NASCAR Winston Cup Napa 500 at California Speedway.
Story and images by Mike Veglia.
Beautiful sunny skies greeted a grandstand full of NASCAR Winston Cup fans at the California Speedway on race day after two days of gloomy, cool, and threatening skies. In fact qualifying on Friday was pushed back and did not end until 6:30pm due to rain showers.
The California Speedway is a fast two-mile oval where NASCAR Winston Cup cars are run to their full potential with no inlet restrictor plates as employed at the longer super-speedways.
Winston Cup rookie Jimmy Johnson took his first win at the California Speedway in the Napa 500 with the help of a decision on his last pit stop (with 17 laps to go) to run his tires to the end and take fuel only. Johnson's first win was also the first win for Jeff Gordon as a team owner, so despite not finishing as well as he may have liked, Jeff Gordon also had something to celebrate. Johnson and Gordon both being from California made the rookie's first time win all the more special.
Johnson was fast all weekend, but was never really dominant out front. Rather than run up front and set the pace, Johnson settled into the front of the grid in the top ten, staying out of trouble and waiting to run out front when it really counted, at the chequered flag. Towards the end of the race the car that appeared to have the field in check was Kurt Busch's car, but in the end the Johnson crew's decision to take fuel only vs. Busch's two tires plus fuel was the difference.
Some quotes of note include:
"To do this and be this competitive in Winston Cup racing has always been a dream of mine," said an ecstatic Johnson in Victory Lane. "I can't believe it actually happened, here, in front of all my friends and family up there in the grandstands. Thank you California!"
Johnson's crew chief, Chad Knaus, who made the call for fuel only on that last stop:
"We were almost into our pit box and Jimmie was yelling 'What are we going to do, what are we going to do?' I just yelled out fuel only," Knaus said. "I about got sick to my stomach after I made the call, but thank goodness it worked out. I really almost threw up."
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