Free Friday: Can Jimmie Johnson Win at Daytona?
Here are six things I know about NASCAR legend Jimmie Johnson.
He’s 48 years old.
He won seven Cup championships—including five in a row at one point—and was just inducted last month into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
He retired from NASCAR driving back in 2020 and then announced his retirement from all professional racing in 2022.
He’s probably the most realistic athlete I’ve ever spent time with. You would never describe Jimmie Johnson as a dreamer. You would instead describe him as a planner.
He came out of retirement to run a super-limited schedule last year, and on Thursday night qualified for the Daytona 500 with a heart-stopping final lap pass.
He honestly, truly, seriously believes he can win the Daytona 500 on Sunday.
“Daytona? Absolutely,” he says. “Other tracks? Probably not, no. I think the reality of the other tracks is that the guys that do it day in, day out, are just going to have a huge advantage. It’s not easy to show up, let alone be out of a NASCAR vehicle for years, and beat those young guys who are all in.
“But Daytona? With restrictor plate racing? Oh yeah. I have a shot.”
Jimmie knows that even though I have written about him many times—we go back 15-plus years—I still don’t know hardly anything about racing. And so when I describe restrictor plate racing, I’m unquestionably doing it wrong: But as I understand it, there are just a couple of tracks—Daytona and Talladega—where they will put restrictor plates next to the carburetor (near the carburetor? under the carburetor? inside the carburetor?) to reduce airflow or something like that, and this will limit how fast the cars can go.* I think.
*I would estimate that between Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon and maybe Junior Johnson, restrictor plate racing has been explained to me at least a dozen times. This is still the best I can do.
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The reason, I do understand: Restrictor plate racing is designed to keep the cars bunched together because Daytona is a gigantic track—two and a half miles around, compared to just about all the others, like Charlotte and Kansas, that are a mile and a half—and if you just let the cars go top speed, the best cars would just run away with the thing, and it would probably be pretty boring.
Even more to the point, without restrictor plates, the Daytona 500 would be about the cars. I’d say Formula One racing is more about the cars. But NASCAR, from the start, has been more about the drivers. This is a sport that started with moonshiners trading paint on Sundays to prove who was the best of them all, and while it has been a very long time since those days, that purpose is still at the core of the sport, I think.
NASCAR fans I know don’t care who can build the most aerodynamic car.
NASCAR fans I know still long to know who is the best driver of them all.
In that kind of race, a Daytona 500 kind of race, Jimmie Johnson still believes he can win. It will take some luck. It always takes some luck. But he thinks Daytona is a lot like the Masters in golf. Can Tiger Woods go out there week in and week out and compete with the younger golfers? No. Can Tiger show up in Augusta make a few early birdies, get up on the leaderboard, and hold up on Sunday while everyone around him succumbs to the pressure? Absolutely. He’s done it already.
“I think that’s the best comparison in another sport,” Johnson says. “After you’ve passed your peak as a golfer, you can choose your mix, pick the courses where you might have a shot, I mean, Fred Couples goes to Augusta and you’ll see him contend for a couple of rounds. Tiger always has a shot when he goes back. It’s special. You can’t moonlight into the Super Bowl or World Series. But you can with the Masters. And maybe I can with Daytona.”
Then again, maybe Jimmie Johnson is kidding himself. That may seem unlikely; as mentioned, he has never been the kid-himself type. What has always been so striking about Jimmie Johnson—and this goes back to his off-road days—is how together he has always been, how laser-focused he was on the prize, how smoothly he worked with sponsors, how he never seemed to make a mistake on the track, how clearly he has understood the larger mission.
“Lots of people can drive a car fast,” he once told me. “You need something else these days.”
But, it must be said, Jimmie Johnson is at the toughest age. When a great athlete first retires, there’s a thrilling buzz about it. Celebratory stories are written. Grateful fans flood you with thanks and applause. All of those hard things about being an elite athlete—the daily grind, the pounding on the body, the never-ending responsibilities, the unceasing pressure, the anxiety about someone catching you from behind—fades away all at once, and you are able to breathe again and suddenly your calendar is filled with nothing but possibilities… travel the world, learn the guitar, golf, start a business, become an actor, spend time with your family, write your book.…
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Maybe that buzz lasts for a long while.
Or maybe that buzz lasts for only a short while.
“I guess I had an awareness of the challenges ahead,” Jimmie says. “I am aware of the struggle. Friends who were car drivers, friends in stick-and-ball games, they told me how hard it is to fill that competitive void.”
Being Jimmie Johnson, he carefully planned for the void by filling it completely. He has countless projects going. He’s co-owner of a NASCAR team. He and his wife, Chandra, run their charity foundation. He’s developing an animated television series. He’s gotten involved in dozens of business projects. He and Chandy and their two kids are temporarily living in England for what he calls “an experience year.”
And he has raced all sorts of different cars; he’s had a blast racing classic cars, and he drove in the 24 hours of Le Mans race last year, and he drove Indy Cars.
He says that he’s been surprised by how much all those challenges, particularly being a race car owner, have fed his competitive nature. “It sounds silly,” he says, “but it’s just so dang competitive in the office of a race shop. You’re trying to deliver on the track, trying to deliver for partners, trying to build a brand. I’m really surprised how competitive it all is.”
And yet… here is Jimmie Johnson again, back racing at Daytona, back with a limited, nine-race NASCAR schedule, back to believing that he can win the Great American Race if things break just right.
“I tried my best to wean myself off this addiction,” he says, not unhappily. “I’m not sure when that day will come.”
JoeBlogs Week in Review
Monday: Some Super Bowl thoughts.
Tuesday: The Most Famous Baseball Players of the Last 50 Years—the countdown begins!
Wednesday: No. 49 on the list of Most Famous Baseball Players.
Thursday: No. 48 on the list.
I come for Famous baseball Player No. 48 . . .
. . . and I stay for an article about a sport (?) I know nothing about, and care about less.
Joe, never stop being you. Man.
Restrictor plates reduce the overall speed of the cars doe safety reasons. Without them, the cars may run around 230mph. Just above 200mph, the car will fly in the air at the slightest disturbance, especially if the car is backwards or sideways. Before restrictor plates, cars were close to flying into the grandstands, so it's a fan safety issue. Not that it can't happen at other speeds, but the risk of cars flying in the air incredibly increases over 200mph based on the design of a stock car.