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Jimmie Johnson proves that nice guys don't always finish last
By Jeff Gluck - Associate Editor
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Jimmie Johnson, driver of the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, is the first driver since Cale Yarborough to win three consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup championships.
Sam Greenwood
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You aren’t going to find what you’re looking for.
Not here. Not anywhere.
If you’re hoping to read an exposé on the REAL JIMMIE JOHNSON, a piece on all of the Sprint Cup champion’s unseen warts, you’re out of luck.
Want to hear about how his competitors secretly dislike Johnson? Sorry.
Or about how, once the cameras go off, the mild-mannered Johnson turns rude and downright mean? Our apologies.
Or maybe about how his image is an elaborate cover-up to keep his true personality from the public? Go fish.
Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.
The truth about Johnson is this: He’s respectful, considerate, patient and friendly.
To his fellow competitors. To his team. To fans. Even to the media.
The guy who just won three Cup championships in a row just so happens to be one of the nicest guys around.
“Nice guys can finish first,” two-time Cup champion Ned Jarrett said. “Our sport is in good hands when you see guys ... like Jimmie Johnson that are the leaders of it now. It’s better to me to see the nice guys winning and fighting for championships.”
Not everyone would agree. These days, it seems everyone is thirsting for a fight, anxious for controversy. Fans wonder why someone doesn’t just take Johnson out. Start a rivalry. Bring some excitement to the sport.
There’s just one problem with that: Johnson is almost universally liked in the garage. He has the respect of his competitors, from fellow drivers to crew chiefs to crew members.
If they could loathe him, they would. But they can’t.
“I think that Jimmie is a good guy. That’s just the way it is,” said his closest rival this year, Carl Edwards. “Sometimes I wish I could hate him a little more, make it more fun. But I just think he’s a good guy.”
In today’s sports world, the athletes who often get the most attention are the ones who reach out and grab it. Sports celebrity is about performing over-the-top celebrations, making controversial comments and generally hogging the spotlight. For them, life is about me, me, me; not team, team, team.
Johnson goes against all that. His values and beliefs guide him down a path of respect for his fellow competitors and the sport.
Is that boring? Maybe. But Johnson believes in treating people the right way, not lashing out and making the sport all about himself.
“I think we get warped into reality television shows and perspective that you need to be in fistfights and all these different types of things,” Johnson says. “What’s wrong with good competition and people that respect each other and teams that respect each other?
“I don’t know why we have to be a circus act to make it a good show. Good competition and respect for one another should be plenty.”
Nothing To Hide
Johnson spoke those words three days before winning his third consecutive title, part of a news conference that previewed the season finale and honored some of NASCAR’s all-time great champions.
In the front row of the audience sat legends such as Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip and Bobby Allison. As reporters quizzed Johnson and Edwards on the lack of a rivalry and the absence of hostility between the drivers, the past champions listened to Johnson’s comments and silently nodded their approval.
On the other side of the aisle, Rusty Wallace – a champion-turned-media-member – raised his hand to ask a question. Two, actually.
He looked at Johnson and wondered aloud what had to happen for Johnson to show his true colors and shed the corporate image. He rattled off names of some of the past champions and asked if winning a third championship would allow Johnson to “have some fun and be your own personality.”
Johnson had been asked various forms of this question a million times before, though perhaps never by a former champion.
“I wouldn’t feel if I was to win a third that now I’m empowered and now I can be someone [else],” Johnson answered, “because through it all, I’ve been myself.”
Wallace appeared frustrated and said, “Everybody has got their own different personalities. Have you thought about creating that for yourself and the fans, or are you happy with what you’re doing right now?”
“No, I haven’t,” Johnson replied. “I’m very happy with what I’m doing. ... I’m not one that’s going to sit up at night and say, ‘Wow, I need to be the funny guy or I need to be the Intimidator or I need to be any of those things.’ I’m just doing my thing. I guess I’m the confusing guy.”
After the news conference was over, former Cup champion Dale Jarrett was asked about Johnson’s answer. It seems that fans and media often plead with drivers to be themselves, be more interesting, more entertaining.
But Johnson already is being himself.
“People want to bring out this bad side of Jimmie or something, being more of a person that competitors don’t like,” Jarrett says. “But he has a reason to be who he is and there’s no reason for him to change.”
The very nature of racing would seem to require its competitors be hard-nosed, on the edge, aggressive and perhaps somewhat of a jerk. It seems that nice guys would have a hard time thriving in a sport that requires its athletes to drive as hard as possible, scrapping for position after position over four hours in demanding conditions.
Perhaps that’s why Johnson doesn’t get as much attention – or as much credit, at times – as drivers such as Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch. He’s calm, cool and polite, not the kind of driver who you notice until he’s standing in victory lane.
Johnson is the quiet assassin, proof that great drivers don’t have to be the in-your-face types.
“It’s not that because you have this competitive spirit and desire to be successful that you have to be a jerk and treat people that way,” Jarrett says. “Unfortunately, some of the ones who do it a little different get a lot more of the ink time, because somebody’s come up with the idea that that’s what people want to see and that’s what sells.
“Well, that’s not necessarily true.”
The Gordon Syndrome
There’s a large segment of fans who don’t care how nice Johnson is. They still would rather see him wreck out of a race than win one.
When Johnson’s name is announced to the crowd during prerace introductions, boos rain down on the California native like a thunderstorm of hate.
You’d think he just walked on stage and burned an American flag.
Johnson has never received mass cheers, though he says he heard more this season than ever before. Why many fans dislike him or are ambivalent toward him remains unclear.
Much of it is perhaps due to the link between Johnson and Jeff Gordon, his teammate, friend and mentor at Hendrick Motorsports.
Gordon-haters and Hendrick-haters automatically transferred their dislike to Johnson when he entered the sport, giving him several demerits before his rookie season was even complete. Like Gordon, Johnson was another clean-cut, non-Southerner who fans perceived to have been handed a great ride without paying his dues.
“Jimmie is a super nice guy and he’s very talented and he’s won a lot of races and we drive for the same team, and I think in that sense there are a lot of similarities,” Gordon says. “The only difference is that most of the boos that came my way came from the rivalry between the Earnhardt fans and my fans. That’s what separated us.
“There is certainly a lot of continuity and bond there that very easily could be taken from the fans as, ‘OK, if I’m a Jeff fan, I’m a Jimmie fan; if I’m not a Jeff fan, I’m not a Jimmie fan.’”
Johnson has been conscious of creating his own image and trying to separate himself from Gordon, but in many ways, he still doesn’t display the flaws and faults that drive fans to relate to their favorite athletes.
Drivers such as Stewart make fans think, “He has problems just like me.” Johnson – like Gordon in the first half of his career – does not evoke that emotion.
“I just couldn’t believe, you know, why was I getting booed? I didn’t understand it,” says Gordon, who now receives a mix of cheers and boos. “I did everything I possibly could and it never changed it.
“What changed it is going through some down years, and having some personal issues. People want to find a way to connect to you. Until they see you going through some of the same things that they’re going through, sometimes they don’t have that connection.”
All About Respect
On the track, image and personality matter little.
There’s nothing about a driver’s popularity that makes his car go faster. Other drivers aren’t going to move out of the way just because a more famous competitor is in the rearview mirror.
But they will move out of the way – or at least not race someone as hard – if they’ve been treated with respect in the past. And Johnson has nearly perfected that element of his racing.
If Johnson doesn’t have the best car, he won’t hold up a faster driver. And in NASCAR, most drivers race one another on a case-by-case basis.
Race me hard, I’ll race you hard. Cut me some slack, I’ll remember that down the road.
When coming upon lapped cars in a championship Chase, that can make a major difference.
After a recent Chase race, Johnson cited Juan Pablo Montoya, Jamie McMurray and Stewart as drivers who worked with him that day.
“Montoya has been great to me, and I give him the different respect at different points in time in the races and we trade that back and forth,” Johnson says. “[Some of the] guys that I’m catching them slowly but surely chipping away at it, they just pulled over and let me go. I have done that for them in the past.
“Each situation is different, and it’s nice to have friends out there that will work with you instead of guys taking shots at you all the time.”
Dale Jarrett says Johnson’s approach to racing was in line with the same philosophy used by Jarrett’s father, “Gentle-man Ned,” and himself. If a driver knows how to play give-and-take, it will be repaid to him later.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt it pays off,” Jarrett says. “[Johnson has] put himself in position, he’s made a lot of friends, he hasn’t ruffled a lot of feathers out here.
“People always ask me the advice I got from my dad in racing, and it wasn’t just about racing, it was about life – treat people the way you want to be treated and that’s going to pay off.”
Just Good People
When Johnson came up through the ranks, there were countless people along the way who helped him, offered advice, shared information. Part of his philosophy now is to do the same for others, even if it someday costs him on the track.
“If somebody has a question, I’ll answer truthfully,” he says. “I’ll help out, because that’s helped me get to where I am today.”
Edwards, who tirelessly chased Johnson over the final weeks of the season in an effort to overtake him in the standings, acknowledges that “if I need-ed some advice or some help or something like that, I could go over to Jimmie and he’d be right there helping me out.”
And that’s a good feeling.
“It’s more fun to race with folks like that, that you don’t necessarily harbor any ill will toward,” Edwards says.
In Johnson’s mind, getting along with people in the garage and having friendships is of the utmost importance (“I love the people in racing,” he says) and that means going out of his way to be nice when he doesn’t have to.
It’s hard for other drivers to dislike a guy like that.
“To this day when we have a good run, Jimmie is one of the first people to come over and congratulate me,” Edwards says. “And when he has a good run, as much as it hurts us in the points sometimes, it’s still good to see good people succeed.”
Mentioned Drivers: Jimmie Johnson
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Comments
12 responses to " Jimmie Johnson proves that nice guys don't always finish last ". Post a Comment.
Meg said:
Dec 10, 2008 at 3:38 PMAgree 100% .. very nice article on Jimmie !
Pamela Johnson said:
Dec 10, 2008 at 4:04 PMLoved this article in the magazine when I got it and am glad to see it on the site here. I've been telling friends about the wonderful articles you all had in last weeks magazine. Hope more of them end up on here too. Jimmie is an awesome person on and off the track. Glad to see the media pointing out that it's OKAY that he is a nice guy. Our country could use more nice guys like Jimmie.
Shirley Welborn said:
Dec 10, 2008 at 4:42 PMI believe Darrell Waltrip called Ned Jarrett Gentleman Ned, and now calls Jimmie Gentleman Jim, and has commented that Jimmie is the same off camera as he is on camera. He's not the knock-him-out-of-the-way racer as many others seem to be, and the cost for fixing his cars after a race should be very minimal. (Except for the Brickyard a few times, but he has mastered that one now.) Hopefully, those people who pre-judged him because of his teammate Jeff Gordon, will re-think and see him as one of the few NICE guys in the racing business.
terry ruth said:
Dec 10, 2008 at 5:19 PMHe may be as boring as day old oatmeal....but he drives clean and wins championships...passing people and not booting then into the wall....but still rubbing doors and winning the old school way...I can respect him even if I am not a Jimmy Johnson fan...
Becky Deline said:
Dec 10, 2008 at 6:15 PMJimmie Johnson friendly??? I'm sorry, but I met him a couple of years ago and he was about the most unfriendly person I have ever met. He had this holier than thou attitude and I'm really sorry that I wasted my time meeting him.
Anna Fie said:
Dec 10, 2008 at 6:59 PMAll that was said above is one of the reasons I like Jimmie Johnson. I have told my friends and husband the same(Jimmie Johnson is a Good Guy and a Great Driver). NEVER CHANGE, JIMMIE
Jim De Boer said:
Dec 11, 2008 at 1:25 AMBecky.... Wow, sorry to hear that. I am sure you have never ever had a bad day and never ever had someone think that of you.....ever. I am personal friends with two people that went to High School with Jimmie Johnson and will be the first to tell you that he was a nice, quiet, grounded, easy going guy..... He is quite the gentlemen....Congrats Jimmie.....
Darla Afable said:
Dec 11, 2008 at 9:00 AMThank you Jim for pointing that out for Becky! Jimmie is a true gentleman and has earned the respect of his peers and fans alike. Becky, it's ok if you don't like Jimmie......I don't like some of the other drivers.....that's what makes this sport so great (and our country!!!!) We are allowed to have differences in our tastes!!! I am sorry you felt he was rude and unfriendly to you....everyone deserves a second chance...why don't you try another time!
Sharon Ellison said:
Dec 11, 2008 at 2:13 PMBecky, I am so sorry you feel that way. Certainly, you must have misread Jimmie or just don't understand him. I have met him 4 times and each and every time he has been most gracious, although he is a little on the shy, quite side and not a loud and overbearing person. Just maybe you expected someone a little less of a gentleman? Or, just maybe he is not really your favorite driver and you are maybe just a little jealous of his accomplishments that exceeded your driver's accomplishments. Nevertheless, Jimmie is a wonderful person and it is kinda rude and selfish for you to use such a poor excuse to try to take away from his selfworth. Sorry, didn't work, guess someone like you will just have to try again. Shame, Shame, my mom taught me "if you can't say something good---just don't say anything. Maybe that could be your new virtue.
Becky Deline said:
Dec 11, 2008 at 6:35 PM#7...Jim, he was friendly to everyone else, but when I went up and asked him Nicely, might I add, for an autograph, he wasn't very friendly to me. I guess it's because I'm not a "stero-typical" looking female or maybe I was wasting his time (even though he had no problem with anyone else). That's is nice that you all have met him and found him nice, but the one time was enough for me.
Becky Deline said:
Dec 11, 2008 at 6:51 PM#9. I don't believe that it is rude or selfish for me to say this. This is what happened. I am sorry that you feel that way. That was the experience I had when I met him. I had no problem with him before. If I had, I would not have gone up to him to ask him for an autograph. It would have been a lot different if I was rude to him in the first place, but I have always been polite and nice when I ask for an autograph. I have every right to have say what I feel. And while he may have been nice to you, it may not be the same for other fans.
wayne scott said:
Dec 12, 2008 at 6:07 PMBecky, lets face it, none of us are at our best 100% of the time. The problem with being famous is that, for many of the people that they will meet, it will be a "1 time special event" for those people. Jimmie should have been nice, but he is only human. I have heard many people say great things about Jimmie.