From the Pit Box with crew chief Chad Knaus

The last two times the Nextel Cup Series has gone to Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the No. 48 Chevrolet has ended up in Victory Lane. Jimmie Johnson's worst finish there is 16th, and he's led laps in all five events in which he's competed.

Needless to say, crew chief Chad Knaus has the 1.5-mile oval figured out. But just as his team begins to hit its groove there, track officials go and change the configuration.

Progressive banking that reaches 20 degrees in the turns has replaced the flat corners. Knaus says that's just part of the sport, and he's still not worried about his team's chances in Sunday's UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 (4 p.m. ET, FOX)

Q: With the newly configured track at Las Vegas, how does that change your preparation going into this weekend?

Knaus: It doesn't change our preparation a whole lot, to be quite frank. For all intents and purposes, it's a new venue. The track is a lot different. It's a lot more like a Texas-style of racetrack now that's very fast. But we were very fortunate enough to be able to test and we came back, looked at the data and looked at what went on out there. We actually had a very good test, so it was easy when we left that we said, 'OK, this is what we need to go back with.' So we didn't leave there with a lot of question marks.

Two unique things are since the test, NASCAR had decided we're going to go back with the smaller fuel cell as opposed to the new fuel cell they made mandatory for every event this year. We're going back to a small fuel cell, which is a 12-gallon fuel cell, and that's what we'll be running at Las Vegas.

The other unique thing is the tires we were using at the Las Vegas test have changed, and we're going back with a different left-side tire from what we had tested there.

Q: Do those changes with the fuel cell and the tires concern you?

Knaus: Oh yeah. But that's the cool thing about what we do. Our team is very good at adapting to change. That's part of it, unfortunately. We caught wind of it at Daytona that they were going to change the fuel cells, so we had enough time to prepare so I think we're ready.

Q: What did you learn from the Las Vegas test that you will take back with you this weekend?

Knaus: We learned a lot about the configuration of the racetrack and the track being completely different. It was a flat track and now it's a high-banked track. That's probably the biggest thing that we learned there. (Continued)