Hornish Responds To Johnson: My Bad

Jimmie Johnson slammed Sam Hornish Jr. earlier in the day for not apologizing to his face about their wreck at Texas last season.

Hornish’s reaction: My bad.

“I feel that maybe he’s right, I should have went over and talked to him,” Hornish said Thursday afternoon. “…I should have said something to him about it. I don’t have any problems with Jimmie, I certainly would never try to take him out.”

Hornish, though, reiterated his belief (which is also the belief of most people with eyes) that it was David Reutimann who started the Lap 3 incident at Texas, when Reutimann got into Hornish.

“[Reutimann] called me up and he apologized for what happened there,” Hornish said. “I guess I don’t have a good opinion one way or the other of whether I would be mad at Jimmie or anything like that because obviously he still won the championship.

“It probably wasn’t an easy week for him in between, so I feel bad about that, but I said multiple times in interviews between then and now that I felt bad about what happened. It’s easy to see on TV that I got hit by the 00, and I tried to correct it and ended up getting into [Johnson]. Obviously, I wouldn’t want anything like that to happen.”

Hornish has heard the people who wonder what he was thinking and ask if he’s trying to make a rival out of the four-time Sprint Cup champion.

In a word, no.

“My opinion of that is, I don’t want to start a rivalry with anybody, but if I’m going to, I’m going to have to start finishing a lot better to be able to do that,” he said.

Now that Hornish knows Johnson is still upset, expect the drivers to come to an understanding. After all, why would anyone want to piss off the champ?

“It’s a little bit upsetting that he’s upset with me, but I’m sure we’ll work it out,” he said.