Disaster strikes Johnson at 'Dega during '02 title battle

If there's one reason why Jimmie Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus are so leery of Talladega Superspeedway—despite three consecutive championships and a 118-point lead with four races remaining—one only needs to look back seven years to the 2002 EA Sports 500.

Sunday's Amp Energy 500 will be run on the day after Halloween, but there couldn't have been anything spookier than what happened to Johnson and the rest of the Hendrick Motorsports operation in 2002. Within minutes after the signal for drivers to start their engines—and before the field even took the green flag—the race turned into a horror show for the No. 48 Chevrolet team.

Coming into the race, Johnson had an 11-point lead on Mark Martin and was 36 ahead of Tony Stewart, as Jeff Gordon was fourth, 109 behind. And when qualifying was washed out, Johnson and Martin were scheduled to start on the front row. I say scheduled, because while Martin was scrubbing his tires at 70 mph on the pace lap, his steering locked and the No. 6 Ford veered down the banking and directly into Johnson's right front fender just as the cars were crossing the start-finish line.

"It was some kind of hydraulic problem when I turned the wheel hard," Martin said. "It just froze."

Not knowing how severe the problem was, NASCAR officials decided to black-flag Martin, who headed for pit road as the green dropped. Johnson followed one lap later, as Knaus wanted to make sure his car wouldn't incur a one-lap penalty.

"It's just a terrible thing," Knaus said. "We have put our hearts and souls into this thing, and to have something like this happen to cost us a chance at winning a race is really sad."

Under normal circumstances, Martin and Johnson would have had opportunities under cautions to make up the lap they had lost. But that race was anything but normal. A decision to shrink the fuel cells from 22 to 12.5 gallons in an effort to force more pit stops and spread out the field worked too well. Lap after lap went by without a reason to throw the yellow, eventually turning Talladega into the world's fastest fuel economy run.

It also turned out to be murder on Hendrick engines. Gordon, who had led 27 laps early on, suddenly slowed after 125 laps and headed for the garage. He wound up finishing 42nd. He was followed by Ken Schrader and Johnny Benson, teammates for Nelson Bowers' operation, which also used Hendrick horsepower.

The carnage continued when the Hendrick cars of Joe Nemechek and Terry Labonte retired with engine problems. And Johnson's day went from bad to worse when his engine followed suit 15 laps from the finish, saddling him with a 37th-place finish. Unfortunately, Martin's luck was almost as awful. An unscheduled pit stop to change a flat tire cost him another lap to the leaders and he wound up 30th.

The only good thing was that Martin's steering issues never returned.

"We didn't have any cautions, so I didn't have to put the steering in that situation again," he said.

With all three of his closest competitors either well back or already out of the race, Stewart seemed content to sit on Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s rear bumper in the closing laps, pushing him to a one car-length victory. Earnhardt made his final stop on Lap 150, allowing him to complete the final 38 circuits on one tank of fuel, while Stewart stopped one lap later and returned to the track directly behind Junior.

"My hat's off to Tony Stewart for being a good friend and helping me out, sticking behind me," Earnhardt said. "Me and him kind of had our share of disagreements in the Busch Series and we became friends after that.

"We've done a lot of buddying up, partnering up on the race track in the past. We like racing against each other."

With the points lead well in hand, Stewart saw no reason to make a risky move at the end. With his runner-up finish, he led Martin by 72 points, with Johnson dropping to third, 82 points out.

"I never thought about trying to go by Junior," Stewart said. "It's a trust thing that he and I have. I know that if I'm leading the race, he has always stuck with me, and he knows that any time I've been behind him like that late in a race that I've always stuck by him."

How close was Earnhardt's fuel mileage calculation? His engine sputtered and died on pit road, heading for Victory Lane.

"That was close. I think the guys worked real hard figuring gas mileage," Earnhardt said.

With the win, Junior joined Buddy Baker—the son of another NASCAR racing legend—as the only drivers to win three consecutive Talladega races. Earnhardt would tack on a fourth the next spring. Stewart, considered NASCAR's bad boy at the time, went on to win the first of his two championships.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.