Knaus loves `staying power'

DAVID POOLE

Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2007

Chad Knaus loves his job.

"I do," said Knaus, crew chief for Jimmie Johnson in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series. "I love every aspect of it."

What's not to love when you've won the past four races and go into Sunday's Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway leading second-place Jeff Gordon by 86 points?

"When everything's going right," Knaus said, "and your driver is switched on, and your team's switched on, and the engine's going right and all that stuff is jelling the way it's supposed to, things like this can happen."

Being in the title hunt is nothing new for Knaus and the team he's assembled. This is the fifth consecutive season Johnson has gone into the final race first or second in the standings.

"The thing I'm proudest of is if you look over our history as a team, we've been able to battle for the championship every year," Knaus said. This is Johnson's sixth season and he's never finished outside of the top five in points.

"The thing that is the coolest about that is we haven't battled the same team," Knaus said. "We've battled (Matt Kenseth), (Kurt Busch), (Gordon). Everybody's had their turn out there, and we've been the team that's been the most consistent. I love that. I love that we've got staying power."

As good as the Johnson-Knaus pairing has been, until last year they had not been able to clear that final hurdle to the championship. That applied stress, to the point that late in '05 season team owner Rick Hendrick had to make them realize what they were heading toward losing.

"Rick was afraid we were going to kill each other at one point," Johnson said. "When you want something so bad, and it slips through your fingers. ... We were watching (Tony Stewart) just outperforming us, and it was just driving us nuts."

"We wanted it so bad we were blinded," Knaus said.

Knaus said one thing he learned from that crisis was the team can't always be run with the accelerator wide open.

"We used to be the team that went out there and tried to be the fastest for the whole race," Knaus said. "... But we really didn't get we wanted to from that kind of effort.

"So, beginning at the end of last year and this year, we adopted a new mentality to just kind of ride and find a position to be in so at the end of the race the car is in good shape, that Jimmie is not worn out."

Johnson's car has been right and Knaus has made the right calls late in victories at Martinsville, Va., Atlanta, Texas and Phoenix. If the No. 48 wins Sunday, it would be the first time anyone won five straight since Richard Petty in 1971.

All Johnson needs is a finish of 18th or better if Gordon wins and leads the most laps. Johnson has finished worse than 14th once is his past 15 starts.

"When I was younger, I did want to be a championship-winning crew chief," Knaus said. "I can remember thinking about it and dreaming of it. It's something that I've always wanted."

Sunday, he could double up on that dream -- loving every minute of it.

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