Long faces, but no short hopes in No. 48 garage

LONG POND, Pa. -- Jimmie Johnson lacked what he considered to be about 150 yards of saving a probable top-10 finish in Sunday's Pocono 500.

Johnson, whose No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet ran in the top 10 at Pocono Raceway for 72 of the race's first 90 laps, was victimized when his car's left front tire exploded on Lap 90 (watch video).

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That's never good -- but Johnson's issue was compounded by where it occurred.

"The tire just exploded -- like a grenade," Johnson said. "But that didn't cause the damage. It happened right before the start / finish line.

"If it had happened 150 yards earlier, I would have been able to come to pit road -- but as it was, I had to drive around, two-and-a-half miles -- and that ground the sway bar mount off."

Johnson's trouble was compounded when no caution flew during his trip around the track, despite race viewers with high definition TV reporting copious amounts of debris spewing from Johnson's stricken car.

Johnson went to pit road first, and then back to the garage, where his crew replaced the sway bar mount in less than 10 laps.

But it was damage done for the defending Nextel Cup champion, as he fell to 42nd in the rundown, nine laps down to race-winning teammate Jeff Gordon (watch video).

It was a bitter blow for the group, as Johnson had been in the top 10 from the start until pit stops under caution at about Lap 66, when a large number of cars took two or no tires. That left Johnson 20th at the restart.

He'd made his way back into the top 10 just before the tire problem occurred.

Neither Johnson nor crew chief Chad Knaus felt they'd seen inordinate wear on their tires in their previous changes.

"We're not sure what happened," Johnson said. "We had no issues on our first run, and that tire is so destroyed we'll never know what happened to it.

"We don't know if it was punctured and we don't know if it was our fault, but the bottom line is, there really wasn't anything we could do about it." (Continued)