Daily Times (Primos, PA)

Johnson mulls future in red-flagged farewell season

- By Jenna Fryer

CHARLOTTE, N.C. » Jimmie Johnson, seven-time NASCAR champion and allaround Everyman, has added home-schooling elementary teacher to his resume.

The sports stoppage from the coronaviru­s pandemic has thrown a red flag on Johnson’s farewell tour. He had planned a final season of racing a full NASCAR schedule, but so far that has lasted just four races.

Amid all the uncertaint­y, Johnson doesn’t know when he’ll be back in his beloved No. 48 Chevrolet.

NASCAR is publicly targeting a May 9 return at Martinsvil­le, privately holding its breath for a May 24 re-opening at the Coca-Cola

600 at Charlotte but vowing only to complete the entire

36-race points schedule. In the meantime, Johnson teaches his two daughters’ daily school lessons, continues his fanatical fitness routine, spends hours upon hours on his racing simulator and waits to see how his pending retirement plan goes.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen in the coming months and if we’ll be able to run the full season or not,” Johnson said. “I feel like I set out to make 2020 my last full-time year, but I’ve always left the door open for other racing and NASCAR and abroad for the future.

“I feel like I am still pretty much on that path. I am hopeful that we get our full year in and we can get back going in a month or so ... and that I can run the season to its entirety. I really don’t have an answer — it’s up in the air just as so much is in the world.”

This 19th season was supposed to be his last as a full-time driver at Hendrick Motorsport­s because Johnson, 44 and father of two young girls, doesn’t want to live in a motorhome 38 weekends a year. Johnson wanted to shift his racing to focus on a bucket list — the kind of schedule former Formula One champion Fernando

Alonso has created.

This unconventi­onal route works for drivers who still have the skills and ability to compete but are exhausted from their full-time jobs. NASCAR has the longest season in sports and participan­ts average three nights a week — the weekend — away from home.

Johnson figured he’d transition to the kind of competitio­ns he could never do as a NASCAR racer: Besides triathlons, Iron Man competitio­ns and cycling pursuits, Johnson was locked in on trying IndyCar and had a test scheduled for early April that was canceled because of the pandemic.

Now he’s adapting to what he described as the most free time he’s ever had as an adult and is eager to get back to work. Johnson was off to a decent start before the season was suspended; through four races he had a pair of top-10 finishes and was fifth in the points.

Impressive for Johnson, who has slogged through a winless streak dating to June 4, 2017. He’d unburdened himself this year of the internal pressure to win a record eighth championsh­ip that would separate him from Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt. And he is far more comfortabl­e in the new Camaro that General Motors is racing this year.

“I know where I am in terms of fulfillmen­t with the career I’ve had. Sure, I want to be on track and sure, I want to go to these places a final time,” he said. “But I feel more for the fans who aren’t having that opportunit­y now than I long for myself to experience it and to be there.”

 ?? JOHN RAOUX — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE ?? Jimmie Johnson gets ready for a practice session in February for the Daytona 500at Daytona Internatio­nal Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla.
JOHN RAOUX — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE Jimmie Johnson gets ready for a practice session in February for the Daytona 500at Daytona Internatio­nal Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla.

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