Previous Dover tire test a boon to Johnson, Montoya

DOVER, Del. -- Jimmie Johnson and Juan Montoya will make up the front row for Sunday's AAA 400 at Dover International Speedway. They also happened to be two of the drivers invited to participate in a Goodyear tire test here in August. Obviously, track time with a new tire combination can be an advantage, but to what extent, especially when it involves two Chase challengers?

Johnson was one of the four teams that ran the newer compound, and won the pole with a lap of 157.356 mph. However, the No. 48 Chevrolet didn't seem to have much trouble with tires back in the spring, as Johnson dominated by leading 298 of the 400 laps, beating Tony Stewart by .861 seconds.

Practice perfect

Jimmie Johnson ran the fastest lap in Friday's qualifying session at the Monster Mile, touring the high-banked, concrete track in 22.878 seconds for the pole.

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Qualifying Video

• Johnson races to pole
• Montoya on front row

"Running laps never hurts," Johnson said. "From an engineering standpoint, the fact that we were able to get a current data set for us to take back to the shop and use on the machines was very important. As far as specifics, ironically, we showed up just like we were at the spring race and that's how we qualified the car. So even with the different tire, it seems we've ended up with the same setup we had.

On the other hand, Montoya didn't get a chance to run the new compound in August, and still ended up just .096 seconds off Johnson's pace.

"Most of the testing was done by Jimmie," Montoya said. "Jimmie and [A.J.] Allmendinger were the primaries on the tire test. We were secondaries. For us, it was more running to rubber up the track. Did it help? I don't know. We qualified third the last time I was here."

Ryan Newman, who qualified third, understood that Johnson and Montoya had more of an idea how the compound would react this weekend, but that doesn't guarantee anything when the green flag drops on Sunday.

"Goodyear and NASCAR do a good job of spreading it out and making sure everybody gets an opportunity, whether they take that opportunity or not, to test. Yeah, those guys should be up top," he said. "We'll get the advantage some day and whether it's at Dover or Charlotte or Phoenix or Martinsville, hopefully show that we can do the same things.

"That doesn't mean they're going to win the race."

Denny Hamlin wasn't so worried about advantages as he was critical about Goodyear's new compound.

"There was a tire test here, and from what I hear, they didn't bring back the tire that everyone liked again," Hamlin said. "Same as Atlanta. They keep increasing the stagger in the tires, and it just keeps making guys loose in and loose off.

"You'll see it during the race. You're going to see guys sliding all over the place, just like you were at Atlanta. I don't know. They won't listen to us drivers, so I don't know why we even tire test these race tracks anymore."

But Montoya defended Goodyear's decision, saying the previous tire just wasn't the right fit for 400 miles on Dover's rough concrete surface.

"If you looked at it last year, after first practice, there was people on cords and there was no rubber [on the track]," Montoya said. "If you look at the track right now, it's black. So they definitely improved the tire again. It's good to see Goodyear doing a really good job improving the tire and making a more competitive tire for everybody. It's nice to see."

In Johnson's opinion, with two more practice sessions scheduled for Saturday, everyone will be on equal footing by Sunday.

"There's no doubt that the tire test we had here that the tire was different," Johnson said. "It laid down more rubber and it made the car turn much stronger. And my suggestion to Goodyear was, 'We've done everything we can to make these cars turn. It would be nice if you could help us make the cars turn, and we can back off some of the crazy setups we're running, tighten the cars up, put some more mechanical grip in them and then maybe we can run side-by-side and maybe we can race better.'

"I think a lot of guys came with the setups they had before and it's too loose, and it's frustrating. By the time the race gets going, they'll have them all tightened up and where they need to be."

If anyone knows what it's like to be excluded from a critical tire test, it's Johnson, who didn't get a chance to test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. And he's quick to remind everyone how that all turned out.

"Goodyear contacts us and tells us where they'd like to use us," Johnson said. "I'd have liked to test Indy. There were 75,000 cars that got to test Indy and run laps and miles, and we didn't go. So you just go where they tell you to go and run and test.

"We tested here. It was our perk. There's no doubt there's an advantage, but we overcame that at Indy where he didn't have a chance to test and won the show."