Johnson Confident for Chase, Calls for Instant Replay in Officiating

By Ron Lemasters Jr.

CONCORD, N.C. -- Jimmie Johnson isn’t often going to admit he’s nervous about anything. He’s a champion NASCAR driver and regularly does things in a car that would give most people chills.

But he had never hopped in a 10,000-horsepower Top Fuel dragster before, and started it up.

“I’m actually nervous,” he quipped to Tony Schumacher, who drives the beast on a weekly basis, as he lowered himself into the shell-like cockpit.

Afterward, while discussing his session in the seat at the helm of the needle-like car, he tried to put it into words.

“Those guys are brave,” he said with a shake of his head. “I think you have to start at a much lower level than jumping in one of those things. Yeah, it’s a big engine, but man…to generate that kind of power…that’s bad-ass.”

It’s not like he doesn’t have his own title chase to be worried about right now, as the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup opens this weekend at Chicagoland Speedway (and the ONMC will be there, for those of you attending!).

While he stopped short of admitting he was nervous about his Chase chances—he’s won five of them already—he did admit he’s not entering the 10-race playoff in the best of shape.

“When you look at the 48, August is always a tough month for us,” he said. “We’ve had a couple of years when we’ve made it through well. That’s one issue. When you look at the tracks that make up the Chase, a lot of them are really, really good for us. Five of them are 1.5-mile tracks, we’ve had tons of speed on those tracks. Seems like it’s the bigger the track the better, as we’ve had more speed there than on the short tracks. Then we have Martinsville and Dover, which are good for us.

“ I wish we had more momentum and better finishes going into the Chase, not going to sugarcoat that, but it’s not the end of the world. We’ve been here before, and we’re rolling into a track that’s been awful good for us.”

If things go wrong in Illinois, however, it might be different.

“If we run 15th, go down a lap at Chicago and don’t have any speed, then it’s time to hit the panic button. But going into Chicago, I’m very confident that we’re going to be right in the middle of it.”

While the events of last Saturday—and Monday night—are fresh in everyone’s mind, Johnson has had some time to think about what can be done so that kind of situation is mitigated in the future.

He’s calling for instant replay.

“The overall issue in officiating is, we need to expect things when we get to Chase time and really year-round,” he said. “NASCAR should have people, they should staff up instead of downsizing, to be part of the race officiating. Not only from the aspect of what we’re talking about now, but when you get down to restarts and a lot of other things that take place. It’s tough for the tower to take care of it all. They need more people, qualified people with resources and technology, to make these decisions.”

Here’s how Johnson would handle an event like what happened with seven laps remaining at Richmond, when Clint Bowyer spun and brought out a race-changing caution flag that wound up altering the Chase field once, and then again when NASCAR levied penalties.

“In my opinion, if there’s a question and they don’t know, they need to stop the race immediately,” he said. “Red flag, pits are closed, make the best judgment they can, because coming back on Monday or Tuesday to try and fix the situation is just too much. That’s my opinion:  stop, red flag, pits are closed, make a decision, sort it out then, line the cars back up.

“Nobody has any advantage from pitting, nobody takes tires, nobody takes fuel. It’s your best attempt to put the race back into motion and let us race for it instead of on a Monday or Tuesday trying to sort it out.”

Instant replay? NASCAR has always been institutionally resistant to changes made quickly to anything but safety, so why would they be willing to adopt a radical new procedure at this late stage?

“You just have to look at the lesser of the evils,” Johnson said. “Coming back on a Monday or Tuesday seems like a bigger problem to me than stopping the race, make the right call and resume the race. Do the best that you can to resume the race in the form or fashion that it was. I get it; it’s not perfect, but I’d much rather us write about, talk about the attempts to preserve the race and to have the right people in the Chase than all these what-ifs.

“We’ve been working hard to eliminate gray areas, and we have to keep going down that road. I know it’s not an easy thing to do, but I think it’s something that should be considered. To go with that, we’re not having many cautions in these races, so a 10-minute break to allow someone to go to the bathroom and someone to grab a beer…”

It’s a compelling point, and one that NASCAR will likely hear about in very short order.

Johnson was asked about teammate Jeff Gordon’s case for inclusion in the Chase, given that he was affected by the Michael Waltrip Racing plan to get another car in.

 “He was in position to be in the Chase before the caution, and if he was in, then I would say yeah, that only seems fair,” Johnson said. “I don’t know how it all plays out. We’re in the position where, truthfully, if you stop the race, make the call, live with the call, let the racing dictate who is in and who is out instead of judgment calls and this is fair, this is not fair, whatever the penalties are. There’s way too much in dispute here.”

Earlier this season, Johnson was black-flagged and penalized for jumping a late-race restart at Dover, so naturally he was queried about the restart where Carl Edwards beat leader Paul Menard to the line by a car length on Saturday night.

“I’m shocked there wasn’t a call on it,” Johnson said with a shake of his head. “I was told that the 27 brushed him before the restart zone and that allowed the jump to take place. That baffles me. I was told it was crystal clear, black and white when I had my issues [at Dover], and this is extremely gray. You’re not to beat the leader to the start-finish line, and if you do by a few inches or so you have the opportunity to give it back by the time you get to Turn 1. That didn’t happen either. I do recognize that it’s tough to make all these calls.

“We should know this is going to happen. We should know that drivers are going to work the rules any which way they can. We need to properly officiate during the race. I think we’ve done a tremendous job officiating through tech inspection, pre- and post, but the race calling itself…we need more officials. We need more people, more cameras and audio to prevent these two issues from cropping up. I think we could do a better job of officiating.”