Eventful race ends in runner-up finish for Johnson

Throughout Sunday’s Food City 500 in Support of Steve Byrnes and Stand Up to Cancer at Bristol Motor Speedway, it appeared the Hendrick Motorsports driver was destined for just another one of his rough days at Bristol.

The end result was anything but.

“Yeah, the first half of the race or first third of the race I was behind the 24 (of Jeff Gordon) and we just worked our way up through the field and things went pretty smoothly,” Johnson said. “I had a very fast race car and felt like we were going to have a strong night. And then one of the restarts midway through the race, the 41 (of Busch), I don’t know what happened, but he lost control, got into me. I went into the outside wall in Turn 3, and a caution came out.

“We had a fair amount of damage to the right‑rear quarterpanel. I didn’t think I hit that hard, but after I got out of the race car and saw the damage, no wonder it didn’t drive very good after that, and we needed two or three pit stops to get the quarterpanel pushed back down so there was some sideforce on the back of the car on corner entry and once we did that, we weren’t as good as we were at the start of the race but still very competitive.”

“Very competitive” is an understatement.

On pit road after the race, Johnson said that he wished he “had a straight race car, because I had a really fast race car.”

Fast enough, as it were, to put himself back on the lead lap after falling off because of the run-in with Busch.

“You just can’t (describe a race like that),” said Johnson, now fourth in points. “You’ve got to keep digging the whole time. We were down a lap with some pretty severe damage to the right side and I thought we were out. Maybe could hang around and get back on the lead lap, but the guys kept working. … and we were able to get going.”

Even beyond Johnson’s meteoric recovery throughout the race, it was an overall thrilling event.

The Food City 500 saw another driver enter the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup field and end a 51-race winless streak, Team Penkse teammates accidentally run each other over and tempers flare a bit on the track before cooler heads prevailed off of it.

We saw a competitive, anybody-can-win type of race throughout.

Just like the good old days.

“I think (the track is) potentially heading towards the old Bristol. Just thinking it through a bit, when we had to race the bottom, everybody gets so mad at one another and punts each other out of the way. We’re getting pretty pissed off at one another riding around the top and there’s a lot more contact,” Johnson said, as Gordon and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. vigorously nodded along during their joint post-race press conference. “Now, when you get into somebody there’s really nowhere for them to go, but I think as we continue to race here and continue to run around the top, we’re going to see it turn into the ‑‑ it’ll never be the old Bristol — but something very similar.

“Frustration is so high. … It doesn’t matter if you’re catching a guy that’s four laps down with crash damage. You can’t pass them if they run the top. It’s just so tough. So it was whacky. But I think there’s more potential yet.”

And to think, it almost didn’t even happen.

Things looked grim before the race and a 3-hour, 58-minute halt after the first 22 laps wasn’t encouraging, either. Eventually the race was completed, but the checkered flag didn’t fly until April 20 was quickly approaching.

Old Bristol or New Bristol, it luckily doesn’t take much time to dry a 0.533-mile track, especially with Air Titan 2.0.

“The one thing that does make a difference here is how fast the track can dry, and I think it caught people off guard,” Johnson said. “I think Tony (Stewart) might have been a little tardy getting to his race car to get started.

“Wild night, but glad to get it in.”

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