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.

2002 EA Sports 500

Results

Pos.	Driver	Make
1.	Dale Earnhardt Jr.	Chevrolet
2.	Tony Stewart	Pontiac
3.	Ricky Rudd	Ford
4.	Kurt Busch	Ford
5.	Jeff Green	Chevrolet
6.	Steve Park	Chevrolet
7.	Ryan Newman	Ford
8.	Michael Waltrip	Chevrolet
9.	Dale Jarrett	Ford
10.	Ward Burton	Dodge

• Complete Results

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. (Continued)