Johnson returns to Indy for road course debut

The lofty expectations started with Chip Ganassi. He is the one who said Jimmie Johnson would win a race during his rookie Indycar season.

And even after his first two races — Johnson has spun, stalled and caused three of the five cautions called — Ganassi hasn’t changed his mind. He still thinks the seventime NASCAR champion is going to find himself at the right place at the right time and get to victory lane this year.

“Above all, he’s a racer,” Ganassi said. “He understands race craft. Is he going to win a race on all-out speed? You’d probably say that’s a challenge. But things happen in these races and I don’t think it’s out of the question.”

His next chance comes at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where Johnson is a four-time winner. But those victories are on the big oval in NASCAR races and Saturday will mark his debut on the road course in just his third career Indycar Series start.

Johnson tested the IMS road course in July with Chip Ganassi Racing, the first step in this two-year deal that transitioned him from NASCAR to Indycar road and street course racer.

The results have been, at least on paper, underwhelming. Johnson was 19th in his Indycar debut on the road course at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama and then 22nd on the street course in St. Petersburg, Florida.

At Barber he navigated through a sixcar crash on the first lap of the race, but later spun to bring out the second caution. He brought out two of the three cautions at St. Pete, including one incident where he struggled to get his car into reverse.

Despite the challenges, Johnson said at St. Pete his “fun meter was at 11” and the new experiences have been invigorating after two decades in NASCAR.

He walked along the waterfront from his hotel to the track in St. Pete, dined with his wife, two daughters and friends at a patio restaurant and noted the would have been “sitting in Talladega right now, staring outside the motorhome window at the same patch of grass we’ve looked at for 20 years.”

Johnson has viewed every ontrack session as a learning experience and doesn’t focus on finishing position.