Set-up gamble paid off for Johnson

Knaus said he worked with the Sprint Cup reigning champion during practice to get the most out of the car on the short runs they were able to complete given the early tyre wear, hoping the race would turn out to be the way it actually unfolded, consisting of a maximum of twelve laps under green flag.

"What we did really focus on was Jimmie and him making sure he could tell us when the tyres were going away on the race car," Knaus said.

"We did that at practice. Second practice session, we had three sets of stickers. Went eight laps, eight laps and seven laps. Each time he said he could feel when the tyres were going away.

"We were able to earmark that, pay attention to what was going on with our tyres, adjust our set-up to make sure we were getting the most out of our car in those laps in hopes we would have short runs today, and it was."

Knaus called for four new tyres in almost every stop Johnson made, but went for two fresh right side tyres on his last stop less than ten laps from the end, like all the front-runners did to try gain track position.

He said others as Denny Hamlin, who had already gone for two new tyres to take the lead of the race before their last stop, were not going to be in a position to contend simply because they would have less overall grip at their disposal for the final seven-lap sprint to the finish.

"What happens is as your left side tyres get hot, as they start to build up, they lose grip," Knaus said. "What ultimately that does is when you come in and take right side tyres, you leave your hot left side tyres on there, that takes total grip away from the car, wears out your right side tyres faster.

"We wanted to be very conservative, make sure we were here for the end of the race. We opted to do the four tyres every time except once just to see what it would do midway until the end, save it for the end of the race."

The reigning champion's chew chief said Goodyear shouldn't be blamed for the tyre debacle, pointing out that the tyre manufacturer did what they could given the limited amount of testing they were able to carry out with the new Cup car at Indy to select the compounds for the race weekend.

"Everybody is going to point fingers at Goodyear and say they did a horrible job of testing the tyre and bringing the tyre in," said Knaus. "Maybe they did make a mistake. You can't put all the blame on Goodyear.

"This car is a relatively unknown piece, especially coming to a race track like this where the surface is so abrasive. Everybody has to realize this car has about 50% of the downforce that we had from the cars we've had here in the past.

"There's really only five things that keep a car on the racetrack, and that's the four tyres and the downforce. To think Goodyear can overcome that much with the little bit of testing they had, I think they did an okay job because they thought they were going on the same path that we had last year."