#48- Jimmie Johnson Sidelined in multi-car crash on lap 2 of the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway on Monday, February 27, 2012, his comments from a Chevy PR:
LOOKED LIKE A HARD HIT. FIRST ARE YOU OK? WHAT HAPPENED?
Johnson: ‘Yes, I ‘m ok. That side hit was hard. We were all just trying to make our lane work. A lot of energy in the lane. I was kind of pushing the No. 78 (Regan Smith) a little bit. I could feel some help from behind. Just turned me around. Sent me down to the inside lane and back up to the outside lane. When I was l sitting in the middle of the race track, I knew at some point someone was going to come along unfortunately. David Ragan had nowhere to go. I unfortunately got drilled by him pretty hard. I ‘m just really, really bummed to start the season this way. For all the hard work that has gone into getting this Lowe’s Chevrolet ready for tonight; we didn ‘t get to complete two-and-a-half miles of green flag racing. So, I ‘m pretty bummed.’
ARE YOU OK? ‘I ‘m ok. I ‘m just really bummed-out for this whole Lowe’s team. To work as hard as everyone did at Hendrick Motorsports to get this Lowe’s Chevrolet and to have it barely complete two-and-a-half miles of green flag racing is pretty sad. Disappointed, but nothing I can do about it now. We ‘ll just go on and go to Phoenix and set our marks on winning that race.’
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT HAPPENED? ‘We were all just getting up to speed and I had some help from behind that got me out of control. From there on I was just spinning.’(Chevy PR)(2-28-2012)
UPDATE: Tuesday (Feb. 28) evening’s edition of the NASCAR Race Hub on SPEED wrapped up a wild Daytona 500 with Elliott Sadler, driver of the #33 Richard Childress Racing Chevy, who re-capped his incident with five-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Champion, Jimmie Johnson. He spoke with host Danielle Trotta about what happened. ‘I just kind of got into the back of Jimmie, it was 100-percent my fault,’ said Sadler, describing the incident that started as the field had just entered the race’s second lap. ‘It got other cars involved like you see in a lot of the restrictor plate races. We were coming into the outside lane, through the tri-oval, the #78 (Regan Smith) and the #48 (Jimmie Johnson) kind of get bunched up a little bit. They came down and its 100-percent my fault in getting into the back of Jimmie. We were kind of bogged down, everyone was side-by-side and I didn ‘t check up in time, and I got into the left-rear quarter (panel) of Jimmie. It was just a little bit, but that is usually all it takes at these types of speeds. It’s a bad way to get started.’(SPEED)(2-29-2012)
