NASCAR Cup Series

Jimmie Johnson needs to end skid quickly

Published Jun. 3, 2010 1:00 a.m. ET

Larry McReynolds

I felt bad for Denny Hamlin in Sunday night's Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He really had a great car. He unfortunately got caught up in a deal there on the front straightaway that put him in a bad situation. He never could overcome the positions lost. Actually that one caution changed the whole complexity of the race.

There was a lot that happened in a short period that changed who some of the key players were. In addition to Denny’s problems, you also had Kyle Busch hitting Brad Keselowski on pit road.

Now the problems with the No. 48 car of Jimmie Johnson are another story.

I have to be honest, I am really starting to change my opinion on what's going on with Team 48. Now I say up front that by the end of the season, I might be proven wrong. Yes, Johnson’s Hendrick Motorsports team ran well at Texas. Yes, they could have won at Dover if it wasn’t for a pit-road speeding penalty. I don’t know, maybe its totally coincidental, but for the No. 48 team, it sure seems that the switch at Martinsville to the spoiler has been a game changer.

I don’t think it was a major change, but it definitely seems like it has Johnson’s Hendrick team and others searching for the right combination. The biggest thing seems to be that the car is a little bit more on the edge. I still believe going back to the spoiler is one of the greatest things NASCAR has done in a long time.

Now with all that said, I still believe at the end of the day, that when we get to the Chase for the Sprint Cup and when we get to Homestead in November, we will be talking a lot about that No. 48 car. You just never know with that group. They like to try things. Who knows, maybe they are doing that right now and testing some things to be ready for the Chase. If I was a Johnson fan, I wouldn’t be getting too discouraged right now.

This weekend we head to Pocono Raceway. It’s one of those unique tracks where we race twice, but in a very short period of time. With that said, it still has been 10 months since we have been back. There wasn’t a Goodyear tire test, so you go there this time with a little bit of a notebook of what you have used in the past.

With this weekend and then being at Michigan next weekend, the draft will come back into play more so than at Texas or Charlotte. They are also both big tracks, though, so it will be interesting to see how the spoiler reacts there. We know who has been strong there. Tony Stewart won this race a year ago in a backup car. His Stewart-Haas Racing team has been struggling this year, so it will be interesting to see how Stewart runs this weekend.

Pocono is one of those tracks where it takes every element of your race car and your race team to be successful. You have to have a good handling package because you have three completely different corners. On top of that, you have that Turn 3 that just seems to go on forever. How well you get off Turn 3 determines how fast you get down that long frontstretch straightaway.

You also have to have a good aero package at Pocono because the speeds are very fast. You have to have plenty of motor. You have to have a lot of torque of the corners and a lot of top-end horsepower down the straightaways. Pocono is hard on motors. You are talking 200 mph laps for 500 miles.

That place is also hard on brakes because you head to those three corners at a high rate of speed, so you slow down a lot to enter the corners. With the track configuration, you are on the brakes hard three times a lap instead of the normal two times a lap at other tracks.

In addition, fuel mileage will come into play. That’s something a crew chief will be thinking about from the drop of the green flag. Other than a road course, Pocono is the worst place to run out of gas. Trust me, it is a long way around that big ol’ 2.5-mile racetrack. Still, teams this weekend that aren’t running that well will be more inclined to roll the dice and gamble on fuel mileage because they really have nothing to lose.

Adding another twist, this weekend’s race also marks the one-year anniversary of the double-file restarts. That has definitely changed a lot about our sport. It could play a role in who makes the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Looking at the points right now with 13 races in the books and 13 to go before the Chase starts, man the points are tight. From about eighth to about 17th in points, things can shift with only one bad race.