Johnson makes case for NASCAR's best champion ever
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[November 28, 2016]
By Jonathan Ingram, The Sports Xchange
Jimmie Johnson joined the pantheon of
the great stock car drivers by winning his seventh Sprint Cup. But
there's still the question of where he stands compared to the other
greats.
Perhaps the more appropriate question concerns a possible eighth
championship. If Johnson, still in his prime at age 41, were to
break a tie for the most titles with Richard Petty and Dale
Earnhardt, would that make him the best of them all?
The scope of the discussion should also include Junior Johnson --
who entered the NASCAR Hall of Fame with Petty and Earnhardt as a
member of the inaugural class -- and David Pearson, whose 105 career
victories are second only to Petty's 200.
Junior Johnson was dominant in the 1950s and early 1960s when it
came to victories but also chose an approach focused on winning or
blowing up. He never competed for a full season, virtually thumbing
his nose at the points championship. Pearson, who won the
championship three of the four years he ran a full schedule,
eventually moved to a selected schedule of speedway races with the
Wood Brothers.
For my money, Pearson was the best pure driver on the track. He was
smooth, conserved his equipment and raced hard when it counted. In
an era of danger from fire or crashes in relatively simple
tube-frame cars, he never once went to a hospital after a race. Of
these five greats, Pearson leads them all in winning percentage
(18.2), average start (6.2) and average finish (11.0).
After 15 seasons, Jimmie Johnson has a winning percentage (14.7)
that is ahead of only Earnhardt, an average finish (12.1) that is
ahead of only Junior Johnson and an average start (11.1) that is
only ahead of Earnhardt and trails considerably to Pearson's amazing
6.2 average. On statistics alone, Jimmie Johnson is not the best
pure driver.
Given his number of starts, Petty deserves a nod as the best when it
comes to winning. In 1,185 starts, Petty had a very stout winning
percentage of 16.8, second only to that of Pearson.
There are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics, according
to Mark Twain and the purists, who prefer looking at eras instead
statistics. The era approach can be an easy out for avoiding a final
decision, often a route chosen by pundits who once participated in
the sport. But it is possible to compare eras just like statistics.
The best case against statistics alone is Earnhardt, who is ahead of
only Junior Johnson when it comes to career victories (he had 76)
and trails badly when it comes to winning percentage (11.2). But
Earnhardt's impact on the sport was huge. His divide-and-conquer
style when it came to fan appreciation was unlike that of Petty, who
always had a rival, particularly Pearson, but rarely fanned the
flames like Earnhardt.
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Earnhardt introduced a whole new era of speedway racing that
included close quarters and inevitable contact. It was a
close-quarter style that demanded utmost skill and is still
prevalent among the current generation -- although drivers are far
more careful than Earnhardt to avoid contact. The fact Earnhardt
died while defending his racing creed, sadly, elevates his status
considerably.
If the humble, smiling "King" Richard brought NASCAR out of the
backwoods -- the same backwoods where Junior Johnson became Tom
Wolfe's "Last American Hero" -- it was Earnhardt who took the sport
to major league status and the six-year $2.4 billion TV contract
that began the year he died in 2001.
We are most certainly currently watching the Jimmie Johnson era. If
Johnson is to be considered the greatest in terms of eras and not
just the statistics that now include seven championships, his status
has to be reckoned according to the impact he's had during his era.
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The Earnhardt years have been tough to follow, witness Johnson's
perennial also-ran status in the Most Popular Driver voting won each
year by Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is still working on his first
championship. (His father, of course, routinely lost this vote to
Bill Elliott.) Unlike his teammate Jeff Gordon, who beat Earnhardt
to the title three times, Johnson did not have the opportunity to
beat The Intimidator to the championship, which might have helped
him in the eyes of fans.
What made the Earnhardt era so great were the T-shirts that read:
"Anybody But Earnhardt." Fans came in droves to either see him win
or to see another driver beat him. By that criteria, Johnson has
achieved a certain measure of success. He has a solid fan following
and most of the rest in the grandstands don't enjoy seeing him win.
With a driving style far more reminiscent of Pearson than any other
driver, Johnson doesn't fan flames or excite passion due to his
smoothness -- on and off the track. Maybe he's just too smooth.
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I would argue that watching Jimmie Johnson race is often worth the
price of admission. You'll always see him make his trademark move.
There's not any one thing he does, but he will size up and pass a
driver quicker than anybody in the business without putting himself
at risk (see Kyle Busch) and generally not the other driver. The
fact Johnson won his seventh title at the Homestead-Miami Speedway
after starting last in the field was not a surprise -- although
there was certainly some luck to the surprise ending.
Johnson has won all his titles in the Chase era, which is the most
decisive element of his reign and the one point of comparison many
fans hold against him. But the other key element has been the TV
money. The billions have been a rising tide that has produced the
most competitive fields in NASCAR history. Throughout the first five
decades of NASCAR, generally there were only six or seven other
drivers who could be counted on to be competitive each weekend.
Currently, there are 13 alone from the teams of Hendrick
Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, Team Penske and Stewart-Haas Racing.
The Chase format calls for drivers and teams to perform at their
best when the chips are on the line. Nobody remembers the winning
percentage of the NFL's Super Bowl winners, rather that they won in
the playoffs. Johnson has mastered that approach in an era where
only Tony Stewart among his contemporaries has been able to win the
Chase more than once.
One can argue that the Chase is more about luck than skill and less
about long run consistency. But Johnson's record suggests otherwise.
Given the current level of competition, if he wins an eighth title
it would be difficult not to consider Johnson, who narrowly missed
winning in the first year of the Chase, the finest driver of them
all, whatever his popularity or impact on the sport.
Then again, during the era of Junior Johnson, Petty and Pearson,
winning the biggest races that paid the most money was the focus and
the championship an afterthought before sponsorship money from the
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company made the title far more lucrative.
If nothing else, Jimmie Johnson is no doubt the greatest of his
generation when the most money and prestige are on the line, which
keeps him in the running for the greatest of all time with more than
a few seasons remaining in his career.
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