{"id":21769,"date":"2018-09-08T13:40:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-08T18:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=21769"},"modified":"2018-09-09T20:48:23","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T01:48:23","slug":"jimmie-johnson-eager-to-turn-season-around-at-indy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/09\/08\/jimmie-johnson-eager-to-turn-season-around-at-indy\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimmie Johnson eager to turn season around at Indy"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

SPEEDWAY, Ind. \u2013 Jimmie Johnson<\/strong> was smiling, being his typical friendly, easy-going self, while answering reporters\u2019 questions at Indianapolis Motor Speedway<\/strong> Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Jimmie Johnson. (Photo by Josh Hedges\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

But far from side-stepping or making excuses for his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team\u2019s current season winless streak, the seven-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series<\/a> champion candidly spoke about how much he misses Victory Lane and has, genuinely, never been more motivated to raise another trophy.<\/p>\n

Hoisting the hardware is something Johnson has done repeatedly here at Indy. His four victories are twice as many as any other driver in the field for Sunday\u2019s Big Machine Vodka 400 at the Brickyard (1 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

He won Indianapolis in 2006, back-to-back in 2008-09 and then again in 2012. Only five-time winner Jeff Gordon has more victories here. Johnson finished runner-up in 2013 and was racing for the win last year when his Chevy suffered an oil leak and Johnson crashed out with two laps remaining.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/JimmieJohnson_09082018.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

\u201cIt is a very difficult track and it took me quite a few years to get the right rhythm and figure it out,\u2019\u2019 Johnson said. \u201cIt is a very unique track, like Dover and like Martinsville. Some of those challenging and unique tracks I\u2019ve just always taken to and have had good luck and success at. So, Indy now fits into that category. And a lot like Martinsville, my first few trips there, there is no way I thought I would win. And then once I got it, it started to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, this could be a very big turnaround race for us. I definitely believe that and feel it. We qualified well here last year and race well here and had a shot to win if it wasn\u2019t for the oil leak. I think the No. 78 (Martin Truex Jr.) and the No. 18 (Kyle Busch) were the class of the field and we were in that next group. So, if we do our part I think we can have a shot at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contending for a win this week would indicate a significant upshift for Johnson\u2019s No. 48 Chevrolet team. This has been an uncharacteristic season filled with frustration and disappointment for the 83-race winner and future NASCAR Hall of Famer.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s last win was June 4, 2017 at Dover International Speedway \u2013 49 races ago. He has never gone a full season without a win. In fact, he\u2019s never had a season without multiple wins \u2013 two victories in 2011 is his smallest single season trophy haul in 17 years at the Cup level.<\/p>\n

But through the first 25 races of 2018, Johnson has eight top-10s and two top-fives. His best showing is a third place at Bristol in April.<\/p>\n

Chase Elliott is the only member of Johnson\u2019s four-car Hendrick team to have reached Victory Lane (his first career win came at Watkins Glen last month).<\/p>\n

Austin Dillon won the season-opening Daytona 500, leading only the last lap. Those are the only points-paying wins for Chevrolet in 2018, but that\u2019s not to say the make hasn\u2019t been close and shown significant can-do of late. The new Camaro body has been a learning curve, but there are signs of promise.<\/p>\n

A three-time winner in 2017, Kyle Larson has five runner-up finishes and led eight races in the No. 42 Chevrolet this season. Elliott has four finishes of third or better in addition to his win.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, there are plenty of takeaways and plenty of things that we learned,\u2019\u2019 Johnson said of his season. \u201cKind of the over-arching thing for me is compounding mistakes. People make mistakes, but let\u2019s not make a bad situation worse. And sadly, we were kind of in a position that we weren\u2019t going to finish that race with the oil pump scenario [at Darlington last week].<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, that does take a little bit off of it. But, we just need to stop making mistakes. I think I was in a position and drove outside of my means and drove over the 100 percent level because I knew I had such a good car. And I\u2019m so eager to get back to winning and get back to leading laps that I just tried too hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, Johnson added, \u201cWe\u2019re all human, you know? And I\u2019ve made mistakes even when I\u2019ve been at my peak. I\u2019ve made a mistake and then I\u2019ve also made compounding mistakes. It\u2019s all part of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut as you (media) all know and we all know each other pretty well and could imagine just the frustration of not being where I want to be. And then, maybe relating back to your own things in life, when something\u2019s not going right you just try harder and harder. We\u2019re all human. And its just part of it. So, I just need to stop doing that (laughs). Easier said than done.\u201d<\/p>\n

And although Indianapolis is a notoriously demanding track \u2013 with only five repeat winners in 24 races \u2013 it\u2019s good vibes and fond memories for Johnson and he\u2019ll be riding that good juju this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t even put into words what it would mean and do,\u2019\u2019 Johnson said of scoring the win on Sunday. \u201cWe\u2019ve worked so hard and have had some good moments along the way that could have turned into great moments. And, mistakes on my behalf or the team or whatever it might be; bad luck, misfortune, we\u2019ve just not been able to capitalize on opportunities that have been there. Plus, we\u2019ve had a tough year.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, it\u2019s been extremely frustrating and extremely difficult to live through, but we are all still very eager to turn it around and know that we will. And, a win is the way to turn it around. So, we\u2019ve seen this team get hot at times and we\u2019ve been unstoppable.<\/p>\n

“A win would be the starting point of that. So, I\u2019m very hopeful we can get that done this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service SPEEDWAY, Ind. \u2013 Jimmie Johnson was smiling, being his typical friendly, easy-going self, while answering reporters\u2019 questions at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Saturday morning. But far from side-stepping or making excuses for his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team\u2019s current season winless streak, the seven-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion candidly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":16964,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[303,421,63,16],"class_list":["post-21769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-brickyard-400","tag-indianapolis-motor-speedway","tag-jimmie-johnson","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/MENCS-ACS-JOHNSON-031618.jpg?fit=1976%2C1438&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-5F7","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21770,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21769\/revisions\/21770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}