Driver mostly concerned with those caught up in final lap wreck
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Jimmie Johnson didn’t get any help, and the only way to beat Dale Earnhardt Jr. in Sunday night’s Coke Zero 400 was to have help. Lots and lots of help.
Johnson, three times a winner at Daytona International Speedway, including once in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series’ summer stop here, led five times for 35 laps. He lined up for a final, green-white-checkered finish second, on the outside of his Hendrick Motorsports teammate.
The opportunity, he said, was there on more than one occasion in the 161-lap race.
“Yeah, restart‑wise, I was excited to have a front‑row opportunity and just hopeful that the scenario behind me would play out right,” Johnson said.
The excitement was short-lived.
“I don’t know what went on,” he said. “I had two or three shots at it and we just couldn’t get our lane to go.”
And as was the case most of the night in a race that started more than 3 1/2 hours past its scheduled start time of approximately 8 p.m. ET due to inclement weather, Earnhardt was able to deftly switch lanes, picking up the push of the faster line of cars that kept his No. 88 Chevrolet safely out front.
Johnson’s final opportunity came on a green-white-checkered restart that extended the race one lap beyond its scheduled distance.
“The last restart I think the 6 car (of Trevor Bayne) was more focused on setting up a run down the back straightaway and was backing up to the car behind him and I got a great start with Junior and was door to door with him, but didn’t have any help getting through (Turns) 1 and 2,” Johnson sad. “I lost control of my lane, and Junior was so strong all night; you give him control of the race, he’s not going to give that up.”
Earnhardt led seven times for 96 laps.
The race was slowed eight times for accidents on the track, and ended under a hail of smoke and debris after Austin Dillon’s Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet was launched into the fencing on the frontstretch.
“Happy to be 1-2,” Johnson said of his runner-up finish to his HMS teammate, “but clearly thinking about the accident that happened and the people in the stands.
“It sounds like things are well out there, which is shocking. I’m shocked that Austin Dillon is even alive, what he went through. Just a frightening moment. I saw it in the mirror, and man, I expected the worst when I came back around.”
Johnson swept both Daytona races in 2013, and scored his first Daytona 500 victory in 2006. He’s seen his share of crashes here, and he’s been involved in his share as well.
“I assumed that the 3 (Dillon) was backwards and it lifted off from that, but it was actually the 11 (of Denny Hamlin) was backwards and the 3 bumped him and got some air under the nose of the car and then it just peeled the car up off the ground,” he said.
“I don’t know how you help the cars in that scenario. Slow us down, certainly. Slow us down, we get further below the lift‑off point, and that could be something to look at. But what I thought happened didn’t happen. I was shocked to see the car get off the ground as it did from that type of contact.”