Jimmie Johnson Is More Than Just Another IndyCar Rookie

• Jimmie Johnson, a 7-time NASCAR Cup champion, will be making his first start in the NTT IndyCar Series on Sunday at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala.

• The races starts at 3 p.m., ET and will be broadcast live on NBC TV.

• For a driver who is sixth on NASCAR’s all-time wins list (83 victories), it’s still a stretch whether he can win a race in his first year in IndyCar. Even JJ admits that.

If Jimmie Johnson were to pick a theme song to typify his move to the NTT IndyCar Series this year, he might be forced to choose Alice Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy.”

Adopting that type of personality may be the only way the perennially positive seven-time NASCAR Cup champ will succeed in the IndyCar ranks.

Johnson will have to be more aggressive and more fiery than he ever was in NASCAR. While many of his new open-wheel peers are respectful of Johnson’s achievements in stock car racing, he’s now playing in their house and, no pun intended, on their turf.

And forget about IndyCar being a more gentile, gentlemanly form of motorsport. While the drivers may be all smiles outside of their race cars, behind the wheel they’re more cut-throat than any Cup drivers Johnson had to contend with.

Johnson’s seven NASCAR Cup championships will mean absolutely nothing once the green flag drops in Sunday’s season-opening Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park.

He’ll be just another rookie—a 45-year-old rookie, at that.

And even with all the success he enjoyed in NASCAR, IndyCar is a whole other animal.

Johnson was asked recently by USA Today’s "For The Win" if he “felt scared or out of your depths (in an Indy car)?”

Johnson replied with a laugh, “Yeah, basically every lap I’ve made so far.”

That’s why it’s all but necessary for Johnson to change his persona from the vanilla-esque, mild-mannered George McFly in the movie Back to the Future to something more akin to Sylvester Stallone in Rambo Everyone will be coming for him and at him.

While NASCAR Cup drivers hate to be upstaged by rivals, IndyCar drivers are in a whole other universe. They’ll take it as a personal affront if Johnson passes them, let alone if he finishes ahead of them in a race. They’ll be on a mission to prove that their style of racing is much tougher than NASCAR.

And Johnson will quickly have to learn—if he hasn’t learned already—that if someone ticks him off in an on-track incident, he won’t be able to use his fenders to push a competitor aside because … well, let’s face it … there’s no fenders on an Indy car.

Remember the Cup race at Martinsville Speedway back in 2007 when Johnson and teammate Jeff Gordon (not to mention being Johnson’s boss because he owned half of Johnson’s race car) got into a celebrated fender banging routine in the final lap before Gordon surrendered the victory to Johnson?

That won’t happen in IndyCar racing for Johnson.

The first time Johnson runs hard into a turn and thinks he can push someone like six-time champ Scott Dixon or fiery former champ Josef Newgarden or even underdog Jack Harvey out of the way, he will quickly get a very rude awakening both on-track as well as potentially after the race when whoever was victimized by Johnson comes looking to bang more than fenders.

While Johnson’s talent and career accomplishments to date are without question, there are several concerns about his foray into IndyCar:

1) He is 45 years old and in a completely different style of car. For the past 20 years, he piloted a 3,600-pound stock car, where drivers have to use brute force to maneuver an aerodynamic-unfriendly car around a racetrack. Now, he’s driving a sleek, aerodynamic-friendly 1,900-pound open-wheel Indy car, where a mere inch or two can spell the difference between success and destruction.

2) To achieve success, IndyCar drivers often need several years of experience in that type of vehicle. Having gotten behind the wheel of an Indy car for the first time late last year, Johnson has just limited testing time and practice in reality, as well as virtual reality driving on a simulator, coming into Sunday’s race.

3) Johnson expects to race at least two years in the IndyCar Series. The plan originally was to race just street and road courses (13 out of 17 races this season), but he’s warming to the ideal of also doing ovals next season. That, of course, would likely mean he’d compete in the Indianapolis 500 for the first time – at the age of 46.

4) Logistically, obviously driving a NASCAR stock car and an Indy car are worlds apart. Will Johnson’s expedition into IndyCar reignite his performance and success? Or will he be just a guy with a flashy name and past recognition who is unable to translate his former career accomplishments into a different form of racing where the only similarity with NASCAR is cars in both series have four tires and a steering wheel?

5) Let’s face it, Johnson comes to IndyCar after the three worst seasons of his Cup career. Not only was his last win in mid-2017, he earned just 10 top-5 finishes in his last 114 Cup starts.

6) Realistic expectations are hard to predict. And how will Johnson be graded at the end of his first 13-race season? Will finishing in the top-15 (albeit missing four oval races, including the Indy 500) in the final standings be realistic? Or perhaps the top-20 – or worse?

7) For a guy who is sixth on NASCAR’s all-time wins list (83 victories), it’s still a stretch whether he can win a race in his first year in IndyCar. Even JJ admits that.

When asked by USA Today’s For The Win if winning a race in 2021 is a realistic goal, Johnson demurred: “I don’t feel like it is. I’m not saying it can’t happen … but I think in an all-out, shootout, heads-up race, I don’t see me being there this year.”

He then followed that comment up by readily admitting, “I’ve got a long way to go.”

Let’s face it, when was the last time Jimmie ever said he didn’t think he could win a race? Answer: never—at least up to this point.

In an interview on NBC’s Today Show on Thursday, Johnson said of his IndyCar debut:

“It’s much more different than I expected. … I grew up around IndyCar and Indy car racing on the west coast. That was my dream as a child, to race an Indy car. I had a chance to drive Fernando Alonzo’s Formula One car in 2018 and that was my first open-wheel experience and it just lit something inside of me and I’ve been pursuing it ever since.”

He then added about the end of his NASCAR career, “I really felt like I was tracking toward retirement, maybe some golf, whatever happens at that point. But that experience in 2018 was so impactful to me that I wanted to do more. And at that point, I started working towards this idea.”

If this was anyone other than Jimmie Johnson—in other words, a 45-year-old IndyCar rookie—t would likely not generate the attention that “7-time” has.

Then again, if anyone CAN succeed in IndyCar at an advanced rookie age, it’s Johnson, too. Just don’t expect too much, too soon.

I know one thing for sure: While I’ll be cheering Johnson on, I, as well as I’m sure countless others, will be holding their breath Sunday when Johnson takes the green flag and drives into the left-leaning first turn.

If he escapes unscathed, he may just have a future ahead of him.