{"id":7697,"date":"2020-02-23T20:51:03","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T01:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonmotorsport.com\/?p=7697"},"modified":"2022-07-22T12:11:06","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T16:11:06","slug":"jimmie-johnson-las-vegas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2020\/02\/23\/jimmie-johnson-las-vegas\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimmie Johnson puts on strong drive to finish Fifth at Las Vegas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jimmie Johnson<\/strong> didn’t need to go out on top to end his career. He was a lock for the NASCAR Hall of Fame, regardless of how 2020 played out.<\/p>\n

While it’s too early to pencil Johnson in as a championship favorite, a win is no longer far-fetched.<\/a><\/p>\n

Jimmie Johnson puts on strong drive to finish Fifth at Las Vegas<\/strong><\/h2>\n

While he didn’t lead a lap in the Pennzoil 400, he put on the best overall performance that I’ve seen from the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team in quite a long time.<\/p>\n

He ran inside the top-10 for most of the afternoon. His average running position was 9.7 (eight-best of the race) and he spent 91.8 percent of the race in the top-15 (seventh-best), according to NASCAR’s post-race loop data.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, he capitalized on a late caution and\u00a0came onto pit road four new tires.<\/p>\n

Johnson took advantage of the chaotic final restart, when teammate William Byron<\/strong> made contact with\u00a0Ryan Blaney<\/strong> in Turn 1.<\/p>\n

He drove under the cars making contact and pulled up to the top-five.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan, every restart, you just have to get everything you can,” Johnson said. “Once your momentum\u2019s broke and guys fall in line, it\u2019s so hard to generate enough of a run and energy to pass somebody. We\u2019re just driving like fools getting started.”<\/p>\n

Byron triggered a multi-car wreck on the final lap and brought out the caution. As a result, Johnson earned his first top-five finish since last July at Daytona International Speedway.<\/p>\n

“Our Ally Chevrolet was really strong, today,” Johnson said. \u201cScored points in both stages and a nice top-five. I think maybe fourth. From where I was sitting, I thought we were fourth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson was among six Chevrolet drivers to finish inside the top-10 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. While not among them, teammate\u00a0Chase Elliott<\/strong> swept the stages and had the strongest car of the race.<\/p>\n

“To see four or five Chevy’s up front mixed in with those Fords, today, was really nice, I think a telling sign of what we needed to get us up front,” Johnson said.<\/p>\n

Johnson leaves Las Vegas 11th in the overall series points<\/a>, and will try to continue his strong start to the year next week at Auto Club.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jimmie Johnson didn’t need to go out on top to end his career. He was a lock for the NASCAR Hall of Fame, regardless of how 2020 played out. While it’s too early to pencil Johnson in as a championship favorite, a win is no longer far-fetched. Jimmie Johnson puts on strong drive to finish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":7700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1664,3],"tags":[59,200,514,14,1269,371,1301],"class_list":["post-7697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","category-nascar-cup-series","category-news","tag-hendrick-motorsports","tag-jimmie-johnson","tag-las-vegas-motor-speedway","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-2020","tag-nascar-cup-series","tag-pennzoil-400"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}