The Cool Down Lap: Could Jimmie Johnson be NASCAR’s best all time?

The Cool Down Lap: Could Jimmie Johnson be NASCAR’s best all time?

By Reid Spencer

Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

(November 22, 2010)

In the aftermath of Jimmie Johnson’s fifth straight NASCAR Sprint Cup title, is it blasphemy to mention the driver of the No. 48 Chevrolet in the same breath with seven-time champions Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt?

Ray Evernham, for one, doesn’t think Johnson is part of that conversation yet, but the champion crew chief and ESPN analyst acknowledges he soon could be.

“If they get this one, then seven looks pretty doable, doesn’t it?” Evernham said Saturday, before the championship was decided.

A day later, Johnson secured the fifth championship methodically and relentlessly, despite a series of substandard pit stops. And if truth be told, he won the title with a car that, throughout the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, wasn’t as fast as those of his two rivals, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick.

Nonetheless, Johnson, crew chief Chad Knaus and team owner Rick Hendrick found a way to win, and in the words of Mike Ford, Hamlin’s crew chief, they found a source of motivation to help them.

Ford called out the No. 48 team after Hamlin won at Texas to take a 33-point lead in the Chase. According to Evernham, that lit a fire in Rick Hendrick.

“Mike Ford did a great job motivating his own team, but he motivated Rick Hendrick just as bad—and that can be a bad thing,” Evernham said.

It’s no coincidence that Hendrick called a three-hour competition meeting after the Texas race.

“It made a difference, for sure,” Johnson told Sporting News after Sunday’s race. “I think it was more of an internal thing where, in any sport, you’re looking for some comment or something to rally the troops around, and we used that to rally our guys.

“It worked well for us. I’m not sure if it was the sole cause of the big three-hour meeting—we knew that we were a little off as a company this year and maybe not as sharp as we needed to be in all aspects.”

Regardless, Johnson survived the closest Chase since the introduction of the format in 2004 and can turn his attention to what inevitably will be called the “six pack.”

For the record, Johnson now has one more championship than the man who brought him into the sport, teammate Jeff Gordon. That puts Johnson third all time in just nine full seasons of Cup racing. Only one other driver, Cale Yarborough, has won as many as three consecutive titles.

As formidable as his record is, Johnson understands that his accomplishments will be appreciated more fully 10 or 20 years from now than they are today.

“I believe that in my heart,” Johnson said. “There’s been a lot of questions about respect—if I get the due respect. I feel that I do, and I know in time it’ll continue to grow. It’s just hard in the present for the entire NASCAR fan base to appreciate what I’ve done, because they want their guy to win. In time, I’ll probably get more credit than I probably deserve.

“When I start to think of what five championships mean—Earnhardt and Petty ahead of me, Jeff behind me—so many weird thoughts, crazy thoughts go through my mind. Jeff gave me this opportunity, brought me here. I watched what he did first-hand and put him on such a pedestal, and to match him last year and to be one ahead of him this year and be close to Earnhardt and Petty, I can’t even comprehend it.

“It’s unbelievable.”

Perhaps, but it’s also real—and so is Johnson’s opportunity to elevate his stature to the level of the two seven-time champions, perhaps beyond them.

What should be a daunting thought to his competition is that he still has plenty of time to do it.