by Darrell Waltrip

Comment

I can't help but remember what Jeff Gordon told me a year or so ago when we were at Martinsville. We were talking and I said, "Jeff, that car of yours is incredible. It goes around the racetrack, it's smooth as silk. It's right down on the bottom, it's in the groove, it's coming up off the corner straight as an arrow. That car is awesome." Jeff looked at me as serious as he could be and said, "DW, how do you know it's the car?"

That's the whole point about putting it in the driver's hands. It's always in the driver's hands. There's nobody in that car but the driver. He's going around the racetrack all by himself. Whatever that car does, he's responsible for it.

Give the driver a good car and it makes him look good. Give a driver a bad car and it makes him look bad. Bad cars don't make for better racing. Bad cars make for bad racing. When the car won't handle and you can't drive the thing, you can't race. If the car is all over the racetrack and it won't turn in the middle of the corner and shoots back up the hill, what's going to happen when you go into the corner under somebody? You're going to slam into them. It's either that or you slow down and don't race.

So we don't need bad handling cars and we don't need the COT to be a handful. We need the COT, or any race car, to be comfortable and something that the driver can compete in, not go out there and be impaired by something that he can't drive.

Ask DW
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I think you can probably tell that I get really annoyed when I hear people who have never driven a car off into a corner at 200 mph say, "We need to put it back in the driver's hands." The driver is a big part of the equation, there's no question about that, but if his hands aren't wrapped around something that will cooperate, or something that he can race with, then you are not going to have good racing. I don't know where that idea came from that I heard somebody say the other morning that "We need to quit letting the engineers drive the car." The engineers are not in the car. Nobody's in the car but the driver. I agree, put it in the driver's hands, but give him something that he can drive so he can use his hands to the best of his abilities.

Oh by the way

I'm in Homestead right now, and its kind of funny when you go to the final race of the year, I've been here a number of times going into the last race of the season. There are times that I've been anxious to get it over with because things maybe haven't gone so well. I've been apprehensive because things have gone too well. I've worried myself almost sick trying to analyze and anticipate everything that could possibly go wrong. And you spend a lot of time doing that. I don't care how cool or how calm you are.

Jimmie Johnson knows that anything could happen; a wreck, a broken part in the engine. There's so many obstacles that stand between him and winning the championship, not just Jeff Gordon. But so many mechanical issues and so many circumstances that you just can't predict or anticipate. Just do what you have done to get here today, being relaxed and just racing hard.

You don't approach the last race of the year that way though, and you surely don't when you have an 86-point lead. You know what you've got to do — you have to finish 18th or better — and you know you can do that fairly easily if everything goes anywhere near right. Nonetheless, you can make a pit stop at the wrong time and get a lap down — a lot of cars finish this race on the lead lap. Because of that, Chad Knaus is under a lot of pressure to call this race correctly on top of the pit box, Jimmie is under a lot of pressure to drive the correct race, and all the people at the shop are under pressure to build the car meticulously like they've been doing all along.

But the tension, the anticipation, the importance of this last race weighs heavily on you until the checkered flag falls. It is absolutely true that it ain't over ‘til it's over. Now Jimmie has to worry all that for himself and his team, but Jeff Gordon does too. He has to be sitting there saying "we have to run the race of our lives. And we have to do everything we can to win this race and hope Jimmie has trouble." I tell you, being the hunter is a lot better than being the hunted though.

As far as how you approach this, it makes it so much easier. Jeff Gordon and Steve Letarte have an easy game plan going into Sunday's race: Drive as hard as you can, try to win the race and lead all the laps. That's his mission. Jimmie Johnson, on the other hand, has to sit in a car that is capable of winning the race, and capable of leading all the laps, and use some restraint, use some control, be patient, don't get excited, don't overreact to anything and just finish 18th or better. That's his mission on Sunday. Based on how they've performed up until now, that should be easy to do if they just don't make any mistakes.