously it's a very good race car. We'll take it home and work on it. We've got a good package. Our engine shop has stepped it up lately. We've got a great engine going to Homestead and this is one of my favourite cars."
DOES THE CAR HAVE A NAME?CK
"This is actually Jimmie Johnson's very first race car that was ever built for him specifically at the No. 24 shop. Jimmie ran this car at Lowe's Motor Speedway in 2001. I'll qualify Jeff Gordon.

"He ran very competitively and unfortunately spun out and crashed even before I was associated with the team. Since we've been together and worked on this car, it's been a solid and stable car. It's just 4859. And that's the number and that's the name. It's a great race car."
WHAT WENT WRONG AT THE END OF THE REGULAR SEASON?JJ
"It's hard to say. We had some failures. I made mistakes. We lost some momentum. Something happened. I don't know why or what. I guess it's a good thing in some respects when you start to have that bad luck. The failures show up and you make more mistakes. It's kind of hard to right the ship."
YOU WORK WITH THE NO. 24 TEAM ALL THE TIME. THIS IS CHAMPIONSHIP WEEK, BASICALLY, SO AT WHAT POINT DO YOU STOP WORKING TOGETHER?CK
"As far as I'm concerned, it'll get separated after the last pit stop at Homestead. If there is a caution with 30 laps to go, everybody comes down pit road and we make our adjustments and then its up to the drivers at that point. Prior to that, it's going to be business as usual. We're going to give them everything that we do. They're going to give us everything they do. We'll continue to race each other like gentlemen on the race track and it'll never stop."

RICK HENDRICK NOW HOLDS THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF OWNER WINS AT THIS TRACK WITH 11. CAN YOU COMMENT ON THAT?JJ
"That's huge. I had no idea this win did that. Rick is doing well and he's trying to find some normalcy and to get things back at his dealerships and at the race track as well. We were testing last week and I spoke to him briefly on the phone. I haven't seen him but I think he's doing as well as can be expected. He sounded very happy on the phone in victory lane. I know he's smiling. With this race track and how long he's been in this sport, I know that what we did today and him taking that lead will mean a lot to him."
THIS IS THE 5TH TRACK YOU HAVE SWEPT JJ
"I don't know what it takes to do that, but I'm pretty happy we've been able to come back and do that. I think our challenge next year is to try to come back and win again.

"We seem to be able to do it in one season, but the next calendar year has been tough on the repeat. I guess that means our set-ups were good the first time and it wasn't luck."
PLEASE EXPLAIN THE SITUATION WITH KEVIN HARVICK ON THE TRACK TODAYJJ
"I have no idea and I look forward to finding out myself soon. Going down pit road before the race started, he was barking something at me and I couldn't understand what he was saying but I knew he wasn't wishing me good luck. And then throughout the race, he was trying to crowd me and race me and try to run me into the fence. I have no idea what his problem is. We'll find out soon. I'm confused."