The car faces its toughest course

This is going to sound funny, but in many ways, I’m pleased with our performance in Michigan. I’m not pleased with a 16th-place finish, but I am pleased that we fought all day and worked our butts off to get what we could get out of that race. We kept ourselves under control and didn’t force anything.

Team Lowe’s needs to think "big picture" each week and look at the season as a whole, not just one race. While winning is very important to us and is what we strive for each week, having solid runs that get us points to keep us in the title hunt, that is what is most important. You won't stay in the top 10 overall if you wreck or make stupid mistakes each week.

This week Team Lowe’s is off to Infineon Raceway in the wine country of Sonoma, Calif. We’re very excited to get back to Sonoma where we had a great run going last season in our first Winston Cup race there before a rear gear failure cost us a top-10 finish, leaving us in 35th place with our second DNF of the season.

That is why mechanical reliability is going to be the most important thing for Team Lowe’s this weekend. Jimmie Johnson will be, among other things, jumping curbs, braking hard, shifting a lot and dealing with rocks on the course, so we need to make sure that the Lowe’s Chevy can take that abuse and keep on going.

We’re bringing a brand new Lowe’s Chevy to Infineon this weekend. This is a Chevy that we tested at Virginia International Raceway at the beginning of the month and Jimmie really got a good feel for the race car in just a few laps. The guys have worked hard to make sure that we can do everything humanly possible to prepare the race car and I’m confident we’ll have a very solid run in Sonoma this weekend.

It will be important for Jimmie to be on his game this weekend and the pit crew guys, too. Jimmie will need to be focused the entire 110 laps. It is very hard to pass at Infineon, so he’ll need to be setting guys up five to 10 laps in advance so when they give him that window, he can jump on it and get the necessary track position.

Speaking of track position, Infineon is a track that we cannot afford to have costly pit stops. As I just mentioned, we cannot afford to give up track position in the pits because it is just too hard to make it up. So we need to be consistent and strong in the pits this week, something these guys have done week in and week out. If we can put all of these things together, Team Lowe’s should have a great run this weekend at Infineon.

Keys to success at Sonoma
Lowe's Chevy	Infineon is the hardest track on a race car and you have to be mechanically reliable for the entire race.
Driver	Jimmie will have to be able to adapt to the ever-changing conditions of the course.
Track Position	We’ll need to have a strong qualifying effort, great pit stops and great driving to make the pass on a track the is extremely difficult to pass on.

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.

 

Related information

Stories

B. Duane Cross: For starters, less is more Around the Track with Ricky Rudd: Sonoma NASCAR signs 10-year sponsorship deal with Nextel

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video