‘Grandpa’ Johnson determined to win 8th NASCAR championship
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Jimmie Johnson has never hitched a ride for an afternoon on a champion’s float that snakes down closed city streets.
The professional sports teams bask in the celebration of hundreds of thousands of fans screaming in adulation and spraying beer from sidewalks in a frenzy as confetti flies from the sky.
Johnson’s top reward for winning it all, a rally once at one of his sponsor’s stores a few miles away from his California hometown.
The NASCAR champion traditionally gets a party in victory lane at the season finale and throws a bash at the postseason banquet. It’s all good fun, but even a seven-time champion wouldn’t mind a parade. “I have to admit, that would be a nice add to the NASCAR champions schedule,” Johnson said. “It would be really cool.”
Johnson, a regular visitor to the White House when he reigned as NASCAR’s champ, had already initiated his own champion’s tradition a few years back.
Inspired by a chat with NASCAR official Mike Helton and the presidential tradition of leaving a handwritten letter to the successor, Johnson started a champion’s journal.
His first entry was a December 2011 letter to series champion Tony Stewart. Johnson followed championship seasons with notes for Kevin Harvick and 2017 champ Martin Truex Jr., and the keepsake is handed off at the banquet.
“There seems to be a thread when it comes back to me about me having more entries than anyone else,” Johnson said with a laugh outside his motorhome. “That kind of finds its way in each time I get it back.”
The journal is thick enough for quite a few more lines of teasing, well wishes and advice left to be composed. But the question looms for the 42-year-old Johnson, can he still fill the blank pages left as he comes off the worst season