JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET SS – INVOLVED IN A FINAL PRACTICE CRASH AT MICHIGAN INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY.
 

 
IN REGARDS TO THE ACCIDENT:
“That was definitely part of it.  I’m a little puzzled as to why I spun out going in because I’ve had great entry stability even on that run I had great entry stability.  I got a little close to the No. 27 but then again it’s not like I was right on him.  To me it felt like I lost downforce just from the traffic scenario.  I’m not really sure either way we have a torn up car and we will have to work hard to get this one ready to go.  Hopefully make a couple of laps here before this session is up and take it from there.”IT SEEMS LIKE YOU HAVE A GOOD BACK-UP CAR:
“Very good back-up car went out and put down an eight or 10 lap run there at the end that I would put up against anybody’s time.  I hate the extra work load, but we are trying to figure out what really happened because I had no sign of lose and certainly spun out and crashed.  The No. 88 came over and he said that he felt there may have been some oil down and he slipped real bad going through there.  Then we are trying to look at our tires and get an understanding of what might have happened because lose was not in the characteristics of the car and then I end up spinning out and going in.  It would be nice to figure out why so we know, but regardless we’ve got a back-up car that we’ve gone to and hopefully the race engine is still in good shape and we can put it in the back-up car and not have any issues with our grid position.”

YESTERDAY YOU HAD A CUT TIRE WHICH WAS SORT OF ODD DID YOU GUYS FIGURE THAT OUT?
“Yeah it was a valve core issue with the right front as we are rolling into tech the valve core was leaking air and NASCAR was like ‘hey we would love to tech your car, but you need tires we air in them, so get out of line and come back’.  So we had to put a different set of tires on for qualifying and got through inspection.”

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO FOR TONIGHT?
“If we can understand why it will help us with the last adjustment we made when we were on the track and decide if that is the direction we want to go in.  Because it produced the fastest lap and then I crashed.  If not we will back up a step and then play it safe there, but it was really nice to get out there and get some laps on the car and get our heights right and get the splitter broken in.  That was real important to get at least one run on the car.”