Jimmie Johnson before fastest speeds of life: 'I have no clue what it's going to feel like'

INDIANAPOLIS – Jimmie Johnson knows to peek out the window of his motorhome each morning and make sure his golf cart hasn’t been booby-trapped. He now knows just how much oval tracks in an open-wheel car can change with a day of rainstorms. He’s starting to come to terms with trying to tame the living, breathing, ever-changing beast of an Indy car over a full-fuel run.

In other words, he’s starting to feel like an IndyCar driver.

“But I’ll put an asterisk on it and just say ‘on ovals,’” Johnson said Thursday evening after his second Indianapolis 500 practice day. “I’ve still got a long ways to go on road and street (courses)."

That task, though, is for another day. Next for the Indy 500 rookie is learning to cope with the feeling of flying 240 mph (or more) into Turn 1, throttle down, full-send, ready to turn left and trust that it’ll stick long enough to shuttle him into Turn 2. Then, he’ll catch his breath and do it again 15 more times and see where that puts the seven-time NASCAR Cup champion come 500 qualifying on Saturday.

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Friday afternoon, he’ll get the first sense of it all with the arrival of the 500’s Fast Friday, where Honda and Chevy crank up the boost and watch those top average lap speeds soar well into the 230s. But Johnson will only get there if he makes certain to completely unlearn everything he wore into his brain over nearly two decades of Brickyard 400s on the IMS oval.

“The last time I was in qualifying trim here was in a Cup car, and we let off and used a little brake to get into Turn 1,” Johnson said Thursday after posting the fifth-fastest single lap of the day at 226.409 mph. “So to feel the boost and the straightaway and look down at that 90-degree turn and think that I’ll hold it flat, it’s going to be an interesting conversation with my right foot.”

Johnson and his Chip Ganassi Racing teammates were one of only a handful of teams that opted not run qualifying simulations. So though the driver of the No. 48 Honda has run two of the fastest laps all week at IMS (Johnson finished third-fastest Tuesday at 227.722 mph), he’s yet to experience the sensation of being the only car on-track and letting his machine do all the work.

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Johnson said his team dedicated Thursday to making two full stints of running the tires down until they were unusable to give him a chance to feel the sensation of the car losing both grip and fuel load at the same time, while also experiencing a draft on the straights and dirty air in the corners with drivers on much newer or older tires coming and going alongside him.

“I feel like today, I kind of broke through to a new level of comfort in race trim,” Johnson said. “I still have no clue what it’s going to feel like to go 230-something (miles per hour) around here when the boost goes up, but I’ll get into that tomorrow.”

And he’ll be doing so on a significantly more slippery track Friday (with temperatures that threaten to hit 90 degrees) and sustained gusts of wind that may reach 25 mph or more. Coupled with more rain Thursday evening that will likely wash off some of the rubber laid down by the full-field that ran more than 3,000 laps Thursday, Johnson said he knows he’s in for another full day of learning and adapting on the fly.

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“One of the differences between a Cup car and an Indy car: We love green racetracks,” Johnson said. “That’s when we have the most potential for whatever reason.

“This track in a Cup car, and certainly I’m learning in an Indy car, it’s very temperamental, and you’ve just got to be on top of it. You can’t put your guard down. Things change, and I’m trying to understand why there was a difference, because obviously on race day when you go into the race, you don’t get a practice session beforehand to see where your balance is.”

If the CGR cars can maintain the speed they’ve shown through two days in tow runs with the added boost and by themselves, there’s reason to think that Johnson could find himself making it into Sunday’s Fast 12, or even the Fast 6, where he’d be gunning to become the first Indy 500 rookie to qualify 1st for the race since 1983 (Teo Fabi). However the weekend goes, Johnson will have four hours of practice left between Monday and Friday to iron out the final couple items on his checklist before taking the green flag in the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

It’s six hours less than he was scheduled to have before Wednesday was a complete wash-out. Johnson said whether he’ll end up happy with that or working off his backfoot next week will ultimately depend on how he performs this weekend.

“Drivers or teams with less experience, you want and need every day that you can get – that’s my first thought,” Johnson said. “On a sarcastic note, though, it’s less time to confuse ourselves.”

He grinned.

“I think (the rest of practice) will be a culmination of finding the balance when you’re in clean air versus in traffic. There’s a pretty big difference in how the car handles and behaves,” Johnson said. “Managing that and just understanding how uncomfortable I can be by myself, to then be more comfortable in traffic or the other way around.

“And then I need to work out the timing it takes to set up a pass and get that proper run off (Turns) 2 and 4.”

Email IndyStar motor sports reporter Nathan Brown at nlbrown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @By_NathanBrown.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indy 500: Jimmie Johnson ready for Fast Friday's unknowns, high speeds