Knaus, 48 team stumped for second week in a row (cont'd)

Johnson's second consecutive title defending season is only four races old, but it hasn't begun the way the champ, his crew chief or their Hendrick team expected.

Sunday's race at Atlanta epitomized it, as the man who had won both 2007 races on the fast, 1.54-mile oval struggled to qualify 11th, then never threatened to get near the front of the pack on his way to a 13th-place finish.

Last year, after four races Johnson had won twice and was fourth in the standings, 28 points out of first.

This season is the first exclusively using NASCAR's new chassis with which Johnson, Knaus and company scored five of their league-leading 10 victories last season. But following one second-place at Auto Club Speedway, along with two finishes of 27th and 29th to go with Sunday's stinker, Johnson is unofficially 13th in the standings, 198 points behind leader Busch.

So far, Earnhardt -- the newest recruit at Hendrick -- is the best of the organization in the standings, unofficially in sixth after Atlanta. Jeff Gordon's fifth-place finish Sunday enabled him to jump eight spots, to 15th; while fourth driver Casey Mears has been plagued by lousy luck but used a workable 17th-place finish Sunday to jump five spots to 30th.

The storylines at Atlanta were many and, after his sub-par run Johnson's media obligations were few, so he quickly left the garage. None of his comments were available.

For the past two seasons -- even over their entire seven-year Cup career -- Johnson and Knaus have been an efficient, effective tandem surrounded by an equally enabled crew. But so far, other than an effective, pole-winning outing at Daytona and the California performance, the new car has been a mystery to them on NASCAR's intermediate speedways.

Knaus said no additional testing is scheduled, short term.

"Right now my guys are so whipped and the driver's so whipped with everything we've had going on, I need to probably give them a little bit of time off after Bristol," Knaus said. "So we'll just have to see how it works out."

After the Daytona opener and three consecutive races on "intermediate" racetracks, the series returns to Bristol, where the new car made its debut a year ago, followed by a week later at Martinsville, where Johnson scored his first victory with the car.

Knaus said there were even plusses and minuses to that.

"I'd rather just skip Bristol, to be honest with you, but of course the way we're running, it really won't hurt us too much," Knaus said with a laugh. "But I'm looking forward to Martinsville, for sure."

Knaus said that, with the exception of different tires and some minor rules adjustments, the car the team will take to Martinsville, where Johnson survived a savage pounding of his rear bumper by teammate Gordon over the race's final laps before holding him off by scant feet, will be the same.

But with the limited adjustments that can be made to make the tires work better with the new chassis, there's one thing that might not change any time soon.

"There are no tools," Knaus said of the car's limited adjustability, as he laughed despite himself. "And that's frustrating."