Previous Dover tire test a boon to Johnson, Montoya

DOVER, Del. -- Jimmie Johnson and Juan Montoya will make up the front row for Sunday's AAA 400 at Dover International Speedway. They also happened to be two of the drivers invited to participate in a Goodyear tire test here in August. Obviously, track time with a new tire combination can be an advantage, but to what extent, especially when it involves two Chase challengers?

Johnson was one of the four teams that ran the newer compound, and won the pole with a lap of 157.356 mph. However, the No. 48 Chevrolet didn't seem to have much trouble with tires back in the spring, as Johnson dominated by leading 298 of the 400 laps, beating Tony Stewart by .861 seconds.

Practice perfect

Jimmie Johnson ran the fastest lap in Friday's qualifying session at the Monster Mile, touring the high-banked, concrete track in 22.878 seconds for the pole.

• Complete story, click here

Qualifying Video

• Johnson races to pole
• Montoya on front row

"Running laps never hurts," Johnson said. "From an engineering standpoint, the fact that we were able to get a current data set for us to take back to the shop and use on the machines was very important. As far as specifics, ironically, we showed up just like we were at the spring race and that's how we qualified the car. So even with the different tire, it seems we've ended up with the same setup we had.

On the other hand, Montoya didn't get a chance to run the new compound in August, and still ended up just .096 seconds off Johnson's pace.

"Most of the testing was done by Jimmie," Montoya said. "Jimmie and [A.J.] Allmendinger were the primaries on the tire test. We were secondaries. For us, it was more running to rubber up the track. Did it help? I don't know. We qualified third the last time I was here."

Ryan Newman, who qualified third, understood that Johnson and Montoya had more of an idea how the compound would react this weekend, but that doesn't guarantee anything when the green flag drops on Sunday.

"Goodyear and NASCAR do a good job of spreading it out and making sure everybody gets an opportunity, whether they take that opportunity or not, to test. Yeah, those guys should be up top," he said. "We'll get the advantage some day and whether it's at Dover or Charlotte or Phoenix or Martinsville, hopefully show that we can do the same things.

"That doesn't mean they're going to win the race." (Continued)