by Julian Spivey One of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history – arguably the greatest of all-time – Jimmie Johnson is hanging up his NASCAR steering wheel following this weekend’s Cup Series season finale race in Phoenix. Unfortunately, Johnson hasn’t received the fan-fare he’s deserved with his final season coming during a massive pandemic that has seen many races run without fans and the others with a much less capacity than normal. If you’re a NASCAR fan you may never see Johnson on track again (though, I don’t believe he’s completely said no to a potential one-off race down the road), but if you’re a racing fan or a Jimmie Johnson fan wanting to see him behind the wheel he will be running a partial IndyCar Series schedule (only road and street course events) for Chip Ganassi Racing in 2021. To celebrate the future NASCAR Hall of Famer’s career here are the five greatest moments in Jimmie Johnson’s career: 5. First Career Win A driver’s first career win is always going to be among the most memorable moments of their career, but Jimmie Johnson’s was probably more sweeter than most as it came in his home state of California at California Speedway in Fontana, Calif. in his rookie season of 2002. Johnson hadn’t had a stellar showing in the sport’s minor series, so it came as a surprise to some that Rick Hendrick and Jeff Gordon chose him to run the No. 48 for Hendrick Motorsports, but it didn’t take long for Johnson to prove naysayers wrong winning at Fontana in just his 13th race in the series. Johnson would go on to win two more races in his rookie year, but believe it or not that wasn’t enough for him to secure Rookie of the Year in the Cup Series, which went to Ryan Newman who won two fewer races and finished one spot in the point standings behind Johnson (a head scratcher for sure). 4. Career-Best Year of 2007 Since NASCAR’s modern era began in 1972 there have only been 10 drivers to win 10 or more races in a season and Jimmie Johnson is one of those drivers. His career-high of 10 wins in a season came in 2007, the second year of a five-straight year title run. Johnson clinched his 10th win of the year at Phoenix International Raceway in the season’s penultimate race. The win at Phoenix marked his fourth straight win that season as he thoroughly decimated the NASCAR playoff competition. Johnson also won races that year at Las Vegas, Atlanta (twice), Martinsville (twice), Richmond (twice), Fontana and Texas. 3. Two Daytona 500 Wins The Super Bowl of NASCAR racing is the season-opening Daytona 500. It’s the event every driver feels they have to win and unfortunately some of the greatest in the sport’s history have found doing so to be elusive. Jimmie Johnson won the sport’s biggest race twice in his career. His first Daytona 500 win came in his first championship season of 2006 when he led 24 laps and the second Daytona 500 came in 2013, his sixth championship season, when he led 17 laps. 2. Seventh Championship Ties Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt For the longest time there were two names at the top of NASCAR’s Greatest of All-Time mountain: Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt. Petty and Earnhardt each won seven NASCAR Cup Series championships, the most all-time in the sport. When NASCAR instituted a playoff system in the early 2000s it seemed winning seven titles would be harder than ever. Well, Jimmie Johnson and his future Hall of Fame crew chief Chad Knauss made doing so seem easier than ever by absolutely dominated the playoff system, even in different iterations of the format. The driver-crew chief duo got the bulk of their seven titles together out of the way consecutively winning five titles in a row from 2006 through 2010. Johnson would get his sixth championship in 2013. His record-tying seventh title came in possibly the hardest championship format thus far, in a winner-take-all championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2016 when he had to beat three other drivers at a track, he’d never won a race at before. His seventh title will always have him synonymous with Petty and Earnhardt as one of the sport’s iconic names. 1. Five Consecutive Titles Despite Richard Petty’s dominance of the ‘60s and ‘70s he’d never won more than two championships in a row. The record for most consecutive titles in NASCAR Cup Series history had been Cale Yarborough winning three in a row in 1976, 1977 and 1978. Some had opportunities to match that, Dale Earnhardt won back-to-back titles three different times in his career and Jeff Gordon came close to winning four in a row but managed just three in a four-year span with a second place finish in the middle. It seemed Yarborough’s record would be hard to break. Jimmie Johnson’s didn’t just break the record of three championships in a row – he demolished it. From 2006 through 2010 Johnson absolutely dominated the sport in a stretch hardly seen in any other sport winning five straight titles. During that historic five-year stretch Johnson managed to win 35 races (42 percent of his career total of 83 wins). With NASCAR developing a winner-take-all championship format that seemingly makes compiling multiple championships harder than ever there’s a good chance Johnson’s five titles in a row is never going to be equaled or broken.
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