One of my tweets recently brought about a tired, overused argument that I often see in regards to the Chase and Playoff formats.
“Jimmie Johnson coasted in the regular season at the back-half of the top-10 in points before turning it on in the Playoffs.”
Whether you agree with my perspective in regards to the tweet above, I can tell you that this narrative is false with evidence to squash it once and for all.
Johnson’s full-time Cup career kicked off in 2002 with Hendrick Motorsports in a brand-new fourth entry with sponsorship from Lowe’s.
The rookie’s first season took just 10 races before the legendary #48 car forged its maiden voyage into victory lane, and after sweeping both Dover races, Johnson put himself in prime position to take the points lead.
After a gruesome accident for points leader Sterling Marlin the following week at Kansas, Johnson assumed the points lead going into Talladega, becoming the first rookie to achieve this in the modern era.
Inexperience and plain bad luck steadily dropped Johnson to 5th in points by season’s end, but he came back stronger in 2003, racking up three more wins and 14 top-5s in 36 races.
This performance normally wins drivers a title, but because Matt Kenseth had one of the most consistent campaigns in NASCAR history, Jimmie came up just 90 points short of his first title in just his second year.
Jimmie and crew chief Chad Knaus sewed up their late-season struggles from their rookie year together, ending the season with six-consecutive top-3 finishes.
That stretch from Charlotte to Homestead would be a precursor of what was to come.
Established in 2004 by then-CEO Brian France, the Chase for the Cup introduced the idea of a postseason in NASCAR’s top division. The first 26 races served as the “regular season” while races 27-36 represented the postseason where the top-10 in points had their points reset.
Over those 10 weeks, the system forced drivers and teams to be more perfect in the closing stages of the year than ever before, even if it washed away the efforts made in the first 26 races.
Johnson and Knaus went about their business in the 2004 regular season, earning four wins and building a 232-point gap to teammate Jeff Gordon by the 20th race of the year.
Three engine failures in a row put Gordon back at the top of the heap, trading the lead with Johnson until Richmond where the #48 team got caught up in someone else’s mess.
Still, Johnson entered the Chase 2nd in points.
The first four races of the inaugural postseason weren’t exactly kind to Jimmie as two mediocre results at New Hampshire and Dover couldn’t keep the dam from bursting open as the #48 DNF’d at Kansas and Talladega.
From there, Johnson went on one of the most virtuosic runs in NASCAR history.
He won each of the next three races (amid a tremendous tragedy), picked up another win at Darlington, and he finished one spot short of the win in Homestead and in the title race, finishing eight points behind Kurt Busch.
So, Jimmie went from 2nd to 2nd.
In 2005, the El Cajon native kept his foot on the gas, winning two races in the regular season at Las Vegas and Charlotte on the way to a 4th-place points finish in the regular season despite leading the points for 16 weeks.
The Chase gave Johnson the stage to fight for the championship against main rival Tony Stewart and his Home Depot team over the next 10 events, and after winning at Dover, he retook the points lead.
Talladega offered little to Johnson in terms of help as he found himself involved in two cautions and finished 30 laps off the pace. Two races later, Johnson scored his fourth win of 2005 at Charlotte, his fourth-straight win at the circuit and snatched the points lead from Stewart for the final time.
A cat and mouse game developed between the dueling home improvement store-sponsored cars, and already being a beneficiary of the Lowe’s cars woes three years earlier, Stewart drove to his second Cup title at Homestead after Johnson eliminated himself from contention by crashing on lap 125.
Johnson went from 4th to 5th in the standings, but here is where a bulk of the aforementioned spite towards the even-keel Californian begins.
Even though NASCAR suspended Chad Knaus for the first four races of 2006, Johnson made his presence felt early and often, winning his first Daytona 500 and adding another win at Las Vegas in his crew chief’s absence.
A hiccup at Bristol in March did little to deter Rick Hendrick’s dynamic duo. A third win of the year at Talladega vaulted Johnson back to the points lead, a position he would hold for 16 straight weeks in 2006 before a four-race slide before the playoffs put Kenseth in the catbird seat for the Chase.
Another poor start to the Chase pushed Johnson down to eighth after Talladega, but Charlotte came to the rescue again where the #48 finished P2 behind Kasey Kahne.
The HMS crew tuned the car to perfection over the next month, never finishing worse than second from Charlotte to Phoenix, and all Jimmie needed to do was run modestly at Homestead to lock up his first title.
That’s exactly what he did, and he only vaulted himself up one position from the regular season to win it.
Adjustments were made to the Chase format to add two additional contenders to the postseason field as well as incentivizing wins during the regular season, so what do you think Jimmie and Chad did?
They won 4 of the first 10 races, endured a brutal summer stretch that sunk them to 9th in the points before logging wins at Fontana and Richmond to finish the regular season 4th in points.
Jimmie never finished worse than 14th throughout the 2007 Chase, going on an unparalleled run in the season’s final five races that included four straight wins at Martinsville, Atlanta, Texas, and Phoenix before outrunning Gordon at Homestead on the way to his second championship.
Jimmie won 6 of the final 12 races. Half of the final third of the schedule, going from 4th to 1st in 2007. Let’s also not forget this was the weird hybrid season as NASCAR allotted 16 races for the new Car of Tomorrow car model while the remaining 20 featured the standard fourth generation car.
The full-switch to the Car of Tomorrow for 2008 failed to hinder Johnson and Knaus, claiming four wins on their way to a 3rd-place spot in the regular season points.
The Lowe’s Racing Team planted their flag early in the 2008 Chase with a win at Kansas that followed two top-5s before notching two additional victories at Martinsville and Phoenix that led to his third title in-a-row.
In 2008, Johnson went from 3rd in the regular season to 1st, tacking on five wins in the final 12 races and finishing no worse than 15th (twice) in the postseason.
Jimmie’s 2009 season saw the #48 team continue to throttle their competition. Triumphs at Martinsville, Dover, and Indy put Jimmie and Chad at 3rd in points for the Chase for the second straight year, and the two would commence to whooping the field again from September onward.
Jimmie finished outside the top-10 once in the postseason, a 38th-place run at Texas where David Reutimann and Sam Hornish Jr. collected Johnson in a lap 4 crash. After spending eons in the garage, the team repaired the #48 and completed the event 129 laps off the pace.
Thanks to a Dover sweep, a Fontana win, and another victory at Charlotte, Jimmie still towered over the competition, sitting 73 points above teammate Mark Martin with two races to go.
Johnson won the next week at Phoenix, and the Californian made history as he earned his fourth-consecutive Cup championship, breaking a tie with one of his heroes, Cale Yarborough. Four Chase wins for a third straight year. 7 wins, 16 top-5s, and 24 top-10s all told. Jimmie and Chad were simply impossible to beat.
Or, so we all thought.
A lukewarm showing at the Daytona 500 could not stunt Johnson’s momentum as he visited victory lane at Fontana, Las Vegas, and Bristol in the first five races. The #48 squad tacked on two more victories at Sonoma and Loudon in the summer, entering the Chase tied for fifth place with Tony Stewart.
His 25th-place showing at Loudon made it appear as though there was blood in the water, but it was nothing but a mere illusion as Johnson put the bad run behind him by taking a win from pole the next week at Dover.
For what seemed like the first time ever, someone kept up with the #48 through the Chase: Denny Hamlin.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver sought his first title in 2010, and behind 5 wins within 10 weeks in the regular season, he entered the Chase as the #1 seed.
Wins at Martinsville and Texas pushed him past Johnson to take the points lead with two races remaining, but a fuel-strategy mishap in Phoenix dropped Hamlin to 12th, just 15 points ahead of Jimmie going into Miami.
A miserable race for the FedEx #11 team ensued on the shores of South Beach as Hamlin qualified a dismal 37th and spun out on lap 25 after contact with Greg Biffle on the backstretch. Denny fought all day long to find his way to Jimmie, falling 12 spots short of the four-time defending champ with a 14th-place result.
Hot on Jimmie’s trail was Richard Childress Racing’s Kevin Harvick. After leading the points for much of the regular season after his drought-breaking victory at Talladega in the spring, Harvick’s advantage was erased, and he spent the entire postseason within eyeshot of the title.
To make the situation more painful, Johnson scooped up a 2nd-place finish while Harvick filed in behind him in 3rd, clinching an unprecedented fifth-consecutive Cup championship.
So, Jimmie went from 5th to 1st in the 2010 postseason.
The 2011 season brought about changes to simplify the points system by making each position worth one point, a system still in-use to this day. Five titles in five years made many believe that the Johnson-Knaus pairing would never wilt even slightly because they knew how to win a title in every way imaginable.
A slow start to 2011 (well, relatively speaking) pushed the #48 down the points order in the first five races, but an unlikely venue gave them relief: Talladega. Teammates Gordon and Martin hooked up in tandem to take on Harvick and Clint Bowyer on the final lap, but lurking in the shadows were Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
As the three duos rocketed through the trioval, Johnson’s last-second appearance tied for the closest finish in NASCAR history at .002 (two one-thousandths of a second), giving the defending champ his first victory of the season.
Jimmie’s brutal consistency permeated throughout 2011, but visits to victory lane were less and less frequent.
Stringing together five top-10s from Pocono 2 through Atlanta put the Lowe’s Chevy Impala in the points lead, but after tangling with Kurt Busch in Richmond, Jimmie relinquished the lead before the points reset.
Johnson exited the regular season second in points, three points shy of first, but due to seeding being determined by wins, it dropped the team down to fifth.
Two top-10s in the first three Chase races kept Johnson afloat heading into Kansas where 5-Time led nearly 200 of the race’s 267 laps en route to just his second win of 2011. In a normal season, this is the turning point for the #48 bunch, but something didn’t click over the final six events, finishing outside the top-10 five times.
These troubles allowed Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards to have one of the most thrilling championship battles in racing history as the season ended in a tie between the two.
Stewart prevailed on account of winning more races while Johnson and Knaus ranked 6th in the final standings, their worst points finish to-date.
Searching for speed for the first time in what felt like a decade, 2012 marked the final year of the Car of Tomorrow as NASCAR set the debut of their new Generation 6 car for 2013. While trying to find speed in something going obsolete, Chad and the #48 team needed to get prepared for the new car to come as well.
Starting the season with a lap 2 DNF in the rain-delayed Daytona 500 set the team back significantly, but the proven driver and crew chief combo slowly but surely , scoring their first win of the year in the Southern 500.
Just two weeks later, Johnson toppled the Monster Mile yet again to jumpstart his summer, a stretch that included just one finish worse than 11th before dominating the Brickyard 400 yet again for win #3.
By the beginning of the 2012 Chase, Johnson racked up three wins and sat fourth in points before the points reset seeded him in second. Flashes of Johnson’s brilliance shown immediately in Chicago where he finished second to Brad Keselowski after dominating the day before completing the Dover sweep the next week.
Jimmie finished outside the top-10 just once in the first five Chase races, ending Talladega 17th after getting swallowed up by a sea of wrecked race cars in turn 3 on the final lap.
The Lowe’s crew wasted no time by putting their car in the top-10 the next two races before adding two more wins at Martinsville and Texas. Texas saw the tension ratchet up between Johnson and Keselowski, the two slamming doors multiple times in the waning laps before the #48 crossed the line first and took the points lead.
Jimmie did his job at Phoenix the next week, riding around in the top-10 with nearly 100 laps to go, but a tire went down on the Kobalt Impala, sending the points leader hard into the outside wall.
The team hurried to repair the car, returning to the track shortly after the caution. The bleeding persisted as Johnson ended the day 32nd while Keselowski’s top-10 handed him the points lead for the final time.
Johnson commanded the race at Homestead, a track he surprisingly hadn’t won at despite celebrating there on several occasions. With 55 to go, Jimmie ducked onto pit road with a six-point advantage over Brad.
Another tire issue befell the former champ as the Lowe’s pit crew missed a lug nut on their final stop, requiring a second trip to the pits. Another 10 laps went by, and the drive for six went up in smoke, literally.
The Lowe’s machine’s broken rear-end gear put the Chevy Impala out of the race and out of the championship, ending a dominant 2012 season in a distant 3rd to first-time champion Brad Keselowski.
The advent of the Gen6 car as well as the new Chevrolet SS model provoked big changes for the Chevy teams, something that could against other manufacturers. You wouldn’t know that if you worked on the #48 team.
Chad gave Jimmie a hot rod to start 2013 the right way: winning the Daytona 500. Repeating his showing from 2006, the Hendrick headliner drove to the front to earn his second victory in the Great American Race.
To save you the trouble, the dynamic duo never slowed down. Jimmie won at Martinsville, Pocono 1, and doubled up at Daytona, leading the points for all but two weeks in the entire 26-race regular season.
Johnson ended the regular season in the worst possible way, finishing 28th or worse in each of the last four events to land second in the regular season points, one point behind Carl Edwards.
Due to Matt Kenseth’s 2013 season, Johnson’s four wins were not enough to take the #1 seed, but as soon as the green flag dropped in Chicago, Jimmie and Chad were back in their bag.
A win at Dover in the third Chase race split up a run of five finishes of sixth or better, broken up by the worst finish of the postseason: a 13th at Talladega.
This poor run still launched Jimmie to the points lead, and he never looked back. Capping the season with another win at Texas and a 9th at Homestead, Jimmie & Chad locked up a sixth title, finishing 19 points ahead of Kenseth.
Winning the Daytona 500 and beating Matt Kenseth for the title? What is this? 2006??
Jokes aside, title #6 for team #48 put them in rarified air as the quest for a record-tying seventh title began.
For the first time since the thrilling 2005 finish where Jimmie beat Bobby Labonte to the line, Jimmie and Chad put themselves in victory lane after winning the Coca-Cola 600.
He went on to score two more wins in the next three races at Dover and Michigan, yet the momentum halted at Kentucky and onward as the Lowe’s team logged seven straight finishes of 9th or worse, including five straight results outside the top-10.
Though his season looked to turn sour, Jimmie and Chad turned 2014 around with four top-10s to end the regular season before performing admirably in the first round of the new NASCAR Playoffs.
Unlike prior years, Johnson needed just one win to make the postseason and everything else until Chicago was gravy. However, once reaching the postseason, every driver that won and the remaining drivers in the top-16 in points enter three rounds of three races where the bottom four drivers are eliminated from the Playoffs.
From there, you either need to be toward the top of the points in a round or win a race to advance to the next round, all in an effort to be one of four drivers to race for a championship at Homestead.
Jimmie’s luck ran out in this round as a 40th at Kansas, 17th at Charlotte, and 24th at Talladega put the NASCAR legend in 10th, two spots short of making the Round of 8.
The team spent the rest of the season trying to impress and build for 2015. Two finishes worse than 30th certainly didn’t dazzle anyone, but a commanding performance by the #48 at Texas earned them their fourth and final victory of the year, ending up 11th in the final standings.
Jimmie went from leading the points heading into the Round of 12 to finishing outside the top-10 for the first time in 13 seasons at NASCAR’s highest level.
Looking for a rebound in 2015, the #48 team clinched a Playoff spot in the second race of the season in Atlanta with sub-30th place results at Las Vegas and Martinsville sunk them in the points.
The Hendrick Motorsports powerhouse bounced back with a win in Texas that jumpstarted a run of five top-3 finishes from Texas to Kansas before a trying Coke 600 left the team with a 40th-place finish.
A fourth win in the season’s 13th race showed the dynamic duo were capable of getting that improbable 7th title; they just needed to keep riding this wave of momentum.
Unlike 2010, that was not possible.
The famed #48 couldn’t conquer another circuit for the rest of the regular season, and by the time the Playoffs rolled around, they were fifth in points. Thanks to their wins throughout the season, the Lowe’s Home Improvement Chevy snagged the #1 seed for the postseason.
Modest performances at Chicago and Loudon put Jimmie a comfortable 27 points above the cutline heading into the Dover cutoff race, the same track that hosted the #48’s most recent triumph.
NASCAR dinged Johnson for speeding on a lap 42 pit stop that put him back in the pack for the opening stages of the event. While marching back into the top-half of the field, Johnson made an unscheduled pit stop on lap 103 that would effectively end his season.
A drive line issue put the Lowe’s Racing Team behind the wall, coming home 41st. The showing saddled the team with a first-round Playoff exit.
Even still, there was work yet to be done. Jimmie felt it was pertinent to sweep Texas, wiping away a truly dominant run from Brad Keselowski with less than five laps to go to earn his 75th career win.
For those of you who clicked on this article expecting to see your opinions on Johnson and Knaus’ success validated even a little bit, thank you for being patient.
Jimmie Johnson’s 2016 campaign was his most efficient title run yet, and it might be the most efficient title in NASCAR Cup Series history.
Nabbing wins in Atlanta and Fontana pushed Johnson past Dale Earnhardt on the all-time wins list and forced the #48 team into the championship discussion. Until Charlotte, everything seemed to be going just fine as they sat third in points with two wins.
Over the final 13 regular season events, Jimmie’s efforts only reaped three top-10s, finishing outside the top-30 five times in that period. Their points position dwindled as their results fell, cascading down to ninth, only five points above rookie teammate Chase Elliott at the onset of the postseason.
Jimmie and Chad withheld just enough magic from the past decade for one last title run.
A trio of top-12s catapulted Jimmie into the Round of 12, erasing the pit road adversity he faced at Chicago and Dover that took the multi-time champion out of the race for the win.
Charlotte Motor Speedway introduced the Round of 12. Starting 11th, Johnson marched to the front in the House that Jimmie Built, taking the lead for the first time on lap 117 and practically taking it for good on lap 176 when he completed the pass on leader Denny Hamlin into turn 3.
Despite losing the lead on the final pit stop to Matt Kenseth, Superman Jimmie struck again, nailing the restart, taking the lead, and securing a spot in the Round of 8 early by winning the Bank of America 500.
The win kept the team in high spirits even after a mediocre 23rd at Talladega to end the round, but a Round of 8 featuring five champions, Denny Hamlin, and Carl Edwards could derail any shot Johnson had at a title if they didn’t execute to perfection.
Let me tell you, they did not execute to perfection at Martinsville to kick off the third round of the Playoffs.
The first 200 laps of the race went by with a couple dings and dents from hard racing, but after receiving a tap from behind courtesy of Hamlin, Johnson showed his displeasure by whacking the #11 car, crumpling the #48 car’s left-front fender.
The contact forced Johnson to pit under green to repair the car, and thanks to a lost tire on Edwards’ #19 with just under 150 to go, Johnson seemed poised for a comeback.
Unfortunately, this occurred right in the middle of green-flag pit stops, shuffling the running order. Timing and scoring got scrambled, extending the caution to 29 laps coasting awkwardly behind the pace car.
Tight on fuel, Johnson’s car just gave up.
In what looked to be a symbolic gesture by the racing gods to end the Jimmie Johnson era, the #48 car lay limp on the racetrack as NASCAR continued to solve the running order.
Johnson writhed inside the race car, panicking while searching for ways to keep his car and his championship chances alive. He flipped a switch inside the car, and suddenly, the car gasped for air, coming back to life and allowing the champion to rejoin the race.
After a brief visit to pit road, the caution flag returned to the starter’s stand, running green from lap 387 to the end of the race. Johnson maneuvered past Hamlin with 91 laps to go and drove off into the Virginia sunset, scoring his 79th career victory and his 9th win at Martinsville, tying him with teammate Jeff Gordon.
The 2016 Goody’s Pain Relief 500 represented the beginning of the end of an era. Jeff Gordon completed his final NASCAR race in 6th position, driving the #88 in place of an injured-Dale Jr.
Gordon was the last driver to share the race track with Richard Petty back in the 1992 season finale in Atlanta. Losing Gordon to retirement also meant losing the final artifact that attached the sport’s past to its present.
Like any good Cinderella, Johnson knew the minute hand had yet to meet up with the hour hand by the 12. Subpar results at Texas and Phoenix were immaterial to the goal.
One last stop: Homestead.
Appearing in the Championship race for the first time since the Playoff format debuted in 2014, Johnson faced off with Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch as well as Team Penske’s Joey Logano.
NASCAR officials pulled our good friend Chad Knaus to the hauler over the weekend because the crew chief fiddled too much with the car, moving Jimmie back from his 14th starting spot to the very back of the field for the pair’s most important race to date.
The starting spot could have been a detriment, but you wouldn’t know it by watching Jimmie surgically dissect the competition, rising to the top-15 by lap 30. Jimmie’s #48 Chevrolet SS hovered around sixth as the day faded into dusk. Not enough juice in the tank to get up Edwards, Logano, and Busch who occupied the top-3.
A Dylan Lupton caution for a blown engine initiated one final pit stop with less than 15 to go for the leaders. Coming out fifth, Johnson needed a miracle to claim title #7.
And, he would get a miracle of sorts.
Edwards took the front row for the restart with Logano and Johnson lined up behind him on the bottom and Busch taking the outside opposite of Johnson in row 3. Logano’s lurched forward jumping to the #19’s left. Except, Carl Edwards was not going to lose this ever-elusive title by letting some kid take it from him.
Carl threw the block to end all blocks, inching Logano’s #22 Shell Pennzoil Ford towards the painted apron before the two ran out of room, sending Edwards flying into the inside wall and collecting multiple cars.
Johnson and Busch escaped with their hands and cars clean, allowing them to take the next restart in the second row. Instead of racing out the final five laps under green, the field failed to exit turn 2 cleanly as Ricky Stenhouse went for a spin, sending the Championship race into Overtime for the first time.
Johnson leapfrogged Kevin Harvick to take second while Logano sprung through the field from 8th to 3rd, taking the final restart from the second row with slightly fresher tires than Johnson.
The tires didn’t matter.
Logano got a poor restart, giving way to Johnson to fight for the victory with Kyle Larson. Larson’s higher line took longer to develop, giving the El Cajon native enough momentum to take the lead and the victory, the fifth of 2016, the 80th of his career, and clinching his record-tying seventh Cup Series title.
Jimmie Johnson slothed his way through the regular season and signed his name beside Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr. as the only seven-time champions in NASCAR Cup Series history.
2016 saw Jimmie go from 9th to 1st in the postseason.
The quest for an unparalleled eighth title lasted all of about 13 races in 2017. Johnson notched his third victory of the year at Dover, his 11th win at that facility. Another record to sign his name beside. His 83 career wins tied him with Cale, the same man that lost his consecutive titles record to Johnson years earlier.
Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson stayed together through the end of 2018. After meandering to a Round of 8 exit the previous year, Johnson struggled without veteran teammates and Chevy’s new car model: the Camaro.
At a familiar venue, Johnson squared up with a new track at Charlotte: the Roval. Chasing down leader Martin Truex Jr. on the race’s final restart, Johnson closed in on the defending Cup champion on the backstretch, coasting on Truex’s bumper through the final two oval corners.
Diving from the oval turn 4 banking onto the flat heading into the final chicane, Johnson could have taken second and safely submitted his name for inclusion to the Round of 12.
But, that’s what losers do.
Johnson sailed the #48 Chevy into the final chicane, clipped Truex, spun backwards through the first half, clipped Truex again halfway through, took the lead, pivoted forward, stopped his car for cutting the chicane, and coasted across the line in 7th, tying him with two other drivers that held better finishes within the round.
For the second time in four years, Johnson’s season ended early in the first round, and the two years spent without Knaus and Lowe’s in 2019 and 2020 saw the sport’s greatest driver miss out on a Playoff berth.
I won’t be getting into Johnson’s alleged decline because I have done that before on another website.
Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus clearly understood the flaws and intricacies of the Chase for the Cup and Playoffs better than anyone else, winning 29 of a possible 130 races in the postseason from 2004-2016.
This means 53 of their wins came during the regular season, nearly two-thirds of their win total coming from the first 26 races of each season.
Johnson never entered a postseason below 5th until 2016, and even after starting that Playoffs in 9th place, he still beat the odds and won his seventh title.
Though I could go on for eons about how dominant Jimmie Johnson was, I won’t because, again, I’ve written about it before.
Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus have nothing left to prove. Their 11-season run is unmatched in the history of the NASCAR Cup Series, and their gawdy numbers in the regular season made them untouchable when the postseason rolled around.
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