Jimmie Johnson Hard Quotations

I was slowly catching Matt before that last caution. I think we could have got up there to race with him but, if it stayed green, I believe Matt had it in the bag. Then we got that last yellow. I thought long and hard about what I would do if I was protecting the lead. I knew I wanted to be on the outside. I faked kind of to the bottom and he kind of bought it.

He's been talking to me for seven or eight years about having an auction, but when you love something like he loves this business, it's really hard to let go. This is an amazing collection. It would take someone 10 years to get the variety of clocks that are here.

I was a little confused too. But maybe his strategy was to race the two contenders hard and maybe the caution would come out in the process.

Crew chiefs try to find advantages. It's a deal where you try to massage the gray areas. We're all flirting with that fine line. I sleep well knowing that Chad is working hard to get me an advantage.

If you're hitting your stride, you're all about the Chase starting. If you're downhill fighting your way up, you'd want a couple of weeks before the Chase starts so you can sort out your own stuff. We didn't get off to a good start last year and almost won it so we'll just have to work hard and see what happens.

I kind of view it as jealousy, and he doesn't have a crew chief in there working hard enough to make his cars as good. This team has worked too hard to even have those kind of comments thrown at them, and I'm going to be very defensive over it.

I know how hard they've been working for a win.

The drivers, we just get in and drive the cars. I do know that the team and crew chief are going to work as hard as they can to work the gray areas, and with that in mind gray areas were looked at and worked over and when the car came back the template didn't fit. So, Chad, the team, myself will accept what happened.

I want to say thank you to everybody at Hendrick Motorsports for their hard work...Obviousl y, the front row is very special, big thank you to Chevrolet and my awesome sponsor Lowe's Home Improvement !