“P*ssed Me Off” – Jimmie Johnson Makes a Brutally Honest Admission Regarding His Old Crew Chief

Recently, NASCAR living legend Jimmie Johnson appeared on ‘In Depth with Graham Bensinger’. Over there, the 7-time Cup Series champion spoke about his days in the Hendrick Motorsports stable. When he first paired up with crew chief Chad Knaus, they stuck together for a long time. However, there were a few hiccups along the way.

Johnson said, “People were like, ‘How can you let him [Chad Knaus] talk to you that way?’. The trust we had for one another, I would say 80% of it was just the brutal truth.

“Honestly, even though it hurt, p*ssed me off at times. That brutal honesty is what made us better. Just maybe if we had handled it in a different way with one another. We could have stayed together through the end of our careers and potentially got the eighth.”

What else did Jimmie Johnson say?

Later on, he confessed that he wished that he could go back and correct it. Knaus’ behavior was a defense mechanism, and he only did it because he cared. Because Johnson got tired of it, he also retaliated, and in the car, he would wonder about what he would say to his crew chief.

Johnson confessed that he and Knaus did not evolve much in the latter stages of their partnership. Both of them had changed a lot over the course of their careers. The driver also revealed that in difficult situations, Knaus had a tendency to revert back to his attitude when they first started. To be precise, he used to micro-manage Johnson’s driving and explain where he made mistakes. This also bled onto solutions and how the Hendrick driver needed to work on it.

According to the driver, the worst occasion was after they won the championship. At the start of the 2017 season, Johnson wanted to go to Aspen and not Charlotte, and Knaus did not like that at all. At that point, things got a little bit personal and he because to question Johnson’s commitment. Sadly, they never got around to repairing it, but they were always honest with each other.

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