Johnson Back On Milestone March

 

The First Reid:  Out of Cadence Early, Johnson Back On Milestone March

By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
    Don’t look now, Earnhardt Nation, but Jimmie Johnson is snapping at the heels of your No. 1 hero.
    That’s right. With his long-overdue victory at Michigan International Speedway on Sunday, Johnson visited Victory Lane for the 69th time in his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career. That leaves him seven victories behind the late Dale Earnhardt for seventh on the all-time list.
    All else being equal, Johnson could reach that milestone as early as next year.
    Johnson’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Jeff Gordon, has already eclipsed Earnhardt’s win total. Gordon got his 77th victory in the 2007 spring race at Talladega Superspeedway, amid a shower of catcalls and beer cans.
    Johnson almost certainly will follow. In 12-plus remarkable seasons of Sprint Cup racing, the six-time series champion has never failed to win multiple races in a single year. Only once, in 2011, has he won as few as two.
    In a 2014 season that started slowly, the driver of the No. 48 Chevrolet now has three victories, having won three of the last four races and putting to rest any fears that the 48 team might have “lost it.”
    At this point, Johnson’s progress toward the next rung on the Sprint Cup ladder, Earnhardt’s 76 victories, seems inexorable. Ultimately, Johnson figures to knock Earnhardt down another notch on the career win list, to eighth.
    But “Six-Time” would do well to learn a lesson from his teammate.
    Just don’t do it at Talladega.

NASCAR NUMBER

4: Now that Jimmie Johnson has gotten his long-awaited victory at Michigan International Speedway, the six-time champion has reduced the number of active NASCAR Sprint Cup Series tracks at which he hasn’t won to four. The remaining venues—Kentucky, Watkins Glen, Chicagoland and Homestead—all lay ahead on the schedule this year.

8: The number of years between NASCAR Nationwide Series victories for Paul Menard, who won his first race in June 2006 in his last season of full-time NNS competition. On Saturday afternoon at Michigan, Menard won the second Nationwide Series race of his career in his only start this season.

625: The number of laps led by Jimmie Johnson in 25 races at Michigan International Speedway. That translates to 13.4 percent of the 4,662 laps Johnson has run at the two-mile track. No wonder the six-time champion was frustrated at his inability to win there—until Sunday.

3: The number of runner-up finishes for Kevin Harvick in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series this season. On Sunday, for the third time in five races, Harvick chased the eventual winner to the finish line with arguably the fastest car in the race, gaining ground in the closing laps but running out of time.

9: In the last nine NASCAR Sprint Cup Series events at Sonoma Raceway, the number of different winners. They are: Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Juan Pablo Montoya, Kyle Busch, Kasey Kahne, Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch, Clint Bowyer, Martin Truex Jr. Of those, Stewart, Kahne, Bowyer and Truex, are prominent full-time drivers without a victory this season. Opportunity knocks?