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Johnson 2 For 2 – Wins Dover

Jimmie Johnson, driver of the #48 Lowe’s/Kobalt Tools Chevrolet, celebrates with a burnout after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series FedEx 400 Benefiting Autism Speaks at Dover International Speedway.  [Credit: Rainier Ehrhardt/Getty Images]

It was predictable.

With Jimmie Johnson finally picking up his first victory this season last weekend at Charlotte and his stellar record at Dover, Sunday’s race looked to be another win for the Hendrick Motorsports driver in the FedEx 400 presented by Autism Speaks.

What started out this season as “when will Johnson win” questions now may have turned into “when will Johnson let someone else win” after Johnson picked up his second win in a row this season and a record ninth win at the Dover International Speedway.

But, Johnson’s domination, leading 272 of the 400 miles run in the race, came down to a late restart to complete the final four laps.

Johnson held off Brad Keselowski and Matt Kenseth to take the checkers.

Keselowski remained in second, followed to the line by Toyota drivers Kenseth, Clint Bowyer and Denny Hamlin to complete the top five.

What They Said:

Jimmie Johnson – #48 Kobalt Tools Chevrolet

I’d say the first segment of the race we were — we were decent but just couldn’t really go anywhere.  Kind of ran in fifth or sixth for a while, and I could see a couple guys losing the handle a little bit, and I was able to work my way up through.  But from the second run on, the track came to us, or I don’t know, something happened there, and the car was just incredible the rest of the day.

We had to adjust a bit.  I think the track changed the first three quarters of the race, and we had to stay on top of adjustments to get there, and then at the end, we really honed in on the balance of the race car I was after and what adjustments to put under it, and that thing was awesome.

[With] 10 to go, just hoping it would stay green, and then when the caution came out, I’m scouring the track looking for where the debris might be, and I saw some rubber off line and assumed that’s what it was for.  I was hopeful I would see like a bumper lane out there, something big and noticeable.  But cautions at the end, you can kind of expect them for whatever reason, and truthfully it’s an opportunity for the guy that’s dominated all day to make a mistake, so I wanted to make sure I chose the right lane and got a good restart and got up through the gears well, and that all worked out for us.

We can get on a roll.  We’ve got some good tracks ahead for us.  I think that tracks really build momentum for teams and drivers, and going to Charlotte is a great track, here is a great track for us, Pocono next weekend is Chad’s favorite racetrack, and I think you can look ahead at the summer months and see who historically runs well at different tracks and kind of pick your favorites.  It certainly has been that way for us.  The tracks we’ve been bad at, we’ve gone there and been embarrassed by our performance, and then the tracks that are good to us still have been good to us.

Brad Keselowski – #2 Miller Lite Ford

We just had an up-and-down day.  I started up front, and that’s a part, and faded to the back pretty early in the race.  Just weren’t where we needed to be in the car.  Paul Wolfe and the team made some good adjustments and got us where we needed to be, and took back off and had a couple really strong runs and drove from I can’t remember whether it was 13th or 14th up to second there.  Thought we were going to get a crack at Jimmie and then that last caution came out and we just kind of whiffed on pit road, came out way behind.

Drove back up there, and with the help of the restart got up to second, and I think we were pretty close to even to Jimmie, it was just a matter of who was going to be out front, and we just never could really take advantage of our pit stall to get in front of him.

[Regarding changes that were made to the pit crew this week]  We’re just not where we want to be.  We haven’t been where we want to be for probably the last year and a half, and it’s keeping us from winning races.  You know, I think that’s the bottom line.  We’re making adjustments and we’re going to continue to make adjustments until we get it right.  I feel really good about the last one we made, and the guy who stepped in did an excellent job in his position, but we still weren’t where we needed to be in others.  We have to keep working.

Matt Kenseth – #20 Dollar General Toyota

It was a solid day for us.  We started in the middle.  I did a poor job qualifying, and we were able to just slowly work our way to the front.  We had good stops, good strategy, good adjustments.  The 48 [Jimmie Johnson], the 4 [Kevin Harvick], a few other guys, Brad got going the last couple runs, they just were better than us, couldn’t quite get the balance, 24 [Jeff Gordon] at times.  There was that one group of cars that were just a couple tenths off and we couldn’t quite run with them.  But overall it was a solid day, just need to get just a little bit faster.

[Regarding the final restart, where Kenseth spun his tires]  I think they’re still spinning.  I’m just dumb.  The 48 spun them, and I spun them a little bit, and I was kind of in his door and I tried grabbing third early thinking that would get it to stop spinning and it didn’t, and I just needed to do a better job.  I needed to let off the gas and let the rear tires quit screaming so I could get rolling.

I was still trying to get it going.  I think I was still spinning tires in fourth gear, and Clint hit me I guess trying to give me a push there and just destroyed our car.  I think I destroyed it.  I was glad to still finish after that.

When you come to Dover it’s always the 48 [Jimmie Johnson].  I mean, they are just unbelievable here.  If you’re going to have a shot to win here, that’s the car you’re going to have to beat every time unless they break.  It’s not unexpected when you come here, and I don’t know if you guys notice, but he’s pretty good at all the racetracks.  I always think they’re one of the favorites no matter where we go, and obviously all the Hendrick and Stewart-Haas cars have been showing a ton of speed all year long, been in position to win a lot of races.  We’ve got to figure out how to get ahead of them.

Clint Bowyer – #15 Cherry 5-hour ENERGY Toyota

I was just trying to help (Kenseth). We were all spinning like crazy and I had a pretty good run at him. I knocked him into the wall and I was like: “Not another (Joe) Gibbs (Racing) car.”

Bowyer earlier in the race made contact with JGR’s Kyle Busch sending Busch into the wall ending Busch’s chances of sweeping all three races at Dover this weekend. Busch won the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race on Friday and NASCAR Nationwide series race on Saturday.  Busch had led the opening 81 laps of the Sprint Cup Series race on Sunday.

Danica Patrick –  #10 GoDaddy Chevrolet

[Regarding a pit road speeding penalty late in the race on lap 322] It’d be interesting to see where we would have finished had we not had that penalty.  It didn’t kill us, but it’d be interesting to see. We were pretty rough at the beginning of the race, but we got it better in the later going. Actually we’re running really good laps. We’d just lost a few laps by that point and couldn’t get them back. But we battled through and did OK. It’s our best finish here, and I think we’re getting better.

Kurt Busch – #41 Haas Automation Chevrolet

It’s unfortunate we had a loose wheel that dropped us a couple laps down.  The Haas Automation Chevrolet was pretty good today, and I thought we could have been in position to run up front until the end. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out that way for us today. It’s frustrating, but we are working to get better each week. It’s just hard when you run pretty well all day and don’t get the finish. We’ll take what we learned today and keep working at it.

Chad Knaus – Crew Chief for Jimmie Johnson #48 Kobalt Tools Chevrolet

Going into the 600 last weekend I told Jimmie we were taking his favorite race car to the racetrack for the 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and I told him that his new favorite car was going to be going to Dover the following week, and then I told him his next favorite car was going to be going to Indianapolis.  So far I’m doing pretty good, and hopefully we can keep it true.

We’ve worked really hard.  The one thing I’m really impressed with at Hendrick Motorsports is when we do get behind, which we feel like we’ve been just a pinch behind this year, everybody digs down really, really deep and they work hard, from the pit crew, from the guys that hang the bodies to the guys that build the chassis to the guys that build the engines and they try to find an advantage.  When we do finally start to hit our stride, all those things that everybody worked on starts to culminate, and we can get out there and really start to make things happen.  I think we’re seeing a lot of the fruit of a lot of people’s labor right now at the racetrack, and definitely looking forward to getting to Pocono.  I’ve said it time and time again, Pocono is one of my favorite racetracks.  I think it’s a lot of fun.  It’s very difficult.  So from a driver standpoint, this is definitely a tough racetrack.  From a Pocono standpoint, it’s definitely difficult crew chief’s tough track, so I’m looking forward to getting there.

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