With some luck, Jimmie Johnson could be gunning for seventh straight title
Hey, have you heard that Jimmie Johnson is trying to win his fourth straight NASCAR Sprint Cup championship?
You’ve probably heard that several hundred times this season, and some fans say they’re aggravated about all the incessant talk about Johnson.
Well, it could be much, much worse for those fans. Given a little luck, Johnson could easily be on the verge of winning his seventh straight series championship.
Johnson drove full time in NASCAR’s Cup series four seasons before winning his first championship in 2006. In 2002, his rookie season, he finished a surprising fifth in the point standings, exactly 200 points behind Tony Stewart. He had three victories. That’s a career year for many drivers. For Johnson, it was by far his worst season to date. He had only six top-fives, a career low, and a career-low average finish of 13.5. Still, he was within 200 points of a championship. Not bad for a rookie. For the sake of argument, we’ll say he wasn’t ready to win a championship that year.
But Johnson was just getting warmed up. Remember 2003? The popular image everyone seems to have of that year is Matt Kenseth’s metronome-like consistency leading to such a blowout in the season-long points race that NASCAR dumped its traditional scoring system a few weeks later and adopted its 10-race Chase format.
Except that blowout part never happened. Johnson finished second in the standings that year, only 90 points behind Kenseth. Hardly the runaway everyone seems to recall. A break here or there and that could have been Johnson’s first championship.
Moving on to 2004, Johnson finished second in the new Chase, a scant eight points behind Kurt Busch. Remember Busch’s fortune in that season finale at Homestead, rallying to finish fifth after having a wheel come off? That could have been championship No. 2 for Johnson.
Then, in 2005, Johnson won four races but finished fifth in the Chase. Yet he was only 127 points behind Chase winner Tony Stewart, a margin that could be made up in one race. In fact, Johnson entered that season finale at Homestead only 52 points behind Stewart, but he crashed late in race.
Yes, Johnson has had some luck in avoiding trouble during his current championship streak – all championship teams in any sport do – but with an extra break or two from 2003 through 2005, he could be looking to nail down his seventh consecutive title in the next couple of races. That is mind-boggling.
