Comeback allowed Johnson to nab seventh top-three result in last eight races
RELATED: Full race results | Updated series standings
LONG POND, Pa. -- For all the convergence and planetary alignment of factors that seemed to stack up against the Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 team Sunday, Jimmie Johnson seemingly managed to turn back each one at Pocono Raceway. Still, a third-place result in spite of the obstacles left him eager for improvement after coming up short.
Johnson's rally to the short step of the podium in the Axalta "We Paint Winners" 400 cemented the No. 48 group's seventh top-three finish in the last eight NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races. But how he got there -- surviving a flat tire, a scrape with the wall, and issues during pre-race inspection -- made the result behind race winner Martin Truex Jr. and runner-up Kevin Harvick all the more impressive.
"Yeah, our race ability has been a shining spot for us this year," said Johnson, a three-time Pocono winner. "Today we really didn't have pace for the 78 (Truex) or the 4 (Harvick), so we've got to get to work there. With the damaged car we ran third, missing half the splitter and the right side knocked in, some hard racing on one of those restarts off Turn 3. To get a good result, we overcame a lot today, having to deal with a flat tire, the damage to the car, and then I got to third.
"We'll take it. Scrappy day for us, but not the end of the world, either."
The issues began early for Johnson and Co. with difficulty getting their entry through pre-race inspection. The No. 48 was presented to the pit-road grid an hour before Sunday's 400-miler but not until after at least one extra trip through the inspection line.
Ron Malec, car chief for Hendrick's No. 48, said the issue dealt with measurements slightly outside the laser inspection's tolerances, but indicated that trying to catch Truex's Furniture Row Racing team and Harvick's Stewart-Haas Racing outfit was the driving motivation.
"You have to get everything you can before the race, and the machine reads certain things and we didn't have a good baseline for the morning or anything," Malec said post-race. "So it read a little high and we adjusted it once and missed it by just a tick. It's just a matter of hitting it right on the number, and you want everything you can for the most advantage you can get from all of those.
"It just helps. Guys like the 78 and the 4 are so fast, it's hard to compete with them, so you have to make sure everything's right and we just missed it a little bit."
After those issues subsided, Johnson started ninth and was among several drivers caught in a yo-yo effect up and down the leaderboard on widely varying pit-stop strategies. But the six-time series champion faded to the low point of his pendulum just past the halfway mark, when a left-front tire went flat in the 87th of 160 laps.
After falling to the tail end of the lead-lap running order, Johnson methodically rallied back into the top 10 before more trouble cropped up. Racing in close quarters with Joey Logano and Matt Kenseth forced his No. 48 and Logano's No. 22 to kiss the outside wall in Turn 3 with 26 laps remaining, causing Johnson to key his in-car radio to say, "Can you thank the 20 (Kenseth) for driving me into the frontstretch wall, please?"
Johnson and Kenseth had a calm, civil post-race discussion on pit road about the incident, a run-in that Johnson and Logano shared a laugh about later.
"I really don't know what happened," Kenseth said. "I've got to go watch it on TV, but I thought I was under the 22 (Joey Logano) and the 48 hit the wall and they said they moved up there or something. I don't know -- I've got to go home and watch it, to be honest with you."
Johnson continued to gain ground during a series of late-race restarts, but still lamented the team's performance deficit behind Truex and Harvick. Johnson wound up slightly more than 12 seconds behind Truex, a distant third at the checkered flag; his deficit back from second-place Harvick was almost 11 seconds.
Johnson leads the series with four victories already this season, but still remained eager to reverse Sunday's seeming disparity. The mammoth comeback and resulting top-three finish left him encouraged about his team's ability to regain its performance perch.
"I think it says that we're doing a good job," Johnson said. "Our car drives good in traffic, which is something I didn't have last year, so I'm very happy to have that. I've had to pass a lot of cars through this first part of the season, from poor qualifying efforts or a flat tire like we had today.
"I think we're doing well. We still need more speed, even if we're the fastest car, I'd probably still want more, but to have the 78 and the 4 so far ahead and the speed that Kevin showed in practice and what kind of speed is really in our Hendrick equipment, we've got to keep working. We're not really where we need to be exactly."