Jimmie Johnson edges up on NASCAR history, like it or not
HOMESTEAD, Fla.—Jimmie Johnson tells the story of the first time he met Dale Earnhardt. Johnson had been crashing on the couch of Ron Hornaday Jr., one of Earnhardt’s drivers, and Hornaday once brought Johnson along for a trip to Earnhardt’s garage. Hornaday and Johnson were tinkering with a car when The Man himself rolled up and spotted the unfamiliar face.
“Boy! You on my payroll?” he shouted at Johnson, who most definitely was not an Earnhardt employee. “Then get the hell off my property!”
Had Earnhardt known that wide-eyed, and likely terrified, kid would one day be challenging his record of Cup championships, he might well have put the kid on the payroll. Or taken a shot at him, one of the two.
Johnson enters Sunday’s Ford Ecoboost 400, NASCAR’s season finale, with the chance to tie the seven-championship mark of Earnhardt and Richard Petty, a mark that on one hand seemed untouchable, and yet for Johnson, inevitable. He’s been the greatest driver in the sport for a decade, claiming five championships in a row from 2006-2010 and the sixth three years after that.
You’d think this would be a cause for enormous celebration, and maybe it will be come Sunday night. But NASCAR’s a strange beast, where history is untouchable and drivers long gone claim an outsized share of the fanbase’s attention. Johnson piling up all those Cup victories–Sprint Cup, mind you, not Winston–was fine and good when he wasn’t anywhere close to the summit. But now that he’s here, only the hardest-core (or hardest-skulled) fans won’t give Johnson his due.
For decades, Richard Petty has brushed off any comparisons between his seven championships and Earnhardt’s, saying that they were racing in two different eras, with two different worlds around them. That’s true enough, but by that metric, Petty and Earnhardt raced in a different universe than Johnson. We’ve gone from an era where the second-place finisher was three laps down to a time when the second-place finisher is three-tenths of a second behind, from an era where 25 cars didn’t finish the race to a time when 25 cars are on the lead lap at the checkered flag.
But if you allow that Johnson is racing against a higher level of competition across the board, you also have to allow that he’s racing in an era that rewards well-timed rather than season-long excellence. Neither Petty nor Earnhardt raced in an era where the points reset for a Chase, and certainly neither ever raced in a four-way winner-take-all race the way Johnson has.
The Chase’s current win-and-advance format doesn’t reward season-long greatness–2016 greats like Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. are among those watching from the sidelines, metaphorically speaking–but in this instance, it’s cut in Johnson’s favor. A victory at Martinsville, a race where he’s as close to a lock as you can get in this series, allowed him a pass into the championship, wiping the slate clean on what had been, to this point, a disappointing regular season for Johnson.
“I thought we could make it through some rounds and maybe get to the Round of Eight, Round of 12,” Johnson said earlier this week. “But I didn’t think I could sit here today and honestly tell you guys that we were a favorite for the championship or had a shot to win it.”
But he does, and with that championship comes legendary status. Johnson has to walk a line here, answering questions about history while still keeping focused on the present. “I’m not running from [the thought of the record]. I’m not hiding from it,” Johnson said this week. “I’m more focused on winning the race, trying to qualify on pole, [and] understand in the middle of the day what I need for the car to do, come dusk and when the sun sets.”
You can’t get this close to history without getting a bit philosophical, and Johnson has allowed himself a bit of that, while still staying focused on immediate business. “I know it’s here,” he said. “I know that I’m as close to this opportunity as I’ve ever been, but I’m not climbing in that car Sunday saying, I’ve got to win seven. I’m saying, I’ve got to win a championship … There’s something that’s kind of crazy to even say, but at least in the way I’m living my life right now, there’s something bigger than that seven that’s going on, so it’s much more vivid in my mind.”
Come Sunday night, he’ll know whether he’s joined Petty and Earnhardt atop the mountain, or whether he’s still got distance to climb.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
