Johnson still trying to figure out new car

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Jimmie Johnson did pretty well at the start of the 2007 NASCAR season. He recovered well enough after crashing out of the Daytona 500 to win back-to-back races at Las Vegas and Atlanta and finish a close third at California Speedway.So how will Johnson fare at those mid-sized, high-speed tracks this spring with NASCAR's new car?"We still have some question marks in our heads, and we haven't sorted things out like we had hoped, but we're getting closer," Johnson said after wrapping up two days of testing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway before heading to California Speedway for two more days of testing."I think by the end of the second day in Fontana we should know a lot more about the car and have a better idea of things," Johnson said.Toyota teams have been strong again this week, and that could show that their Daytona testing wasn't a fluke.But Johnson said he's keeping an eye on teams rather than manufacturers right now."I think you have to rule out some of the manufacturer influence and think of the race teams," Johnson said, pointing to the Joe Gibbs' trio of Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin."We know that Gibbs is strong. The Hendrick cars have been good ... but I don't think we're where we want to be yet. We're still learning and developing things."The one that has impressed me really is Carl Edwards. Those Roush cars have been good, especially Carl. He's been real fast, not only for one lap but over the course of the run he's been really impressive, and I think the best car so far."After two Cup titles, Johnson might be forgiven for getting a bit complacent."But every year's a new year, and I know this year is going to be a totally different discipline," Johnson said. "I saw a lot of teams at the end of last season coming on strong."Jack Roush is going to be somebody to worry about. And I don't think Tony had the year he wanted last season; Denny had two-thirds of the year he wanted, but the end didn't turn out how he would have liked. Kyle is going to be fast, we know that."In fact the first few weeks of the season could be Hendrick vs. Gibbs.Johnson said he's not taking anything for granted."The sport is so humbling," he said. "We're struggling our butts off right now, 18th on the board. So we've got a lot of learning."I've got to figure this car out."There are a couple of things that feel different. The car acts different than the old car."Can he sense the bull's-eye on his rear bumper?"I don't feel it any more than I would in any year," Johnson said. "When you drive for Hendrick Motorsports.... Rick has a history of setting a high mark, and the company has a lot of expectations of its drivers and crew chiefs."I feel more pressure from that environment than any outside environment."Well, that's easy to say right now. But if these new cars handle as poorly as they have in testing ...At Daytona, "as far as the cars on the track, from what I saw in our test session, it's going to be a handful," Johnson said. "Typically, the cars end up tight there. But my car, and my teammates', once you were three or four cars back in line, the car was really loose and really uncomfortable to drive."So I think there could be a lot of crashes. There could be a lot of ill-handling cars."I look forward to the Shootout (Feb. 9) ... and also drafting practice, when we have more cars out there, to really see what they're going to do. I hope they're better. But I don't think they will be; I'd be foolish thinking that. I expect the car is really difficult to drive."It couldn't possibly be more difficult than last spring's race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, which had just been repaved, and where drivers had to run on an impossibly hard tire."It's still a race car on the track," Johnson said. "The challenging thing for us is our hands are tied. There are only so many areas you can work in. In the past, there were five ways to figure out how to make your car do whatever you needed it to do better."But now, with the aerodynamic rules we have -- the common body -- and the chassis the way it is, with the limited (spring) travel, we're all boxed in."When you're working on them every day, trying to find speed, trying to find things, that's the challenging part."(Contact Mike Mulhern can be reached at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.) (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)