Johnson, Knaus return to scene of 48's 'worst' race (cont'd)

But it wasn't quite that simple. That Sunday afternoon had been a contentious one, and while the No. 48 car went backward, Johnson and Knaus sparred over team radio. All those sponsor representatives, they discovered later, had been listening in.

"It was extremely humbling, and almost embarrassing in some ways," Johnson said. "One, obviously the performance, but two, to be so frustrated over the radio. Chad and I weren't holding any punches back. We forget that there are so many people listening, especially the 3,000 that were visiting and were in the sponsor tent after. To walk in and have them recite some of the smart remarks that I had for Chad and he had for me, it was embarrassing on that front, and really helped me kind of recognize who's listening and all that stuff. It was a humbling and an embarrassing experience all in one."

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No one saw it coming. Although the No. 48 team had struggled in practice a week earlier at Auto Club Speedway in Southern California, they borrowed a setup from Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon and finished second. They thought they had things figured out. And then they came to Las Vegas and fell apart quicker than a blackjack player hitting on 19.

"We totally missed it again," Johnson said, "and never got it back."

They went back to the same well, borrowing another setup from Gordon's team. It didn't work. They borrowed a setup from teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. It didn't work. It was at that point they realized they had a severe problem, one that clearly manifested itself Sunday on the race track.

"How often have you seen us get lapped on the race track without something being wrong?" Knaus asked. "We got lapped twice on the race track running full speed. We were a second and a half, two seconds off the pace. That's uncharacteristic of our team. For other teams that's acceptable. For us that's not."

Johnson's car had seemed a little off in preseason testing, but at the time no one was overly concerned. The businesslike No. 48 team still had a sterling record on 1.5-mile intermediate tracks, as all those race victories at Charlotte, Atlanta and even Las Vegas would attest. But last year's debacle shook that confidence, and precipitated a rigorous testing schedule designed to get the program back to where Knaus felt it needed to be. How long did that take? Months, according to Johnson.

"This race here made us think, OK, we really have something here we need to work out," Johnson said. "From this point forward, it took two or three months before we started breathing easier. I'd say really in my eyes, it wasn't until July at Chicago, when we raced [Kyle Busch] for the win at the end, that's when I felt like, all right, we've caught up now to where we need to be."

Knaus said he never doubted. "I knew we could do it, it was just a matter of actually doing it," the crew chief said. "We are capable of doing a lot of things. It's just a matter of finding the ingredients and putting things where they needed to be, that would be the tough thing. I knew we were capable of doing it."

This year is different -- NASCAR's recession-induced ban on testing at sanctioned tracks would severely handcuff the No. 48 team should they need to rebound from another Vegas bust. But early indications are that won't happen again. Johnson was a strong fourth in Friday's opening practice for the Shelby 427. At least one casino, the Palms, has installed Johnson as a 9-2 favorite to win Sunday. There's no sponsor event planned for after the race. And Johnson and Knaus have proven they know how to learn from experience. Everything seems easy compared to leaving Las Vegas.

"It wasn't fun last year. We did get nervous about the Chase and some other things, but deep down inside, we didn't panic and kind of fall apart as a race team, because we had the experience of going down to the basement and working our way back up," Johnson said. "It's a great characteristic of this race team. I think we've been tested time and time again, and we've continued to work hard and come back and be competitive after a period of time."