Johnson in rare position as underdog
LAS VEGAS – Jimmie Johnson is right where he wants to be this weekend — and right where he doesn’t.
For the seven-time NASCAR champion, this is the time of year when golden things begin to materialize, with Sunday signaling the start of the playoffs, the thrive-to-survive format that has channeled his career’s finest moments.
He is back at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where he has more cherished memories than any other current driver, with four Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series wins stashed in the back pocket of his Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 racesuit.
Yet Johnson didn’t want the start of
2018’s crunchtime to come around like this, with a disappointing campaign having seen him flirt with elimination before squeezing into the postseason on the final weekend in the 15th out of 16 spots.
His uncharacteristically mediocre results speak for themselves: a best finish of third with just two top-10 finishes since early June.
“I have gone through many emotions,” Johnson told USA TODAY on Thursday morning. “I am kind of over the pain of it and the being pissed part. It is just a case of getting through it.”
No other driver has won more NASCAR championships than Johnson — his tally of seven matched only by stock car icons Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt Sr.
Somehow, Johnson found a way to tame the inherent unpredictability of the playoffs to churn out one success after another.
This time, the mentality is different. Now, he hopes the “anything can happen” randomness of the 10-race postseason will come into full effect.
This season, Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. have been out of sight at the top of the standings with a combined 17 wins, while Brad Keselowski comes in hot after taking the checkered flag the past two weeks. They will open the playoffs ranked first through fourth, respectively.
Johnson is a long way back, beginning the playoffs with a reset figure of 2,000 (Busch and Harvick have 2,050, which includes bonus points for race and stage wins). His first task is to survive the primary cut, three races in, after which the bottom four drivers will see their championship dreams evaporate. In Johnson’s position, the best way to be sure of advancing is to top the podium.
“In sports playoffs anything can happen, so there is newfound optimism with that,” Johnson added. “It is a somewhat clean sheet of paper to start off with.
“This format really parallels other sports where you see a team start winning, get hot and get that momentum rolling. In the playoff era, we have won all of our championships, so that situation is very good for us.”
Johnson’s prospects will hinge on his ability to turn back the clock, the Hendrick crew’s potential to squeeze something extra out of his car, and possibly, some nervous wobbles from the frontrunners, whom, he says “definitely have a target on their back.”
“Jimmie is not the target he used to be,” former Hendrick teammate and current NBC analyst Dale Eanhardt Jr. said. “That might be better mentally, less pressure, less eyeballs, everybody is going to be looking at the other top guys. That could help him.”
Busch and Harvick have meshed raw power with unflappable consistency to this point. Busch placed out of the top 10 only five times, while Harvick was even steadier, with just four non-top 10s in 26 regular-season races.
“But now it’s crunchtime,” Harvick said. “You have to go out and perform and try to do the exact same thing that we did through the first 26 races of the season in the last 10 races — that’s winning.”
Busch and his older brother, Kurt (fourth in the final regular-season points, sixth in the playoff standings), hail from Vegas and the regular-season champion is hoping for a hometown boost when the engines heat up on Sunday.
“Las Vegas has grown into more of a sports town over the years,” Kyle Busch said. “When I was a kid, I always wondered why we didn’t have a professional team of any kind. Now there are a lot of stars in all kind of sports. It is nice to have that opportunity.”
Truex is the defending series champion, while Keselowski and 26-year-old Kyle Larson are seen as having the best chance of breaking the dominance of the Big Three.
But these are the playoffs, which means the only thing certain is that there will be no certainty whatsoever. Just the kind of time, perhaps, for an experienced head to capitalize upon the confusion.
“You will have guys up on stage saying it is just another day, but that’s (expletive),” Johnson said. “It is a pressurepacked situation and someone is going to be handling it a little bit better than the others. I want that guy to be me.”