LOUDON, N.H. — Jimmie Johnson was sorely tempted to comment about the late caution in Sunday’s Lenox Tools 301 that trapped him a lap down and cost him a probable top-five finish.
Johnson had just short-pitted on Lap 231 when NASCAR threw the yellow for oil on the track, courtesy of David Reutimann’s blown engine.
Though Johnson got his lap back as the highest scored lapped car and subsequently drove up to seventh place at the finish, the five-time champion tiptoed up to the edge of questioning the validity of the caution without going there — perhaps because negative comments by drivers about such things have earned monetary fines in the past. Â
“Yeah, I’m going to keep my mouth shut on that caution,” Johnson said after the race. “Anyway, we had a great race car. There was a lot of speed in the car. It was the Gibbs cars and the Hendrick cars, and at times I was the best Hendrick car — running top-two, top-three.
“But then that caution put us back in traffic. We still got through there decent.”
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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