Jimmie Johnson was able to slide into his pit easily all day with no one blocking him from the rear (above).
By Ryan Smithson, Turner Sports Interactive
March 22, 2004
11:58 AM EST (1658 GMT)
Even Jimmie Johnson admitted it. He didn't have the best car late in the Carolina Dodge Dealers 400.
Bobby Labonte did. But Labonte didn't win the race off pit road, so he didn't win.
It was that simple. The 2004 version of Darlington Raceway made it extremely difficult to pass, and Labonte didn't have enough time to pull it off in just four laps.
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It wasn't like Labonte's pit crew lost him the race. Far from it. But their outstanding final stop by beaten by an extraordinary one – and a little help with pit stall selection.
"The guys did a great job in the pits and got better throughout the day by tweaking on it," Labonte said. "That wasn't good enough for us, but it was almost good enough for us."
Johnson's pit crew is fairly new – they've only worked together as a unit since the middle of 2003. They are young, fast, and excitable.
"We have a couple of guys on our pit crew that are just animals," crew chief Chad Knaus said. "They go flat-out 24 hours a day.
"That's great in some cases, but when you're out there doing a pit stop and you have to be smooth and methodical and follow the choreography of the pit stop, you've just got to calm down a little bit."
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Knaus' choice of pit stalls gave Johnson easy access in and out pit road, which obviously made the difference on the final stop.
Johnson pitted at the far end of pit road -- near Turn 4 -- and he was able to enter and exit the pits without worrying about traffic.
Once the race progressed, Johnson found fewer and fewer lead-lap cars around him on pit road, enabling him to get off the lane quickly.
"The first part of the race (our stall) was hurting us because you've got a lot of cars and I'd have to leave my pit stall in traffic," Johnson said. "It worked out better in the second half of the race."
Cone costs Newman a lap
It was made of plastic. It was orange. And Ryan Newman clipped it on Lap 123.
In one of the stranger occurrences of the 2004 season, Ryan Newman hit a small cone entering pit road. Hitting the cone – used to mark the entrance to pit road – is a penalty, and it cost Newman a lap.
Despite repeated cautions that slowed his progress through the field, Newman rallied to a third-place finish.
"It was driver's error getting into pit road. I caught the cone," Newman said. "I think we had a car capable of winning, but it just didn't work out today."
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