Atlanta Win Serves Notice That Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus Are on the Prowl

NASCAR rolled out its new rules—rules that weren't in place for the Daytona 500—at Atlanta Motor Speedway. From testing on Thursday, to qualifying on Friday, to the running of the Sprint Cup Series' second race, the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500, the weekend tested all the teams' capacity to adapt to new conditions. Some teams guessed. Most estimated. A few relied on beginner's luck.

 Jimmie Johnson, who, along with his mastermind of a crew chief, Chad Knaus, generally adapts well to changing conditions, didn’t much need luck. They had preparation ready when opportunity arose.

Johnson, 39, has won six of the past nine Sprint Cup championships, and his victory at AMS was the 71st of his career. Change is his friend. Luck has little to do with it.

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“From our standpoint,” Knaus said, “it was a challenge. Thursday practice session, Friday qualifying time, and [Saturday] throughout practice, we didn't have the car that we needed. Fortunately enough, my engineers and myself, we really put our heads together last night, came up with some good ideas and it worked out for us today.”

Funny how often that works.

The Daytona 500 is a marvelous sporting event, but it has about as much to do with the championship as a pickup hockey game on a frozen pond to the Stanley Cup Final.

A week after the blustery wind, sunshine and palm trees of Daytona Beach, Johnson put on a typical exhibition of workmanlike precision, one that is more crucial to his prospects of winning a record-tying seventh championship than Logano’s victory in the 500 was to his.

“It says a lot of good things,” Johnson said on Fox from Victory Lane. “I’m so excited the guys could understand what I was complaining about [early in the race.] I didn’t think we were going to be that good, but we certainly were.”

Teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. snaked alongside for a lap after the final restart, with 15 laps to go, but once Johnson’s Chevy had Earnhardt’s cleared, the victory was a fait accompli. Kevin Harvick, also in a Chevy, tracked down Earnhardt for second place, but, by then, Johnson was barely in sight.

Johnson and Knaus' artistry is etched in the sport’s history. Logano’s Daytona 500 victory had little mystery to it. The teams used the same rules as the year before.

The NASCAR offseason changes in the cars—principally, a cut in horsepower but also a countervailing one in downforce (via smaller rear spoilers)—weren’t tested in Daytona Beach and won’t be in Talladega, where restrictor plates are also used. For the teams, the second race was a test of new rules but also adaptability to them.

Johnson didn’t win the championship last year. He didn’t come particularly close. He only won four races. Such a season isn’t considered a disaster in other camps.

“Today I think we both (he and Knaus) impressed one another,” Johnson said in the winner’s media conference. “It just showed maybe how rough last year's performance was.

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“To fly through the field like that, to feel those sensations in the car, the car creating that much grip, being that friendly, being able to work traffic from my standpoint was surprising. I'm sure from [Knaus’] standpoint, sitting on the box watching me pass two to three a lap, was impressive as well. It is pretty wild after all these years we're able to do that and still impress one another, but we did it [Sunday].”

The Hampton, Georgia, track’s only appearance on this year’s schedule was conducted in temperatures 50 degrees colder than Labor Day weekend, last season's previous slot.

“This is a unique situation, though,” Harvick said in the post-race media conference, “because the car is probably making 8 or 9 percent more downforce, just because it’s 40 to 50 degrees cooler than when we were here last year. So that’s really one of the biggest reasons that the speeds are up.”

Logano, who finished fourth Sunday, dominated early and started the race on the pole. Harvick was superior from the middle stages until the latter. Then, well, Johnson emerged, as usual, like a thief in the gathering night.

Logano got the message. “Everyone got better and we didn’t,” he said afterward on Fox. “We were making ground, but everyone got faster, and we kind of stayed the same. We made adjustments, but not as well as the Hendrick [Motorsports] cars ahead of us.”

The season’s second race was delayed by morning rain and a persistent drizzle that fell during the early laps. The crowd was sparse, the weather cold, the air murky and the mood dour. The Daytona 500 is the closest thing NASCAR has to a Disney adventure. Atlanta was coming back from vacation for a shift in the mines.

The pay’s better, but the risk is high.

Johnson and Knaus looked like they’d been working before they got there. They usually do. It’s been a whole two seasons since their sixth championship.

Year	Wins	Poles	Laps Led	Average Finish
2006	5	1	854	9.7
2007	10	4	1,290	10.8
2008	7	6	1,959	10.5
2009	7	4	2,238	11.1
2010	6	2	1,315	12.2
2013	6	3	1.985	10.7

A huge crash with 20 laps remaining set up the ending but not the outcome. Greg Biffle let his Ford get out of shape and into the smoke streamed fruitlessly cars driven by Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Regan Smith, Tony Stewart, Clint Bowyer, Kyle Larson, Sam Hornish Jr. and Joe Nemechek. The leaders were ahead of the melee, and a few were able to avoid it, but the race came to a halt while crews cleaned up the mess.

Earnhardt got the message. He couldn’t beat Johnson, or Harvick, who competes for the affiliated Stewart-Haas team, but he didn’t use the rule changes as an alibi.

“[It’s] the same old car, man,” he said in a media conference. “The rules changed a little bit, but they drive the same and actually qualified faster than we did last year. It’s a good race car. The rules aren't going to be that big of a deal."

Not, apparently, for the teammate who won. Johnson and Knaus are like Penn and Teller, Nichols and May, Masters and Johnson. Earnhardt has a new crew chief, Greg Ives. He has more reason for optimism than most of his peers, trying to hang on in the turbulence of Johnson’s wake.

The next race is at a similar track, Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Everything may change again. Someone new may emerge.

“Just because we won today doesn't mean we're going to go to Vegas and knock it out of the park,” Knaus said. “I think we have the ability to, but I don't think there's any givens by any stretch.”

Don’t bet against it.

Johnson and Knaus unleashed a bit of a lightning bolt in Week 2 of the season. They look ready to win another title. The season is long, and the Chase at season's end is treacherous, but Hendrick Motorsports' flagship, its No. 48 car, with Johnson behind the wheel and Knaus in command, looks combat-ready.

All quotes are taken from official NASCAR, team and manufacturer media releases unless otherwise stated.