In a NASCAR teleconference on Tuesday Jimmie Johnson let the cat out of the bag as to why the Talladega was boring for some fans.

Before you read what he had to say please note, based on what I've been told, the phrase 'push drafting' means pushing the car in front of you with the air pocket between your front bumper and their rear bumper.  The closer you get to the rear of the car the bigger the push of air you hit him with and the faster you'll both go - it's like bump drafting with air as their is no physical contact between the two cars.

Q.  I know you had talked about what to do about Talladega, you had some good comments after the race, until they blow the track up and fix it, but given that may not happen, if you were NASCAR, looking back, what would you do?  You heard all the fans talking about it, options of continuing to enforce harder regulations that they didn't seemingly enforce that much, but what would you do if you were NASCAR now coming back out of Talladega the next time we return other than tear the track up? 

JIMMIE JOHNSON:  Well, there's a couple things.  First of all, bump drafting hasn't been allowed in the corners for some time, so they didn't allow push drafting.  Mike wasn't sure what phrase to use in the drivers meeting because it's kind of a new thing that is a product of this new car.  So I don't think that that had as big of an impact on the race as people want to make it up as. 

The real impact was we didn't want to wreck.  We knew we were going to wreck.  We knew we were going to cause a big wreck, it's just what that racing does, and everybody was minding their manners and be responsible up until we could see the checkered flag essentially and that's when things started to get crazy and we crashed. 

NASCAR we're on a different style of car that was supposed to make the racing more exciting at these bigger tracks and really all tracks, and it has made it more exciting and allows us to close and make passes on the restrictor plate tracks, but it also is the exact thing that causes the big wrecks.  We went to a smaller restrictor plate to help keep the cars on the ground and make them safer.  That didn't work. 

At the end of the day I hope people realized we have messed with enough in the garage area with cars, threatening drivers, regulating – some people think they're over-regulated, other people think we're under-regulated, but the bottom line is we're going to have these issues until we're required to let off the gas going into the turns.  I don't see any way possible with the safety rules that we need to pay attention to for the safety of the drivers and the fans and the way the cars are built that we can do that without eliminating banking in the corners. 

I was just on a phone call with Mark Martin not long ago, and he said for 15 years now, he's been saying to people that would listen, they need to take the banking out of the corners and make us lift.  I think finally the overwhelming public is understanding and starting to recognize that you can't change the cars anymore.  You can't scold the drivers almost.  We're going to ride single file for 490 miles and make it boring and then wreck everything at the end.  So the only way we can get the racing to change is by changing the track.  It's the only thing left.  We've messed with every other area and nothing has worked.

Oh but wait, it gets better; was there a conspiracy by the drivers to drive in single file in protest against restrictor plate racing?

You'll have to take the jump to find out ...

Q.  Also there was no chatter during the race on Sunday that maybe a lot of the single-file racing we saw could have been some type of former driver protest against restrictor plate racing.  Is there any truth to that? 

JIMMIE JOHNSON:  No, there's no truth to that.  That really is, when we hit single file like that, we just know there's no need to race at that point.  All that matters is from that last pit stop on.  I've been joking for years saying we just need a 23-lap shootout and it will be exciting and everybody will be happy and we'll hurry up and wreck the cars and go home.  That's really what took place.  Nobody was willing to race that hard and make those risky moves for the first 490 miles.  So much so that our strategy, thinking that somebody would wreck, didn't pan out and we were sitting in a really bad situation at the red flag. 

The fans can be upset and be upset at NASCAR, but at the end of the day, the reason we weren't three and four wide is because we didn't want to be.  We wanted to ride single file.  We wanted to log miles and have a better chance at finishing the race. 

Nope there wasn't an organized driver protest.  Darn!

Man that would have made good media fodder for sure considering it has been 40 yrs since Talladega had its first race without some of the sports big name drivers at the time who chose to sit out the race because the cars were too fast for the tires which kept coming apart after about 4 laps.

(This article contain portions of a NASCAR Teleconference Transcript done with Jimmie Johnson on Tuesday Nov. 3, 2009)