May sweeps

Team Lowe's looks to complete Charlotte success

Yes! What a great win for Team Lowe's last Saturday night in The Winston. I can think of a million reasons to be excited about this win, but the one that comes to mind is redemption for last season. While we didn't win two segments like last year, we did win one, and that one is the one that matters and the one that puts us back in Victory Lane.

I'm also really happy that we put Lowe's in victory lane for the first time at its home track. Lowe's has been such a great partner in this team and has offered so much support to this team since they came aboard. To have us pull the Lowe's Power of Pride Chevy into Victory Lane and see those guys jumping up and down and as excited as we were Saturday night was a lot of fun.

I'm really proud of the way this team continues to pull together and get the job done. We made some changes to the team following the Richmond race and the guys didn't hesitate to step it up and take on more responsibility to ensure that we would be solid coming into last weekend. It's great that through all of that and all of the things that have gone on this season to get the reward of getting into victory lane.

Now we move on to the longest race of the season, the Coca-Cola 600. This might sound funny, but in many ways, we feel that we have a better shot at a good run or a possible win in this race than we did in The Winston even though there's 43 cars in the 600. It's just because of the simple fact that you can predict a little bit better what's going to happen in the 600 than you can in The Winston. With the experience that Jimmie Johnson has gotten over the past year and the experience that the team has gotten, I feel pretty confident heading into this weekend.

I said it in last week's edition -- there is not better driver at Lowe's Motor Speedway than Jimmie and he proved it with last weekend's win. Because of our test and because of last weekend's win, I know that if Jimmie is on his game Sunday like he was last Saturday, he will be very hard to beat.

Chad Knaus is the crew chief for Jimmie Johnson, driver of the No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet Monte Carlo for Hendrick Motorsports. His column will appear weekly on SI.com.

 

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