The two blunders that will cost Jimmie Johnson the title

The two blunders that will cost Jimmie Johnson the title

 

By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

 

(October 16, 2011)

 

Is it finally time to say goodbye to Five-Time?

 

Is it finally time to write off Jimmie Johnson’s chances in the wake of a late crash that dropped him to 34th place in Saturday’s Bank of America 500 and put his entire season in peril?

 

Jack Roush all but did that after the race at Charlotte Motor Speedway that left Johnson eighth in the standings, 35 points behind leader Carl Edwards. In essence, Roush said Johnson won’t be able to race his way to a sixth straight Sprint Cup title unless all seven drivers in front of him in the standings screw up.

 

“For anybody that has a wreck or breaks an engine or has a cut tire at the wrong time, you can’t expect to get a mulligan,” Roush said. “You’ll be very lucky if somebody will give you a chance to make up the whole race.

 

“I thought that Jimmie Johnson would be a factor in it, and he’s definitely going to have to stand in line and wait for the other folks in the top five to have problems for him to get back in it. He won’t race his way back in it. He won’t finish high enough above the top four or five cars to beat them on the racetrack. He’ll have to wait for them to have trouble, I think.”

 

Has Roush forgotten 2006? After five races, Johnson was seventh in the standings, 146 points behind Chase leader Jeff Burton. Translated to the current points systems, that was a bigger deficit than Johnson faces now, and in 2006, as we all know, Johnson rallied to win the first of his five straight championships.

 

The fabric of this season, however, is fundamentally different. In 2006, Johnson finished second at Charlotte in the fifth race of the Chase, the first of a string of five straight top-two results that won him the title.

 

This year, Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus did the unthinkable at Charlotte. They beat themselves. Two fundamental mistakes, the first of which led to the second, in all likelihood will be the proximate cause of Johnson’s failure to win the championship.

 

A four-tire call under the second caution of the race, just short of the halfway point, left Johnson mired in 15th place for a restart on Lap 153. In a race where track position was at a premium, and pronounced “aero-push” made passing almost impossible—even if your car was slightly faster—two tires were the order of the day.

 

In fairness, Matt Kenseth also took four tires on that stop and restarted 11th. Kenseth recovered to win the race. Johnson didn’t recover, because his car wasn’t quite as fast as Kenseth’s.

 

For the rest of the race, Johnson fought traffic, and that led to the second catastrophic mistake.

 

After Greg Biffle cut a tire and clobbered the Turn 1 wall to cause the seventh caution of the race, Johnson restarted 10th on Lap 304. Poised for another trademark silk-purse-from-a-sow’s-ear  comeback, he had raced his way into the seventh spot when he nosed inside Ryan Newman’s Chevrolet in Turn 2 on Lap 316.

 

A pit bull will give up a steak bone more readily than Newman will relinquish a position on the racetrack, and Johnson knows that. Still, he went for the pass. Newman crowded him, and Johnson spun, first down toward the apron and then nose-first into the outside wall.

 

Johnson had Kasey Kahne in his mirror, but there was no great urgency to pass Newman. The better part of valor would have been to take the top 10 and move on to Talladega, where Johnson won in April, and then to Martinsville, where Johnson is exceptional and two of the drivers contesting for the championship—Kenseth and Edwards—are not.

 

Who knows? There may be a few miracles left in Johnson’s pocket. Enough to rally for a sixth title? Probably not.

 

This year, there’s a strong sense that some of the magic is gone—because Johnson, Knaus and the No. 48 team have squandered it.