Texas may be perfect antidote for Johnson

FORT WORTH, Texas — Maybe Jimmie Johnson can do something old at Texas, and get back into Victory Lane.

“I think the term ‘new’ is the thing that has hurt us the most this year. We know and acknowledge that what we were trying last year didn’t work,” Johnson said. “Us trying new things and not having a past history with these setups, and honestly searching for greatness and to get an advantage. In some respects maybe we’ve been a little aggressive in trying to start the year.”

With his career-long winless streak at 65 races since a win at Dover in June 2017, Johnson is the polesitter in his No. 48 Chevrolet Camaro for Sunday’s race at the 1 1⁄2-mile Texas track where he is a seven-time winner. It is his first pole anywhere since 2016, the season he won the last of his seven NASCAR Cup championships.

And maybe this will be the first race of 2019 that someone wins other than a driver from Joe Gibbs Racing or Team Penske, though one of them won both lower-series races at Texas this weekend. Each of those teams won three of the first six Cup races.

Gibbs driver Kyle Busch will have a shot at a Texas tripleheader weekend sweep after winning both the Xfinity and Truck Series races. He completed such tripleheader sweeps at Bristol in 2010 and 2017.

Johnson and his Hendrick Motorsports teammates William Byron and Chase Elliott are starting in the top three spots.

Johnson had the top practice speeds Friday, and led all three stages of qualifying to get the pole at

188.890 mph. He was fifthfastest in practice Saturday at 186.047 mph.

This will be the 37th Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway since the track opened in 1997. It is the fifth since a total repave when Turns 1 and 2 were also reconfigured before the 2017 spring race that Johnson won.

Johnson last week finished 24th at Martinsville, where he got lapped during the second stage on the historic short track where he leads all active drivers with nine victories. He is

15th in season points, after finishing 14th last year for the worst showing in his 17 full Cup seasons so far.

“I had so much support on social media,” Johnson, 43, said in a sarcastic response. “There were so many nice people talking about me and how good of a driver I am and how young I am.”