Can Johnson rise anew as young crop nips at heels?
Jimmie Johnson is ready to rise up.
F.E.A.R. has two meanings: Forget Everything and Run or
Face Everything and Rise. His words, not mine. His tweet Monday has received 10,000 likes, reflective of the fact that people like cheering for good guys.
Jimmie Johnson is one of the good guys in NASCAR. But he is also one of the worst drivers based on the most recent NASCAR Cup standings.
Johnson is 35th in points, a Nowhere Man land that finds him trailing part-timers like D.J. Kennington and backpackers like Matt DiBenedetto.
Johnson should be able to drive circles around those guys, or at least left-hand turns. And he usually does. He has seven Cup titles, the most in NASCAR history, tied with icons named Petty and Earnhardt.
He also has 83 Cup victories, most among active drivers. He is also on a winless streak of 25 races after getting knocked out in the proverbial pileups at Daytona and spinning out in Atlanta.
So you can see why Johnson sent himself a motivational pick-me-up on the internet. But you can also see why, despite the slim two-race snapshot, that we are reaching an escalating level of concern when you lump in his late-season struggles in 2017.
“You can never count someone that great out, of having a great year of being a contender, of fighting for a championship, but it’s harder,” said three-time NASCAR champion Darrell Waltrip, now an analyst with Fox Sports. “The more young guys you have, the harder it is for an old guy.
“They are hungrier, more aggressive. They take more chances. You’ve been there. You’re more conservative.”
Waltrip looks in the mirror and sees himself. He won 84 races but none after 1992. He retired in 2000. Do the math.
“You name every driver who is 40, 45, in that range, you might grab one now and then, but the consistency is not going to be there,” Waltrip said. “You’re not going to dominate. And that’s a fact of life.”
Johnson is 42. Do the math. It’s a whole new dynamic with the younger crop of kids, which includes three of Johnson’s teammates at Hendrick Motorsports. One of them, William Byron, has logged countless hours on simulators before getting significant lap times on a track.
It is not Jimmie’s NASCAR anymore.
“We were all young once to that point,” Johnson said during Speed Weeks. “This sport really did serve experience for a lot of years. And in today’s world you can get experience in a variety lot of different ways and have the hours needed to jump in a car, unlike my generation.”
Will Johnson rise up, as he suggests in his tweet, or continue to struggle?
There could be more trouble ahead. Or a heck of a comeback story for the old guard.